l8Sf 
 
 University of California • Berkeley 
 
 BRUCE PORTER COLLECTION 
 Gift of Mrs. Robert Bruce Porter 
 

THOMAS CAELTLE 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 A HISTORY OF HIS LIFE IN LONDON 
 
 1834-1881 
 
 BY 
 
 JAxMES ANTHONY FROUDE, M.A. 
 
 I 
 
 HONOKABT FELLOW OF EXKTKR COLLEGE. OXFORD 
 
 TWO VOLUMES IN ONE 
 
 VOL. L 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1884 
 
 lAll righia re9erv«d\ 
 
TROWt • 
 
 PRINTING AND BOOKBINOINQ COMPANY, 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 OP 
 
 THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 , PAGE 
 
 Introductory, *. . . . i 
 
 CHAPTER 1. 
 A.D. 1834. MT. 39. 
 
 Beginning of life in Clieyne Row — First winter in London — 
 John Sterling — Oflfers of employment on the ' Times' not 
 accepted, and r, hy — Begins * History of the French Revo- 
 lution ' — Carlyle's inteiin-etation of it — Extracts from Jour- 
 nal — London society — Literature as a profession — John 
 Mill — The burnt manuscript — Resolution to continue the 
 book — Meets Wordsworth, ...... 
 
 CHAPTER IL 
 A.D. 1835. MT. 40. 
 
 The first volume to be replaced — Poverty and depression — 
 John Sterling — Maurice on the Articles — * Sartor ' — Car- 
 lyle's theology — Style — Invitation to America— Thoughts 
 of abandoning literature — Reflections in Hyde Park — 
 Book to be finished — London drawing-rooms — First vol- 
 ume rewritten, 2S 
 
vi 'Contents. 
 
 CHAPTEK III. 
 A.D. 1835-6. Mt. 40-41. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Visit to Scotland — Hard conditions of life — Scotsbrig — Re- 
 turn to London — Effort of faith — Letter from his mother 
 — Schemes for employment — Offer from Basil Montagn — 
 Polar bears — Struggles with the book — Visit from John 
 Carlyle — Despondency — Money anxieties — Mrs. Carlyle 
 in Scotland — Letters to her — ' Diamond Necklace ' printed 
 — * French Revolution ' finished, 49 
 
 CHAPTER lY. 
 
 A.D. 1837. ^T. 42. 
 
 Character of Carlyle's writings — The ' French Revolution ' as 
 a work of art — Political neutrality — Effect of the book on 
 Carlyle's position — Proposed lectures — Public speaking — 
 Delivery of the first course — Success, moral and financial 
 — End of money difiiculties — Letter to Sterling — Exhaus- 
 tion — Retreat to Scotland, 75 
 
 CHAPTEE Y. 
 
 A.D. 1837-8. ^T. 42-43. 
 
 Effects of the book — Change in Carlyle's position — Thoughts 
 on the cholera — Article on "Sir Walter Scott — Proposals 
 for a collection of miscellanies — Lord Monteagle — The 
 great world — T. Erskine — Literature as a profession — 
 Miss Martineau — Popularity — Second course of lectures 
 — Financial results — Increasing fame, . . . .98 
 
 CHAPTEE YI. 
 
 A.D. 1838-9. iET. 43-44. 
 
 Visit to Kirkcaldy — Sees Jeffrey — ' Sartor ' — Night at Man- 
 chester — Remittances from Boston — Proposed article on 
 Cromwell — Want of books — London Library — Breakfast 
 with Monckton Milnes— Third course of Lectures — 
 Chartism — Radicalism — Correspondence with Lockhart — 
 Thirlwall— Gift of a horse — Summer in Scotland — First 
 journey on a railway, , , , . . . . 124 
 
Contents, vii 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 A.D. 1839-40. ^T. 44-4Q. 
 
 PAOB 
 
 Keview of Carlyle by Sterling— Article on Chartism offered 
 to Lockliart — Expanded into a book — Dinner in Dover 
 Street — First sight of Dickens — Lectures on Heroes — 
 Conception of Cromwell — Visit from Thirlwall — London 
 Libraiy — Imj^ressions of Tennyson — Reviews — Puseyism 
 — Book to be written on Cromwell, 145 
 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 
 A.D. 1840-1. MT. 45-46. 
 
 Preparation for * Cromwell ' — Nei-vous irritability — A jury trial 
 — Visit to Fryston — Summer on the Solway — Return to 
 London and work — Difficulties in the way — Offer of a 
 professorship — Declined, 173 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A.D. 1842. ^T. 47. 
 
 Sterling at Falmouth — My own acquaintance with him — 
 'Strafford' — Carlyle's opinion — Death of Mrs. Welsh — 
 Carlyle for two months at Templand — Plans for the 
 future — Thoughts of returning to Craigeni3uttock — Sale 
 of Mrs. "Welsh's property — Letters from Lockhart — Life 
 in Annandale — Visit to Dr. Ai-nold at Rugby — Naseby 
 field, 195 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 A.D. 1842. ^T. 47. 
 
 Return to London — Sees the House of Commons — Yachting 
 trip to Ostend — Bathing adventure — Church at Bniges — 
 Hotel at Ghent — Reflections on modern music — Walk 
 through the town — A lace girl — An old soldier — Artisans 
 at dinner — The 'Vigilant' and her crew — Visit from 
 Owen — Ride in the Eastern counties — Ely Cathedral — 
 St. Ives— 'Past and Present,' 218 
 
viii Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 A.r>. 1842-3. ^T. 47-48. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Slow progress with ' Cromwell ' — Condition of England ques- 
 tion—' Past and Present ' — The Dismal Science — Letter 
 from Lockhart — Effect of Carlyle's writings on his contem- 
 poraries — Young Oxford — Eeviews — ^Visit to South Wales 
 — Mr. Eedwood's visit to the Bishop of St. David's — Im- 
 pressions — An inn at Gloucester — Father Mathew — Ee- 
 treat in Annandale — Edinburgh — Dunbar battle-field — 
 Eeturn home, 238 
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 A.D. 1843-4. ^T. 48-49. 
 
 A repaired house — Beginnings of ' Cromwell '—Difficulties — 
 The Edinburgh students — Offer of a professorship — The 
 old mother at Scotsbrig — Lady Harriet Baring — A day 
 at Addiscombe — Birthday present — Death of John Ster- 
 ling, 280 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 A.D. 1845. MY. 50. 
 
 Summer in London — Mrs. Carlyle in Liverpool — Completion 
 of ' Cromwell ' — Eemarks upon it — Effect of Cromwell's 
 history on Carlyle's mind — Eights of majorities — Eight 
 and might — Eeception by the world — Visit to the Barings 
 — Lady Harriet and Mrs. Carlyle — Letter to Sir Eobert 
 Peel— Meditations, . 300 
 
 CHAPTER XIY. 
 
 A.D. 1846-7. JET. 51-52. 
 
 Domestic confusions — Two letters from Mazzini— Mrs. Car- 
 lyle at Seaforth — Clouds which will not disperse — Glori- 
 ana — Tour with the Barings in Dumfriesshire — Moffat 
 and its attraction — Carlyle at Scotsbrig, .... 324 
 
Contents. ix 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 A.D. 1846-7. JET. 51-52. 
 
 PACK 
 
 Six days in Ireland— John Mitchel— Ketum to London— Mar- 
 garet Fuller — Visit to the Grange — Irish famine— Dr. 
 Chalmers— Literature as a profession— Matlock— Sight 
 near Buxton — ^\^isit to Rochdale — John and Jacob Bright 
 — Emerson comes from America — The * Jew Bill ' — Hare's 
 Life of Sterling — Plans for future books — Exodus from 
 Houndsditch, 338 
 
 CHAPTEE XVI. 
 
 A.I). 1848-9. JET. 53-54. 
 
 Revolutions of February in Paris— Thoughts on Democracy- 
 London society— Macaulay— Sir Robert Peel— Chartist 
 petition, April 10— Articles in the * Examiner '—Paris bat- 
 tles in the streets— Emerson— Visit to Stonehenge— The 
 reaction in Europe— Death of the first Lord Ashburton, 
 and of Charles Buller— Mazzini at Rome— King Hudson 
 —Arthur Clough— First introduction to Carlyle— His 
 appearance, 365 
 
X 
 
CARLYLE'S 
 LIFE IN LONDON. 
 
 INTRODUCTOEY. 
 
 In Carlyle's Journal 1 find written, on the 10th of Octo- 
 ber, 1843, the following words : — 
 
 Some one wiites about 'notes for a biography ' in a beggarly 
 
 * Spirit of the Age ' or other nibbish basket — rejected nem. con. 
 What have I to do with their * Spirits of the Age ' ? To have my 
 
 * life ' sui*veyed and commented on by all men even wisely is no 
 object with me, but rather the opposite ; how much less to have it 
 done unwisely ! The world has no business with my life ; the 
 world will never know my life, if it should write and read a hun- 
 dred biographies of me. The main facts of it even are known, and 
 are likely to be known, to myself alone of created men. The 
 
 * goose goddess ' which they call ' Fame ' ! Ach Gott ! 
 
 And again, December 29, 1848 : — 
 
 Darwin said to Jane the other day, in his quizzing serious man- 
 ner, * Who will write Carlyle's life ? ' The word rejwrted to me 
 set me thinking how impossible it was, and would for ever remain, 
 for any creature to write my * life.' The chief elements of my lit- 
 tle destiny have all along lain deep below view or surmise, and 
 never will or can be known to any son of Adam. I would say to 
 my biographer, if any fool undertook such a task, * Forbear, poor 
 fool! Let no life of me be written; let me and my bewildered 
 wiestlings lie buried here and be forgotten swiftly of all the world. 
 Vol. III.— 1 
 
2 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 If thou write, it will be mere delusion and hallucination. The 
 confused world never understood nor will understand me and my 
 poor affairs. Not even the persons nearest to me could guess at 
 them ; nor was it found indispensable ; nor is it now (for any but 
 an idle purpose) profitable, were it even possible. Silence, and 
 go thy ways elsewhither.' 
 
 Kelnctantly, and only wlien he found that his wishes 
 would not and could not be respected, Carlyle requested 
 me to undertake the task which he had tliiis described as 
 hopeless ; and placed materials in my hands which would 
 make the creation of a true likeness of him, if still diffi- 
 cult, yet no longer as impossible as he had declared it to 
 be. Higher confidence was never placed by any man in 
 another. I had not sought it, but I did not refuse to ac- 
 cept it. I felt myself only more strictly bound than men 
 in such circumstances usually are, to discharge the duty 
 which I was undertaking with the fidelity which I knew 
 to be expected from me. Had I considered my own com- 
 fort or my own interest, I should have sifted out or passed 
 lightly over the delicate features in the story. It would 
 have been as easy as it would have been agreeable for me 
 to construct a picture, with every detail strictly accurate, 
 of an almost perfect character. An account so written 
 would have been read with immediate pleasure. Cai-lyle 
 Avould have been admired and applauded, and the biog- 
 rapher, if he had not shared in the praise, would at least 
 have escaped censure. He would have followed in the 
 track marked out for hira by a custom which is all but 
 universal. When a popular statesman dies, or a popular 
 soldier or clergyman, his faults are forgotten, his virtues 
 only are remembered in his epitaph. Everyone has some 
 frailties, but the merits and not the frailties are what in- 
 terest the woi'ld ; and with great men of the ordinary kind 
 whose names and influence will not survive their own gen- 
 eration, to leave out the shadow, and record solely what is 
 
Daly of his lj'iO(jrap?tei\ 3 
 
 bright and attractive, is not only permissible, but is a right 
 and honourable instinct. The good should be frankly ac- 
 knowledged with no churlish qualifications. But the 
 pleasure which we feel, and the honourt*vhich we seek to 
 confer, are avenged, wherever truth is concealed, in the 
 case of the exceptional few who are to become historical 
 and belong to the iminortals. The sharpest scrutiny is 
 the condition of enduring fame. Every circumstance 
 which can be ascertained about them is eventually dragged 
 into light. If blank spaces are left, they are filled by 
 rumour or conjecture. When the generation which knew 
 them is gone, there is no more tenderness in dealing with 
 them ; and if their friends have been indiscreetly reserved, 
 idle tales which survive in tradition become stereotyped 
 into facts. Thus the characters of many of our greatest 
 men, as they stand in history, are left blackened by 
 groundless calumnies, or credited with imaginary excel- 
 lences, a prey to be torn in pieces by rival critics, with 
 clear evidence wanting, and prepossessions fixed on one 
 side or the other by dislike or sympathy. 
 
 Had I taken the course which the ' natural man ' would 
 have recommended, I should have given no faithful ac- 
 count of Carlyle. I should have created a ' delusion and 
 a hallucination ' of the precise kind which he who was the 
 truest of men most deprecated and dreaded ; and I should 
 have done it not innocently and in ignorance, but with de- 
 liberate insincerity, after my attention had been specially 
 directed by his own generous openness to the points which 
 I should have left unnoticed. I should have been unjust 
 first to myself — for I should have failed in what I knew 
 to be my duty as a biographer. I should have been unjust 
 secondly to the public. Carlyle exerted for many years an 
 almost unbounded influence on the mind of educated Eng- 
 land. His writings are now spread over the whole Eng- 
 lish-speaking world. They are studied with eagerness 
 
4 Carlyle*s Life in London. 
 
 and confidence by millions who have looked and look to 
 Jiini not for amusement, but for moral guidance, and those 
 millions have a right to know what manner of man he 
 reallj was. It iiraj be, and 1 for one think it will be, 
 that when time has levelled accidental distinctions, when 
 the perspective has altered, and the foremost figures of 
 this century are seen in their true proportions, Carlyle will 
 tower far above all his contemporaries, and will then be 
 the one person of them about whom the coming genera- 
 tions will care most to be informed. But whether I esti- 
 mate his importance rightly or wrongly, he has played a 
 part which entitles everyone to demand a complete account 
 of his character. He has come forward as a teacher of 
 mankind. He has claimed ' to speak with autliority and 
 not as the Scribes.' He has denounced as empty illusion 
 the most favourite convictions of the age. lS<o conceal- 
 ment is permissible about a man w^ho could thus take on 
 himself the character of a prophet and speak to it in so 
 imperious a tone. 
 
 Lastly, I should have been unjust to Carlyle himself and 
 to everyone who believed and has believed in him. To 
 have been reticent would have implied that there was 
 something to hide, and, taking Carlyle all in all, there 
 never was a man — I at least never knew of one — whose 
 conduct in life would better bear the fiercest light which 
 can be thrown npon it. In the grave matters of the law 
 he walked for eighiy-five years unblemished by a single 
 moral spot. There are no ' sins of youth ' to be apologised 
 for. In no instance did he ever deviate even for a mo- 
 ment from the strictest lines of integrity. He had his 
 own way to make in life, and when he had chosen his 
 profession, he had to depend on popularity for the bread 
 which he was to eat. But although more than once he 
 was within sig^ht of starvation he w^ould never do less than 
 liis very best. He never wrote an idle word, he never 
 
Duty of his Biographer, 5 
 
 wrote or spoke any single sentence which he did not with 
 liis whole heart believe to be true. Conscious though he 
 was that he had talents above those of common men, he 
 sought neither rank nor fortune for himself. When he 
 became famous and moved as an equal among the great of 
 the land, he was content to earn the wages of an artisan, 
 and kept to the simple habits in which he had been bred 
 in his father's house, lie might have had a pension had 
 he stooped to ask for it ; but he chose to maintain him- 
 self by his own industry, and when a pension was offered 
 him it was declined, lie despised luxury ; he was thrifty 
 and even severe in the economy of his own household ; 
 but in the times of his greatest poverty he had always 
 something to spare for those who were dear to him. AVhen 
 money came at last, and it came only when he was old 
 and infirm, he added nothing to his own comforts, but 
 was lavishly generous with it to others. Tender-hearted 
 and affectionate he was beyond all men whom I have ever 
 known. Ills faults, which in his late remorse he exag- 
 gerated, as men of noblest natures are most apt to do, his 
 impatience, his irritability, his singular melancholy, which 
 made him at times distressing as a companion, were the 
 effects of temperament first, and of a peculiarly sensitive 
 organisation ; and secondly bi absolution in his work and 
 of his determination to do that w^ork as well as it could 
 possibly be done. Such faults as these were but as the 
 vapours which hang about a mountain, inseparable from 
 the nature of the man. They have to be told because 
 without them his character cannot be undei-stood, and be- 
 cause they affected others as *vell as himself. But they 
 do not blemish the essential greatness of his character, and 
 when ke is fully known he will not be loved or admired 
 the less because he had infirmities like the rest of us. 
 Carlyle's was not the imperious grandeur which lias risen 
 superior to weakness and reigns cold and impassive in dis- 
 
6 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 tant majesty. The fire in his soul burnt red to the end, 
 and sparks flew from it which fell hot on those about him, 
 not always pleasant, not always hitting the right spot or 
 the right person ; but it was pure fire notwithstanding, fire 
 of genuine and noble passion, of genuine love for all that 
 was good, and genuine indignation at what was mean or 
 base or contemptible. His life was not a happy one, and 
 there were features in it for which, as lie looked back, he 
 bitterly reproached himself. But there are many, per- 
 haps the majority of us, who sin deeper every day of their 
 lives in these very points in which Carlyle sinned, and 
 without Carlyle's excuses, who do not know that they have 
 anything to repent of. The more completely it is under- 
 stood, the more his character will be seen to answer to his 
 intellectual teaching. The one is the counterpart of the 
 other. There was no falsehood and there was no conceal- 
 ment in him. The same true nature showed itself in his 
 life and in his words. He acted as he spoke from his heart, 
 and those who have admired his writings will equally 
 admire himself when they see him in his actual likeness. 
 
 I, for myself, concluded, though not till after long hesi- 
 tation, that there should be no reserve, and therefore 1 
 have practised none. I have published his own autobio- 
 graphical fragments. I have published an account of his 
 early years from his Letters and Journals. I have pub- 
 lished the Letters and Memorials of his wife which de- 
 scribe (from one aspect) his life in London as long as she 
 remained with him. 1 supposed for a time that if to 
 these I added my personal recollections of him, my task 
 would be sufficiently accomplished; but I have thought it 
 better on longer consideration to complete his biography 
 as I began it. He himself quotes a saying of Goethe that 
 on the lives of remarkable men ink and paper should least 
 be spared. I must leave no materials unused to complete 
 the portrait which 1 attempt to draw. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 A.D. 1834. ^T. 39. 
 
 Beginning of life in Clieyne Row — First winter in London — John 
 Sterling — Offers of employment on the ' Times' not accepted, 
 and why — Begins * History of the French Revolution ' — Car- 
 lyle's interpretation of it — Extracts from Journal — London 
 society — Literature as a profession — John Mill — The burnt 
 manuscript — Resolution to continue the book — Meets Words- 
 worth. 
 
 In the summer of 1834 Carlyle left Craigenputtock and 
 its solitary moors and removed to London, there to make 
 a last experiment wliether it would be possible for him to 
 abide by literature as a profession, or whether he must 
 geek another employment and perhaps another country. 
 I have already told how he set up his modest establish- 
 ment in Cheyne Kow in the house where he was to re- 
 main till lie died. lie had some 200Z. in money for im- 
 mediate necessities ; of distinct prospects he had none at 
 all. He had made a reputation by his articles in reviews 
 as a man of marked ability. He had been well received 
 on his visit to London in 1832, and was an object of ad- 
 miring interest to a number of young men who were 
 themselves afterwards to become famous, to John Mill, to 
 Charles Buller, to Charles Austin, Sir William Moles- 
 worth, and the advanced section of the Philosophic Radi- 
 cals, and he doubtless hoped that when he was seen and 
 more widely known, some editorship, secretaryship, or an- 
 alogous employment might fall in his way, which would 
 
8 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 enable him to live. Even Brougham and Macaiilay and 
 the orthodox Whigs of the ' Edinburgh Keview,' admitted 
 his talents, thougli they disliked the use which he made 
 of them, and would have taken him up and provided for 
 him if he would have allowed Jeffrey to put him into 
 liarness. But harness it was impossible for him to wear, 
 even liarness as light as was required by booksellers and 
 editors. Tliey had wondered at him and tried him, but 
 since the appearance of 'Sartor 'they had turned their 
 backs upon him as hopeless, and had closed in his face the 
 door of periodical literature. He was impracticable, un- 
 pei'suadable, unmalleable, as independent and wilful as if 
 he were an eldest son and the heir of a peerage. He had 
 created no 'public' of his own; the public which existed 
 could not understand his w^ritings and would not buy 
 them, nor could he be induced so much as to attempt to 
 please it ; and thus it was that in Cheyne Bow he was 
 more neglected than he had been in Scotland. No one 
 seemed to want his services, no one applied to him for 
 contributions. At the Bullers' house, at the Austins', and 
 in a gradually increasing circle, he went into society and 
 was stared at as if he were a strange wild animal. His 
 conversational powers were extraordinary. His unsparing 
 veracity, Ids singular insight, struck everyone who came 
 in contact with him, but were more startling than agree- 
 able. He was unobtrusive, but when asked for his opinion 
 he gave it in his metaphoric manner, and when contra- 
 dicted was contemptuous and overbearing, ' too sarcastic 
 for so young a man,' too sarcastic by far for the vanity of 
 those whom he mortified. A worse fault was that he re- 
 fused to attach himself to any existing sect, either religious 
 or political. He abhorred cant in all its forms, and as cant 
 in some shape gathers about ev^ery organised body of Eng- 
 lish opinion, he made many enemies and few friends ; and 
 those few, fearful of the consequences, were shy of con- 
 
Uncertain Prospects. 9 
 
 fessing tliemselves his disciples. Month after month went 
 by, and no opening presented itself of which lie was able 
 to avail himself. Molesworth founded a ' liadical Re- 
 view,' but the management of it was not offered to Car- 
 lyle, though he hoped it might be offered. His money 
 flowed away, and with the end of it would end also the 
 pi*ospect of making a livelihood in London. 
 
 1 said no opening of which he could avail himself, but 
 one opening there was which if he had chosen would have 
 led him on to fortune, and which any one but Carlyle 
 would have grasped at. In the small number of men who 
 had studied 'Sartor' seriously, and had discovered the 
 golden veins in that rugged quartz rock, was John Ster- 
 ling, then fresh from Cambridge and newly ordained a 
 clergyman, of vehement but most noble nature, who 
 though far from agreeing with Carlyle, though shrinking 
 from and even hating, so impetuous was he, manj' of Car- 
 lyle's opinions, yet saw also that he was a man like none 
 that he had yet fallen in with, a man not only brilliantly 
 gifted, but differing from the common run of people in 
 this, that he would not lie, that he would not equivocate, 
 that he would say always what he actually thought, care- 
 less whether he pleased or offended. Such a quality, rare 
 always, and especially rare in those who are poor and un- 
 friended, could not but recommend the possessor of it to 
 the brave and generous Sterling. He introduced Carlyle 
 to his father, who was then the guiding genius of the 
 * Times ; ' and the great editor of the first periodical of the 
 world offered Carlyle work there, of course on the implied 
 conditions. When a man enlists in the army, his soul as 
 well as his body belongs to his commanding officer. lie is 
 to be no judge of the cause for which he has to fight. 
 Ilis enemies are chosen for him and not by himself. His 
 duty is to obey orders and to ask no questions. Carlyle, 
 though with poverty at his door, and entire penury visible 
 
10 . Carlyle*s Life in London. 
 
 in the near future, turned away from a proposal which 
 might have tempted men who had less excuse for yielding 
 to it. He was already the sworn soldier of another chief. 
 His allegiance from first to last was to truth^ truth as it 
 presented itself to his own intellect and his own conscience. 
 He could not, would not, advocate what he did not be- 
 lieve ; he would not march in the same regiment with 
 those who did advocate what he disbelieved ; nor would 
 he consent to suppress his own convictions when he chose 
 to make them known. By this resolution not the ' Times ' 
 only, but the whole world of party life and party action, 
 was necessarily closed against him. Organisation of any 
 kind in free communities is only possible where individuals 
 will forget their differences in general agreement. Car- 
 lyle, as he said himself, was fated to be an Ishmaelite, his 
 hand against every man and every man's hand against 
 him ; and Ishmaelites, if they are to prosper at all in such 
 a society as ours, and escape being trampled under the 
 horses' hoofs, require better material sources behind them 
 than a fast-shrinking capital of 200Z. 
 
 One occupation, and one only, absorbed Carlyle's time 
 and thought during these first years of his London life, 
 the writing his history of the French Ke volution. He 
 had studied it at Craigenputtock. He had written as a 
 preliminary flight, and as if to try his wings, the exquisite 
 sketch of the episode of the Diamond ]N'ecklace, which lay 
 in his desk still unpublished. He had -written round the 
 subject, on Yoltaire, on Diderot, and on Cagliostro. The 
 wild tornado in which the French monarchy perished had 
 fascinated his attention, because it illustrated to him in all 
 its features such theory as he had been able to form of the 
 laws under which this world is ruled, and he had deter- 
 mined to throw it out of himself if afterwards he was to 
 abandon literature for ever. His mind had been formed 
 in his father's house upon the Old Testament and the 
 
'History of the Fr, /id Revolution^ 11 
 
 Presbyterian creed, and, far as he liad wandered and deeply 
 as he had read, the original lesson had remained indelible. 
 
 To the Scotch people and to the Puritan part of the 
 English, the Jewish history contained a faithful account 
 of the dealings of God with man in all countries and in all 
 ages. As long as men kept God's commandments it was 
 well with them ; when they forgot God's commandments 
 and followed after wealth and enjoyment, the wrath of 
 God fell upon them. Commerce, manufactures, intellec- 
 tual enlightenment, political liberty, outward pretences of 
 religiosity, all that modern nations mean when they speak 
 of wealth and progress and improvement, were but Moloch 
 or Astarte in a new disguise, and now as then it was im- 
 possible to serve God and Baal. In some form or other 
 retribution would come, wherever the hearts of men were 
 set on material prospei-ity. 
 
 To this simple creed Carlyle adhered as the central 
 principle of all his thoughts. The outward shell of it had 
 broken. He had ceased to believe in miracles and super- 
 natural interpositions. But to him the natural was the 
 supernatural, and the tales of signs and wonders had risen 
 out of the efforts of men to realise the deepest of truths to 
 themselves. The Jewish historj^ was the symbol of all 
 history. All nations in all ages were nnder the same dis- 
 pensation. We did not come into the world with rights 
 which we were entitled to claim, but with duties which 
 we were ordered to do. Rights men had none, save to be 
 govei-ned justly. Duties waited for them everywhere. 
 Their business was to find what those duties were and 
 faitlifully fulfil them. So and only so the commonweal 
 could prosper, only so would they be working in harmony 
 with nature, only so would nature answer them with peace 
 and happiness. Of forms of government, 'that which 
 was best administered was best.' Any form would answer 
 where tiiere was justice between man and man. Consti- 
 
12 Ca7'lyle's Life in London. 
 
 tiitions, Bills of Rights, and such like were no substitutes 
 for justice, and could not further justice, till men were 
 themselves just. They must seehjirst God's kingdom, 
 thej must be loyally obedient to the law which was writ- 
 ten in their consciences ; or though miracles had ceased, 
 or had never been, there were forces in the univei'se teni- 
 ble as the thunders of Sinai or Assyrian armies, which 
 would bring them to their senses or else destroy them. 
 The French Revolution was the last and most signal ex- 
 ample of 'God's revenge.' The world was not made that 
 the rich might enjoy themselves while the poor toiled and 
 suffered. On such terms society itself was not allowed to 
 exist. The iilm of habit on which it rested would burst 
 through, and hunger and fury would rise up and bring to 
 judgment the unhappy ones whose business it had been to 
 guide and govern, and had not guided and had not gov- 
 erned. 
 
 England and Scotland were not yet like France, yet 
 doubtless these impressions in Carlyle had originated in 
 scenes which he had himself witnessed. The years which 
 had followed the great war had been a time of severe 
 suffering, especially in the North. It had been borne 
 on the whole with silent patience, but the fact remained 
 that hundreds of thousands of labourers and artisans had 
 been out of work and their families starving while bread 
 had been made artificially dear by the corn laws ; and the 
 gentry meanwhile had collected their rents and shot their 
 grouse and their partridges, with a deep unconsciousness 
 tliat anything else was demanded of them. That such an 
 arrangement was not just — that it was entirely contrary, 
 for one thing, to what was taught in the religion which 
 everyone professed to believe — had early become evident 
 to Carlyle, and not to him only, but to tliQse whose opinions 
 he most respected. His father, though too wise a man to 
 meddle in active politics, would sternly say that the exist- 
 
French lievolation. 13 
 
 iiig state of things could not last and onglit not to last. 
 His mother, pious and devout thougli she was, yet was 
 a fiery Radical to the end of her days. Radicalism lay in 
 the blood of the Scotch Calvinists, a bitter inheritance 
 from the Covenanters. Carlyle felt it all to his heart; 
 but he had thought too long and knew too much to believe 
 in the dreams of the Radicals of politics. In them lay 
 revolution, feasts of reason, and a reign of terror. Goethe 
 had taught him the meaning and the worth of the apos- 
 tles of freedom. They might destroy, but they could 
 never build again. For the sick body and sick soul of mod- 
 ern Europe there was but one remedy, the old remedy of the 
 Jewish prophets, repentance and moral amendment. All 
 men high and low, wise and unwise, must call back into 
 their minds the meaning of the word *duty ;' must put 
 away their cant and hypocrisy, their selfishness and appe- 
 tite for pleasure, and speak truth and do justice. Without 
 this, all tinkering of the constitution, all growth of wealth, 
 though it rained ingots, would avail nothing. 
 
 France was the latest instance of the action of the gen- 
 eral law. France of all modern nations had been the great- 
 est sinner, and France had been brought to open judgment. 
 She had been offered light at the Reformation, she would 
 not have it, and it had returned upon her as lightning. 
 She had murdered her Colignys. She had preferred to 
 live for pleasure and intellectual enlightenment, with a 
 sham for a religion, which she maintained and herself dis- 
 believed. The palaces and chateaux had been distin- 
 guished by the splendour of dissipation. The poor had 
 asked for bread and had been scornfully told to eat grass. 
 The Annandale masons in old James Carlyle's time had 
 dined on grass in silence ; the French peasantry had borne 
 with the tyranny of their princes and seigneurs, patient as 
 long as patience was possible, and submitting as sheep to bo 
 annually sheared for their masters' pleasure ; but the duty 
 
14 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 of subjects and the doty of rulers answer one to the other, 
 and the question, sooner or later inevitable in such cases, 
 began to be asked, what this aristocrary, these splendid 
 units were, for whom thousands were sacrificed, these no- 
 bles who reo^arded the earth as their huntinoj frround, 
 these priests who drew such lavish wages for teaching 
 what they knew to be untrue — an ominous enquiry which 
 is never made till fact has answered it already. False no- 
 bles, false priests, once detected, could not be allow^ed to 
 remain. Unfortunately it did not occur to the French na- 
 tion that wdien the false nobles and the false priests were 
 shaken off they would need true nobles and true priests. 
 The new creed rose, wdiicli has since become so popular, 
 that every man can be his own ruler and his own teachei-. 
 The notion that one man was superior to another and had 
 a right to lead or govern him was looked upon as a cun- 
 ning fiction that had been submitted to for a time by 
 credulity. All men were brothers of one family, born 
 with the same inalienable right to freedom. The right 
 had only to be acknowledged and respected, and the de- 
 nial of it made treason to humanity, and Astrsea would 
 then return, and earth would be again a Paradise. This 
 Avas the new Evangel. It was tried, and was tried with 
 the guillotine as its minister, but no millennium arrived. 
 The first article was false. Men were not equal, but infi- 
 nitely unequal, and the attempt to build upon an untrue 
 liypothesis could end only as all such attempts must end. 
 The Revolution did not mean emancipation from author- 
 ity, because the authority of the wise and good over fools 
 and knaves was the first condition of natural human so- 
 ciety. What it did mean w^as the bringing great offenders 
 to justice, who for generation after generation had pros- 
 pered in iniquity. Crown, nobles, prelates, seigneurs, 
 they and the lies wdiich they had taught and fattened 
 on were burnt up as by an eruption from the nether 
 
French Revolxdlon. 15 
 
 deep, and of them at least the weary world was made 
 quit. 
 
 It was tliiis that Carlyle regarded the great convulsion 
 which shook Europe at the close of the last century. He 
 believed that the fate of France would be the fate of all 
 nations whose hearts were set on material things — who for 
 religion were content with decent unrealities, satisfying 
 their consciences with outward professions — treating God 
 as if he were indeed, in Milton's words, ' a buzzard idol.' 
 God would not be mocked. The poor wretches called 
 mankind lay in fact under a tremendous dispensation 
 which would exact an account of them for their misdoings 
 to the smallest fibre. Every folly, every false word, or 
 unjust deed was a sin against the universe, of which the 
 consequences would remain, though the guilt might be 
 purged by repentance. The thought of these things was 
 a weight upon his heart, and he could not rest till he was 
 delivered of it. England just then was rushing along in 
 the enthusiasm of Reform, and the warning was needed. 
 His own future was a blank. He had no notion what was 
 to become of him, how or where he was to live, on what 
 he was to live. His inmiediate duty was to write down 
 his convictions on this the greatest of all human problems, 
 and ' the history of the French Revolution ' was the shape 
 in which these convictions crystallised. 
 
 Let the reader therefore picture Carlyle to himself, as 
 settled down to this work within a few months after his 
 arrival in London. He was now 39 years old, in the prime 
 of his intellectual strength. His condition, his feelings, 
 his circumstances, and the outward elements of his life are 
 noted down in the letters and journals from which I shall 
 now make extracts. 1 will only ask the reader, as I must 
 avoid repetition, to glance occasionally into the contempo- 
 rary correspondence of Mrs. Carlyle, which will add par- 
 ticulars that are omitted in his own. 
 
16 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 January 1, 1835. — Twelve o'clock has just struck, the last hour 
 of 1834, the first of a new year. Bells ringing, to me dolefully ; a 
 wet wind blustering, my wife in bed, very unhaj^pily ill of a foot 
 which a puddle of a maid scalded three weeks ago ; I, after a day 
 of fruitless toil, reading and re-reading about that Versailles 6th of 
 October still. It is long since I have written anything here. The 
 future looks too black to me, the present too doleful, unfriendly. 
 I am too sick at heart, wearied, wasted in body, to complain even 
 to myself. My first friend Edward Irving is dead — I am friendless 
 here or as good as that. My book cannot get on, though I stick to 
 it like a burr. Why should I say ' Peace, peace,' where there is no 
 peace ? May God grant me strength to do, or to endure as right, 
 what is appointed me in this now commenced division of time. 
 Let me not despair. Nay, I do not in general. Enough to-night, 
 for I am done. Peace be to my mother, and all my loved ones that 
 yet live. What a noisy inanity is this world ! 
 
 February 7. — The first book of the ' French Eevolution ' is fin- 
 ished.^ Soul and body both very sick. Yet I have a kind of sacred 
 defiance, trotzend das Schicksal. It has become clear to me that I 
 have honestly more force and faculty in me than belongs to the most 
 I see. Also it was always clear that no honestly exerted force can 
 be utterly lost. Were it long years after I am dead, in regions far 
 distant from this, under names far different from thine, the seed 
 thou sowest will spring. The great difficulty is to keep oneself in 
 right balance, not despondent, not exasperated, defiant, free and 
 clear. Oh for faith ! Food and raiment thou hast never lacked 
 yet and shall not. 
 
 Nevertheless it is now some three-and-twenty months since I 
 have earned one penny by the craft of literature. Be this recorded 
 as a fact and document for the literary history of this time. I have 
 been ready to work, I am abler than ever to work, know no fault 
 I have committed ; and yet so it stands. To ask able editors to 
 employ you mil not improve but worsen matters. You are like a 
 spinster waiting to be married. I have some serious thoughts of 
 quitting this ' Periodical ' craft one good time for all. It is not 
 synonymous with a life of wisdom. When want is approaching, one 
 must have done with whims. If literature will refuse me both bread 
 and a stomach to digest bread, then surely the case is growing clear. 
 
 Emerson from America invites me in the most enthusiastic terms 
 
 1 This first hook was the original first volume. The arrangement was after- 
 wards altered. 
 
Extracts from Jov/maZ, 17 
 
 to come thither and lecture. I thank him, and at least ask ex- 
 planatory light. Thanks to thrift and my good Scotch wife, we 
 can hold out many months yet. Voyons! Met Kadicals, &c., at 
 Mrs. Buller's a week ago. Roebuck Robespierre was there, an 
 acrid, sandy, barren chamcter, dissonant-speaking, dogmatic, triv- 
 ial, \vith a singular exasperation ; restlessness as of diseased vanity 
 written over his face when you come near it. I do not think him 
 even equal to Robespierre, nor is it likely that a game of that sort 
 will be played so soon again. A its dent tcird wenig. Sir William 
 Molesworth, with the air of a good roystering schoolboy, pleased 
 me considerably more. A man of irink can still do this, forget his 
 rank wholly, and be the sooner esteemed for having the mind equal 
 to doing that. 
 
 February 8, 1835. — ^Vernal weather of all kinds, soft and hard, 
 moist western and clear north-eastern, to me most memarative. Old 
 days at Maichill, Hoddam Hill, and earlier, come vividly back full 
 of sad beauty which, while passing, they had not. Why is the past 
 so beautiful ? The element of /ear is withdrawn from it for one 
 thing. That is all safe, while the present and futui-e are all so 
 dangerous. ' Moonlight oi memory ' — a poetic phrase of Richter's. 
 Also ' The limbs of my buried ones touched cold on my feet.' 
 There are yet few days in which I do not meet on the streets some 
 face that recalls my sister Margaret's, and reminds me that she is 
 not suffering, but silent, asleep, in the Ecclefechan kirkyard ; her 
 /i/c, her self, where God willed. What a miracle is all existence ! 
 Last night at Taylor's by myself ; I, against my will, the main 
 talker ; learned nothing, enjoyed little ; the tribes of Westminster, 
 all on the late streets, making their Saturday markets, quite a new 
 scene to me. 
 
 February 26, 1835. — Went last night, in wet bad weather, to 
 Taylor's to meet Southey, who received me kindly. A lean, grey, 
 whiteheaded man of dusky complexion, unexpectedly tall when he 
 rises and still leaner then — the shallowest chin, prominent snubbed 
 Roman nose, small carelined brow, huge bush of white grey hair 
 on high crown and projecting on all sides, the most vehement pair 
 of faint hazel eyes I have ever seen — a well-read, honest, limited 
 (strait-laced even) kindly-hearted, most irritable man. We partecL 
 kindly, with no great purjjose on either side, I imagine, to meet 
 again. Southey believes in the Church of England. This is nota- 
 ble : notable and honourable that he has made such belief serve 
 him so well. 
 
 Vol. III. -3 
 
18 Carlyl^s Life in London. 
 
 Letter from Alick yesterday with a postscript from my mother. 
 Jack also has written to me. Properly at this time there is nothing 
 comfortable to me in my existence but the getting on with that 
 book and the love of some beloved ones mostly far from me. 
 
 Allein und ahgetrennt von aller Freude ! I repeated this morning. 
 Yet thou canst write. Write then and complain of nothing — defy 
 all things. The book announced yesterday. Would that I were 
 further on with it ! I ought to be done when Jack appoints to ar- 
 rive, which I hope he will soon. He is one of my chief comforts. 
 To work at the Fete des Piques. 
 
 'Jack' and 'Alick' were Carljde's two brothers, John 
 and Alexander. Alexander, who had been his companion 
 at Craigenputtock, was struggling, not veiy successfully, 
 with a farm near Lockerbie. John, who had been so long 
 an object of expense and anxiety, was now, tlianks to Jef- 
 frey, in easy circumstances, living as travelling phj^sician to 
 Lady Clare, and with a handsome income which lie was 
 eager to share with his brother, as his brother had before 
 shared with him his own narrow earnings and his moor- 
 land home. Tlie contest of generosity was a very pretty 
 one. Carlyle could never accept these offers, so indepen- 
 dent and proud he was, and yet he reproached himself 
 sometimes for having denied John so great a pleasure. 
 John was the one person from whom he could have ac- 
 cepted an obligation, and if the worst came he had resolved 
 that John should help him. But the occasion had not 
 arrived yet, and the brothers continued to correspond with 
 perfect unreserve and the old effusiveness of detail. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : January 13, 1835. 
 Your letters, my dear Jack, are always a great comfort to me. 
 With your brotherly affection and true-heartedness, you are one of 
 the best possessions I have. Be certain I will share if need be. 
 It were poor pride to resolve otherwise. With you alone of men 
 such a thing were possible. Nay, it is to you only I can so much 
 as complain. My true Annandalians would but in vain afflict 
 
Literature as a Profession. 19 
 
 themselves with my cares. Other heart there is none in the world 
 that would even honestly do that. My friends here admit cheer- 
 fully that I am a very heroic man, that must understand the arf, 
 unknown to them, of living upon nothivc/. Mill, I think, alone of 
 them, would make any great effort to help me. As to heroism 
 (bless the mark !), I think often of the old rhyme : 
 There was a piper had a cow. 
 
 And he liad naught to give her ; 
 He took his pipes and played a spring. 
 
 And bade the cow consider. 
 The cow considered wi' herscl' 
 
 That piping ne'er would fill her ; 
 * Gie me a peck o' oaten strae, 
 And sell your wind for siller.' 
 
 In a word, my prospects here are not sensibly brightening ; if it 
 be not in this, that the longer I live among this i^eople, the deeper 
 grows my feeling (not a vain one — a sad one) of natural superiority 
 over them ; of being able (were the tools in my hand) to do a hun- 
 dred things better than the hundred I see paid for doing them. In 
 bright days I say it is impossible, but I must by-and-by strike into 
 something. In dark days I say, ' and suppose nothing ? ' My 
 sentiment is a kind of sacred defiance of the whole matter. 
 
 In this humour I write my book, without hope of it, except of 
 being do)ie icith it, properly beginning to as good as feel that liter- 
 ature has gone mad in this country, and will not yield food to any 
 honest cultivator of it. For example : if this book ever prospers, 
 the issue will be applications in mad superabundance from able 
 editors to. write articles for them (with my heart's blood, as you 
 sympathetically say) for perhajjs six months — then a total cessa- 
 tion. Though I myself were able to write articles for ever, that is 
 notliing. They are off after * any new thing,' and you stand won- 
 dering alone on the beach. As to * fame ' again, and ' distin- 
 guished ' men, I declare to thee. Jack, a ' distinguished man ' (but 
 above all things a distinguished woman) is a character I had rather 
 not see ; and ' fame * with such miserable cobwebs as gain it most, 
 and are burnt up by it, is heartily worth iwthing to me. 
 
 Nay, sometimes, with pious thought, I feel it a mercy that I 
 have it not. Wlio knows whether it would not calcine me too — 
 drive me, too, mad ? Literature does not invite me. Sometimes 
 I say to myself. Surely, friend. Providence, if ever it did warn, 
 wai-ns thee to have done with literature, which will never yield 
 thee bread, nor stomach to digest bread. 
 
20 Ca7'lyle's Life in London. 
 
 Mrs. Carljle adds a postscript : 
 
 My dear Brother, — Your affectionate letter is the greatest com- 
 fort we have had this new year. Otherwise it has been a rather 
 detestable one. I said to Carlyle some weeks ago, ' I am resolved 
 to make a little fun this Christmas, for our Ohristmases for a long 
 while back have been so doleful. ' ' I shall be particularly de- 
 lighted,' said he, * if you can realise any fun.' Well, the next 
 morning, at breakfast, my maid poured a quantity of boiling water 
 on my foot, in consequence of which, and I think also of improper 
 applications, I have been confined to the house five weeks, the 
 most of that time indebted to Carlyle for carrying me out of one 
 room into another. 
 
 Mrs. wrote me a sentimental effusion on the death of Ed- 
 ward Irving, threatening as heretofore to come and see me, but has 
 not been yet, nor will not. The only pity is that she will not let 
 the matter lie quite dormant. 
 
 There is a Mrs. X. whom I could really love, if it were safe and 
 she was willing ; but she is a dangerous-looking woman, and no 
 useful relation can spring up between us. In short, my dear doc- 
 tor, I am hardly better off for society than at Craig-o-putta : not 
 so well off as when you were there walking with me and reading 
 Ariosto. 
 
 Hard as he was working, Carljle never ceased to look 
 about for any kind of employment outside literature. His 
 circumstances made it a duty for liim to try, vain, as every 
 effort proved ; and one scheme after another rises and 
 fades in his correspondence. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : February 16, 1835. 
 The honest task, which I thank God is henceforth not so ob- 
 scure to me, I will study to do. The talent which God has given 
 me shall not rust unused. But must booksellers, able editors, and 
 the glar * company of suchlike individuals be a new set of middle- 
 men between me and my task? I positively do not care that 
 periodical literature shuts her fist against me in these months. 
 
 » See note, p. 243. 
 
John Mill, 21 
 
 Let her keep it shnt forever, and go to the devil, which she mostly. 
 belongs to. The matter had better be brought to a crisis. There 
 is perhaps a finger of Providence in it. The secret of the whole 
 thing is frothy and grounds itself in bubbles and unreality. Tlie 
 inference seems to be * Walk out of this ; * if even into the knap- 
 ping of stones, which is a reality. We w^ll do nothing rashly, but 
 have our eyes open and study to do all things fitly. My only new 
 scheme, since last letter, is a hypothesis — little more yet — about 
 National Education. The newspapers had an advertisement about 
 a Glasgow 'Educational Association' which wants a man that 
 would found a Normal School, first going over England and into 
 Germany to get light on that matter. I wrote to that Glasgow 
 Association afar off, enquiring who they were, what manner of 
 man they expected, testifying myself very friendly to their project, 
 and so forth — no answer as yet. It is likely they will want, as 
 Jane says, * a Chalmers and Welsh ' kind of cliaracter, in which 
 case Va ben^felice notte. If otherwise, and they (almost by mira- 
 cle) had the heart, I am the man for them. Perhai)s my name is 
 so heterodox in that circle, I shall not hear at all. If I stir in any 
 public matter, it must be this of national education. Radicalism 
 goes on as fast as any sane mortal could "wash it, without help of 
 mine. Conservatism I cannot attempt to consei-ve, believing it to 
 be a poi*tentou8 embodied sham, accursed of God, and doomed to 
 destraction, as all lies are ; but woe the while if the people are not 
 taught ; if not their wisdom, then their brutish folly will incarnate 
 itself in the frightfullest reality. 
 
 My grand immediate concern is to get the * Fi'ench Revolution * 
 done. I cannot tell what I think of the book. It is ceiiainly better 
 some ways than any I have hitherto written ; contains no falsehood, 
 singularity, or triviality that I can help ; has probably no chance 
 of being liked by any existing class of British men. Nevertheless, 
 I toil on, searching diligently, doing what I can, in old Samuel's 
 faith that 'useful diligence wall at last prevail.' Mill is very 
 friendly. He is the nearest approach to a real man that I find here 
 — nay, as far as negativeness goe^, he is that man, but unhappily 
 not very satisfactoiy much farther. It is next to an impossibility 
 that a London-bom man should not be a stunted one. Most of 
 them, as Hunt, are dwarfed and dislocated into the merest imbe- 
 cilities. Mill is a Presbyterian's grandson, or he were that too. 
 Glory to John Knox ! Our isle never saw his fellow. 
 
22 Carlyle^s Life in London, 
 
 Letters seldom went to John without a few words from 
 Mrs. Carlyle. She adds : 
 
 Dearest of created doctors, — I would fain cull a few flowers to 
 make thee a dainty postscript, but the soil, alas ! only yields dry 
 thistles, for I am in ' the pipeclay state,' as Carlyle has designated 
 a state too common with those who are too well furnished with 
 bile. I went the other day, distracted that I was, to a great modern 
 
 fashionable horrible dinner. It was at Mrs. 's. There was 
 
 huge venison to be eaten, and new service of j^late to be displayed, 
 
 and Mrs. talked about the Aarts (Arts), and the great Sir John 
 
 R favoured us with ' idears ' on the Peel administration ; and 
 
 next day my head ached, and I was ready to imprecate the fire of 
 heaven on the original inventor of a modern ' dinner.' We are go- 
 ing to-morrow to Mrs. X. 's, whom I would like that you knew, and 
 could tell me whether to fall desperately in love with or no. 
 
 So Carlyle's first winter in London was passing away. 
 His prospects were blank, and the society in which he 
 moved gave him no particular pleasure, but it was good of 
 its kind, and was perhaps more agreeable to him than he 
 knew. His money would hold out till the book was done 
 at the rate at which it was progressing. The first volume 
 was finished. On the whole he was not dissatisfied with 
 it. It was the best that he could do, and he was, for him, 
 in moderately fair spirits. But the strain was sharp ; his 
 ' labour-pains • with his books were always severe. He had 
 first to see that the material was pure, with no dross of 
 lies in it, and then to fuse it all into white heat before it 
 would run into the mould, and he was in no condition to 
 bear any fresh burden. Alas for him, he had a stern task- 
 mistress. Providence or destiny (he himself always be- 
 lieved in Providence, without reason as he admitted, or 
 even against reason) meant to try him to the utmost. I^ot 
 only was all employment closed in his face, save what he 
 could make for himself, but it was as if something said 
 'Even this too you shall not do till we have prov^ed your 
 mettle to the last.' A catastrophe was to overtake him, 
 
The BunU Manuscript. 23 
 
 wbicli for a moment fairly broke his spirit, so cruel it 
 seemed — for the moment, but for the moment only. It 
 served in fact to show how admirably, though in little 
 things so querulous and irritable, he could behave under 
 real misfortunes. 
 
 John Mill, then his closest and most valuable friend, was 
 ardently interested in the growth of the new book. He 
 borrowed the manuscript as it was thrown oif, that he might 
 make notes and suggestions, either for Carlyle's use, or as 
 material for an early review. The completed first volume 
 was in his hands for this purpose, when one evening, the 
 6th of March, 1835, as Carlyle was sitting with his wife, 
 'after working all day like a nigger' at the Feast of 
 Pikes, a rap was heard at the door, a hurried step came up 
 the stairs, and Mill entered deadly pale, and at first unable 
 to speak. ' Why, Mill,' said Carlyle, ^ what ails ye, man ? 
 What is it ? ' Staggering, and supported by Carlyle's arm. 
 Mill gasped out to Mrs. Carlyle to go down and speak to 
 some one who was in a carriage in the street. Both 
 Carlyle and she thought that a thing which they had 
 long feared must have actually happened, and that Mill 
 had come to announce it, and to take leave of them. So 
 genuine was the alarm that the truth when it came out 
 was a relief. Carlyle led his friend to a seat ' the very 
 picture of desperation.' He then learned in broken sen- 
 tences that his manuscript, 'left out in too careless a man- 
 ner after it had been read,' was, ' except four or five bits 
 of leaves, irrevocably annihilated.' That was all, nothing 
 worse ; but it was ugly news enough, and the uglier the 
 more the meaning of it was realised. Carlyle wrote always 
 in a highly wrought quasi-automatic condition both of mind 
 and nerves. He read till he was full of his subject. His 
 notes, when they were done with, were thrown aside and 
 destroyed ; and of this unfortunate volume, which he had 
 produced as if ' possessed ' while he was about it, he could 
 
24 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 remember nothing. ]S^ot only were 'the fruits of ^sq 
 months of steadfast, occasionally excessive, and always 
 sickly and painful toil ' gone irretrievably, but the spirit in 
 which he had worked seemed to have fled too, not to be 
 recalled ; worse than all, his work had been measured care- 
 fully against his resources, and the household purse might 
 now be empty before the loss could be made good. The 
 carriage and its occupant drove off — and it would have 
 been better had Mill gone too after he had told his tale, 
 for the forlorn pair wished to be alone together in the face 
 of such a calamity. But Carlyle, whose first thought was 
 of what Mill must be suffering, made light of it, and talked 
 of indifferent things, and Mill stayed and talked too — 
 stayed, I believe, two hours. At length he left them. 
 Mi-s. Carlyle told me that the first words her husband ut- 
 tered as the door closed were : ' Well, Mill, poor fellow, is 
 terribly cut up ; we must endeavour to hide from him how 
 very serious this business is to us.' 
 
 He left lis (Carlyle wi'ites the next day in his Journal) in a re- 
 lapsed state, one of the pitiablest. My dear wife has been very 
 kind, and has become dearer to me. The night has been full of 
 emotion, occasionally of sharp pain (something cutting or hard 
 grasping me round the heart) occasionally of sweet consolation. I 
 dreamt of my father and sister Margaret alive ; yet all defaced 
 with the sleepy stagnancy, swollen hebetude of the grave, and 
 again dying as in some strange rude country : a horrid dream, the 
 painfullest too when you wake first. But on the whole should I 
 not thank the Unseen ? For I was not driven out of composure, 
 hardly for moments. ' Walk humbly with thy God.' How I longed 
 for some psalm or prayer that I could have uttered, that my loved 
 ones could have joined me in ! But there was none. Silence had 
 to be my language. This morning I have determined so far that I 
 can still write a book on the French Revolution, and will do it. 
 Nay, our money will still suffice. It was my last throw, my whole 
 staked in the monstrosity of this life — for too monstrous, incom- 
 prehensible, it has been to me. I will not quit the game while 
 faculty is given me to try playing. I have written to Fraser to buy 
 
Tlie Burnt Manusci'ipt. 25 
 
 me a ' Biographie Universelle ' (a kind of increasing the stake) and 
 fresh paper : mean to huddle up the F^le des Piques and look 
 farther what can be attempted. 
 
 Oh, that I had faith ! Oh, that I had ! Then were there noth- 
 ing too hard or heavy for me. Cry silently to thy inmost heart to 
 God for it. Surely He will give it thee. At all events, it is as if 
 my invisible schoolmaster had torn my copybook when I showed 
 it, and said, * No, boy ! Thou must wi-ite it better.' What can I, 
 sorrowing, do but obey — obey and think it the best? To work 
 again ; and, oh ! may God be with me, for this earth is not friendly. 
 On in His name ! I was the nearest being happy sometimes these 
 last few days that I have been for many months. My health is 
 not so bad as it once was. I felt myself on firmish ground as to 
 my work, and could forget all else. I will tell John, my mother, 
 and Annandale Getreuen, but not till I feel under way again and 
 can speak peace to them with the sorrow. To no other, I think, 
 will I tell it, or more than allude to it. 
 
 The money part of the injury Mill was able to repair. 
 He knew Cai'lyle's circumstances. He begged, and at 
 last passionately entreated, Carlyle not to punish him by 
 making him feel that he had occasioned real distress to 
 friends whom lie so much honoured ; and he enclosed a 
 check for 200^., the smallest sum which he thought that 
 he could offer. Carlyle returned it ; but, his financial 
 condition requiring that he should lay his pride aside, he 
 intimated that he would accept half, as representing the 
 wages of five months' labour. To this Mill unwillingly 
 consented. He sent a hundred pounds, and, so far as 
 money went, Carlyle was in the same position as when he 
 began to write. He was not aware till he tried it vv-liat 
 difficulty he would find in replacing what had been de- 
 stroyed ; and he was able to write to his brother of what 
 had happened, before he did try again, as of a thing which 
 had ceased to distress him. 
 
 To John Carli/le. 
 
 Chelsea : March 23. 
 I am busy with vol. ii., toiling away with the heai-t of a free 
 Roman. Indeed, I know not how it was, I had not felt so clear 
 
26 Carlyl&s Life in London. 
 
 and independent, sure of myself and of my task, for many long 
 years. There never in my life had come upon me any other acci- 
 dent of much moment ; but this I could not but feel to be a sore 
 one. The thing was lost, and perhaps worse ; for I had not only 
 forgotten all the structure of it, but the spirit it was written in was 
 past. Only the general impression seemed to remain, and the 
 recollection that I was on the whole satisfied with that, and could 
 now hardly hope to equal it. Mill, whom I had to comfort and 
 speak peace to, remained injudiciously enough till almost mid- 
 night ; and my poor dame and I had to sit talking of indifferent 
 matters, and could not till then get our lament fairly uttered. She 
 was very good to me, and the thing did not beat us. That night 
 was a hard one ; something from time to time tying me ■ tight, as 
 it were, all round the region of the heart, and strange dreams 
 haunting me. However, I was not without good thoughts too, 
 that came Kke healing life into me ; and I got it somewhat reason- 
 ably crushed down. I have got back my spirits, and hope I shall 
 go on tolerably. I was for writing to you next day after it hap- 
 pened, but Jane suggested it would only grieve you till I could 
 say it was in the w^ay towards adjustment. 
 
 The image of the schoolboy whose copy had been torn 
 lip by the master had taken hold of Carlyle, for he re- 
 peated it in his letters. It was humble enough and touch- 
 ing, yet not without comfort, for it implied that he had a 
 master who was interested in his work and meant it to be 
 executed properl}^ and not an outcast orphan for whom 
 no one cared. For Mill's sake the misadventure was not 
 spoken of in London. Carlyle had been idle for a week 
 or two till he could muster strength to set to work again, 
 and had gone into society as much as he could to distract 
 himself. He was a frequent guest at Henry Taylor's, ' a 
 good man,' he said, ' whose laugh reminds me of poor Ir- 
 ving's.' At Taylor's he had met Southey. Shortly after 
 the accident he met Wordsworth at tlie same house. 
 
 I did not expect much (he said in a letter), but got mostly what 
 I expected. The old man has a fine shrewdness and naturalness 
 in his expression of face, a long Cumberland figure ; one finds also 
 
Wordaioorth. 27 
 
 a kind of sincerity in his speech. But for prolixity, thinness, end- 
 less dilution, it excels all the other speech I hatl heard from mor- 
 tals. A genuine man, which is much, but also essentially a small 
 genuine man. Mothing perhaps is sadder (of the glad kind) than 
 the unbounded laudation of such a man, sad proof of the rarity of 
 such. I fancy, however, he has fallen into the garrulity of age, 
 and is not what he was; also that his environment and rural 
 prophethood has hurt him much. He seems impatient that even 
 Shakespeare should be admired. ' So much out of my own pocket.' 
 The shake of hand he gives you is feckless, egotistical. I rather 
 fancy he loves nothing in the world so much as one could wish. 
 When I compare that man with a great man, alas ! he is like 
 dwindling into a contemptibility. Jean Paul, for example (neither 
 was he great), could have worn him in a finger- ring.' 
 
 And again : 
 
 Have seen Wordsworth, an old, very loquacious — indeed, qmte 
 prosing man, with a tint of naturalness, of sincere insight, never- 
 theless. He has been much spoiled ; king of his company, unrec- 
 ognised, and then adulated. Worth little now. A genuine kind 
 of man, but intrinsically and extrinsically a small one, let them 
 sing or say what they will. The languid way in which he gives 
 you a handful of numb unresponsive fingers is very significant. It 
 seems also rather to grieve him that you have any admiration for 
 anybody but him. The style in which he, clipping, qualifv-ing, 
 and wearisomely questioning without answer, spoke of Bums and 
 Shakespeare, finding or guessing that to me he was all too little 
 in comparison, was melancholy to hear. No man that I ever met 
 has given me less, has disappointed me less. My peace be with 
 him, and a happy evening to his, on the whole, respectable life. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 A.D. 1855. MT. 40. 
 
 The first volume to be replaced — Poverty and depression — John 
 Sterling — Maurice on the Articles — Sartor — Carlyle's theology 
 — Style — Invitation to America — Thoughts of abandoning lit- 
 erature — Keflections in Hyde Park — Book to be finished — 
 London-drawing rooms — First volume rewritten. 
 
 To resolve to rewrite the burnt volume was easier than to 
 do it. The ^ JPete des Piques^ at which Carljle had been 
 engaged was leisurely finished. He then turned back to 
 the death of Louis XY., the most impressive passage in 
 the whole book as he eventually finished it, but he found 
 that it w^ould not prosper with him. 
 
 'The accident had grown tolerable to me,' he says, * sometimes 
 almost looked indifferent. But now when I actually come to try 
 if I can repair it, I want of all things humility, faith. It is a sore 
 loss I have had, but well taken, I will firmly believe, might be- 
 come a gain. The wages part of it does next to nothing for me. 
 I might all but as well have gone without wages. However, it 
 was only gigmanity ^ that hinted at that, to which I needed not 
 give any ear.' 
 
 Wages, indeed, could only be useful to enable the work 
 to recover itself, but it seemed as if the mirror had been 
 broken and the image irrevocably gone. 
 
 Miserable ! (he enters in his notebook on the 10th of April). I 
 can in no way get on with this wretched book of mine. For the 
 last fortnight, moreover, there seems to have been a kind of con- 
 spiracy of people to ask us out, from every one of which expedi- 
 
 1 Vulgar pride ; a favourite phrase of Carlyle's, taken from Thurtell's trial 
 
Poverty a/nd Confidtfice. 29 
 
 tions, were it only to * tea and no party,' I return lamed for the next 
 day. My sight, inward as well as outward, is all as if bedimmed. 
 I grow desperate, but that profits not. Mrs. Somerville's rout 
 the other night, from which I whisked out in about an hour. Mad 
 as Bedlam is that whole matter ! 
 
 There was no hope now of the promised summer holi- 
 day when John Carlyle was to come home from Italy, and 
 the ^ French Revolution ' was to have been finished, and 
 the brothers to have gone to Scotland together and settled 
 their future plans in family council. Holidays were not 
 now to be thought of, at least till the loss was made good. 
 Then, as always when in real trouble, Carlyle faced his 
 difficulties like a man. 
 
 To John Carlyle, 
 
 Chelsea: AprillO. 
 
 I assure you my health is not bad nor worsening. I am yellow, 
 indeed, and thin, and feel that a rest will be very welcome and 
 beneficial. Nevertheless, I repeat, my health, though changed, is 
 not worse than it was. I can walk further than I used to do. My 
 spirits, if never high, are in general quiet. I have more and more 
 a kind of hope I shall get well again before my life ends. With 
 health and peace for one year, it seems to me often as if I could 
 write a better book than any there has been in this country for 
 generations. 
 
 If it be God's ordering, I sliall get well. If not, I hope I shall 
 work on indomitably as I am. Beautiful is that of brave old Voss, 
 and often comes in my mind : ' As the earth, now in azure sun- 
 shine seen of all the stars, now in dark tempests hidden, liol(h on 
 her journey round the sun.' Good also is this that you give me ; 
 l>iss es um Dich \oettern. I really tiy to do so, and succeed. . . . 
 Mill and I settled : he pleaded for 200/. or some intermediate sum. 
 But I found we must stick by the rigorous calculation, and I took 
 100/. Since then I have seen almost less of Mill than before, nor 
 am I sorry at it, //// this work be done. There is an express agree- 
 ment we are not to mention it till then. I believe I might have 
 plenty of work in his * London Review * for a time, but pay shall 
 not tempt me from the other duty. We shall be provided for one 
 way or the other, independently of the devil. Indeed, it often 
 strikes me as strange what an unspeakable composure I liave got 
 
30 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 into about economics and money. It seems to me, I should not 
 mind a jot if hard had come to hard, and they had rouped me out 
 of house and hold, and the very shirt off my back. I should say, 
 'Be it so; our course lies elsewhither then.' Forward, my boy ! 
 let us go with God, towards what God has chosen us for. We 
 have struggled on hitherto without taking the devil into partner- 
 ship. The time that remains is short ; the eternity is long. My 
 little Heldin is ready to share any fortune with me. We will fear 
 nothing but falling into the hands of the destroyer. 
 
 The household at Chelsea was never closer drawn to- 
 gether than in these times of trial. Mrs. Carlyle adds 
 her usual postscript. 
 
 Dearest John, — ^Your letter not only raised our spirits at the 
 time, but has kept them raised ever since. Its good influence is 
 traceable in the diminished yellow of my husband's face, and tha 
 accelerated speed of his writing. Bless you for it, and for the 
 kind feelings which make you a brother well worth having — a 
 man well worth loving. Surely we shall not quarrel any more 
 after having ascertained in absence how well we lilie one another. 
 Alas ! surely we shall ; for one of us at least is only ' a plain hu- 
 man creature,' liable to quarrel and do everything that is unwise. 
 But we will do it as little as possible, and be good friends all the 
 while at heart. The book is going to be a good book in spite of 
 bad fortune, and what is lost is by no means to be looked on as 
 wasted. What he faithfully did in it, and also what he magnani- 
 mously endured, remains for him and us, not to be annihilated. 
 How we shall enjoy our visit to Scotland when the volume is re- 
 done ! Shall we resume Ariosto where we left Mm ? And the 
 battledores are here, and more suitable ceilings. Much is more 
 suitable. Heaven send you safe ! 
 
 Carlyle was brave ; his Heldin cheering him with woid 
 and look, his brother strong upon his own feet and heartily 
 affectionate. But he needed all that affection could do for 
 him. The ' accelerated speed ' slackened to slow, and tlien 
 to no motion at all. He sat daily at his desk, but his im- 
 agination would not work. Early in May, for the days 
 passed heavily, and he lost the count of them, he notes 
 ' that at no period of his life had he ever felt more discon- 
 
Blank Prospects. 31 
 
 solate, beaten down, and powerless than then ;' as if it 
 were * simply impossible that his weariest and miserablest 
 of tasks should ever be accomplished.' A man can rewrite 
 what he has known ; but he cannot rewrite what he has 
 felt. Emotion forcibly recalled is artificial, and, unless 
 spontaneous, is hateful. He laboured on * with the feeling 
 of a man swimming in a rarer and rarer element' At 
 length there was no element at all. s' My will,' he said, 
 ' is not conquered, but my vacuum of element to swim in 
 seems complete.' He locked up his papers, drove the sub- 
 ject out of his mind, and sat for a fortnight reading novels, 
 English, French, German — anything that c^me to hand. 
 ' In this determination,' he thought, ^ there might be in- 
 struction for him.' It was the first of the kind that he 
 had ever deliberately formed. He would keep up his 
 heart. He would be idle, he would rest. He would try, 
 if the word was not a mockery, to enjoy himself. 
 
 In this suspended condition he wrote several letters, one 
 particularly to his mother, to relieve her anxieties about 
 him. 
 
 To Margaret Carlyle^ Scotsbrig. 
 
 Chelsea : May 13, 1835. 
 
 You will learn without regret that I am idling for these ten days. 
 My poor work, the dreariest I ever undertook, was getting more 
 and more untoward on me. I began to feel that toil and effort not 
 only did not perceptibly advance it, but was even, by disheartening 
 and disgusting me, retarding it. A man must not only be able to 
 work, but to give over working. I have many times stood dog- 
 gedly to work, but this is the first time I ever deUberately laid it 
 down without finishing it. It has given me very great trouble, 
 this poor book ; and Providence, in the shape of human misman- 
 agement, sent me the severest check of all. However, I still trust 
 to get it written sufficiently, and if thou even cannot write it (as I 
 have said to myself in late days), why then bo content with that 
 too. God's creation will get along exactly as it should do without 
 the writing of it. 
 
 There are other proposals hovering about me, but not worth 
 
32 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 speaking of yet. The ' literary world ' here is a thing which I 
 have had no other course left me but to defy in the name of God ; 
 man's imagination can fancy few tilings madder ; but me (if God 
 will) it shall not madden ; I will take a knapping hammer first. 
 Everything is confused here with the everlasting jabber of j)olitics, 
 in which I struggle altogether to hold my peace. The Radicals 
 have made an enormous advance by the little Tory interregnum ; 
 it is not unlikely the Tories will tiy it one other time. They would 
 even fight if they had anybody to fight for them. Meanwhile 
 these poor Melbourne people will be obliged to walk on at a 
 quicker pace than formerly (considerably against their will, I be- 
 lieve), with the Eadical bayonets pricking them behind. And so, 
 whether the Tories stay out, or whether they try to come in again, 
 it will be all for the advance of Radicalism, which means revolt 
 against innumerable things, and (so I construe it) dissolution and 
 confusion at no great distance, and a darkness which no man can 
 see through. Everybody, Radical and other, tells me that the con- 
 dition of the poor people — ^is — improving. My astonishment was 
 great at first, but I now look for nothing else than this ' improv- 
 ing daily.' ' Well, gentlemen,' I answered once, * the poor, I think, 
 will get up some day, and tell you how improved their condition 
 is ! ' It seems to me the vainest jangling, this of the Peels and 
 Russells, that ever the peaceful air was beaten into dispeace by. 
 But we are used to it from of old. Leave it alone. Permit it 
 while God permits it, and so for work and hope elsewhither. 
 
 Another effect of Carlyle's enforced period of idleness 
 was that lie saw more of liis friends, and of one especially, 
 whose interest in himself had first amused and then at- 
 tracted him. John Sterling, young, eager, enthusiastic, 
 had been caught by the Kadical epidemic on the spiritual 
 side. Hating lies as much as Carlyle hated them, and 
 plunging like a high-bred colt under the conventional har- 
 ness of a clergyman, he believed, nevertheless, as many 
 others then believed, that the Christian religion would 
 again become the instrument of a great spiritual renova- 
 tion. While the Tractarians were reviving medisevalism 
 at Oxford, Sterling, Maurice, Julius Hare, and a circle of 
 Cambridge liberals were looking to Luther, and through 
 
John SterUng. 33 
 
 Liitlier to Neander and Schleiermacher, to bring * revela- 
 tion' into harmony with intellect, and restore its ascend- 
 ency as ft guide into a new era. Coleridge was the high 
 priest of this new prospect for humanity. It was a beau- 
 tiful hope, though not destined to be realised. Sterling, 
 who was gifted beyond the rest, was among the first to see 
 how much a movement of this kind must mean, if it 
 meant anything at all. He had an instinctive sympathy 
 with genius and earnestness wherever he found it. In the 
 author of ' Sartor Resartus ' he discovered these qualities, 
 while his contemporaries were blind to them. I have al- 
 ready mentioned that he sought Carlyle's acquaintance, 
 and procured him the offer of employment on the * Times.' 
 His admiration was not diminished when that offer was 
 declined. He missed no opportunity of becoming moi-e 
 intimate with him, and he hoped that he might himself 
 be the instrument of bringing Carlyle to a clearer faith. 
 Carlyle, once better instructed in the great Christian veri- 
 ties, might become a second and a greater Knox. 
 
 * I have seen,' Carlyle writes in this same May, ' a good 
 deal of this young clergyman (singular clergyman) during 
 these two weeks, a sanguine light-loving man, of whom, 
 to me, nothing but good seems likely to come ; to himself 
 unluckily a mixture of good and evil.' Of good and evil 
 — for Carlyle, clearer-eyed than his friend, foresaw the 
 consequences. Frederick Maurice, Sterling's brother-in- 
 law, on the occasion of the agitation about subscription to 
 the Thirty-nine Articles, had written a pamphlet extremely 
 characteristic of him, to show that subscription was not a 
 bondage, as foolish people called it, but a deliverance from 
 bondage; that the Articles properly read were the great 
 charter of spiritual liberty and reasonable belief. Ster- 
 ling lent the pamphlet to Carlyle, who examined it, re- 
 ppectfully recognising that *an earnest man's earnest word 
 was worth reading ; but,' he said, * my verdict lay in thefte 
 Vol. III.— 3 
 
34 Cwrlyles Life in London. 
 
 lines of jingle, which 1 virtuously spared Sterling the sight 
 of:— 
 
 Thirty -nine EngHsh Articles, 
 Ye wondrous little particles, 
 Did God shape His universe really by you ? 
 In that case I swear it. 
 And solemnly declare it, 
 This logic of Maurice's is true.' * 
 
 Carlyle afterwards came to know Maurice, esteemed 
 him, and personally liked him, as all his acquaintance did. 
 But the ' verdict ' was unchanged. As a thinker he found 
 him confused, wearisome, and ineffectual ; and he thought 
 no better of the whole business in which he was engaged. 
 An amalgam of ' Christian verities ' and modern critical 
 philosophy was, and could be nothing else but, poisonous 
 insincerity. This same opinion in respectful language he 
 had to convey to Sterling, if he was required to give one. 
 But he never voluntarily introduced such subjects, and 
 Sterling's anxiety to improve Carlyle was not limited to 
 the circle of theology. Sterling was a cultivated and clas- 
 sical scholar ; he was disturbed by Carljde's style, which 
 offended him as it offended the world. This style, which 
 has been such a stone of stumbling, originated, he has 
 often said to myself, in the old farmhouse at Annandale. 
 The humour of it came from his mother. The form was 
 his father's common mode of speech, and had been adopted 
 by himself for its brevity and emphasis. He was aware 
 of its singularity and feared that it might be mistaken for 
 affectation, but it was a natural growth, with this merit 
 among others, that it is the clearest of styles. jS'o sentence 
 leaves the reader in doubt of its meaning. ' Sterling's ob- 
 jections, however, had been vehement. Carlyle admitted 
 that there was foundation for them, but defended him- 
 self. 
 
 1 Shghtly altered when printed in ' Past and Present.' 
 
Carlylc's Style. 35 
 
 To John Sterling. 
 
 Chelsea: June 4, 1835. 
 The objections to phraseology and style have good grounds to 
 stand on. Many of them are considerations to which I myself was 
 not blind, which there were unluckily no means of doing more 
 than nodding to as one passed. A man has but a certain strength ; 
 imperfections cling to him, which if he wait till he have brushed 
 off entirely, he mil spin for ever on his axis, advancing nowhither. 
 Know thy thought — believe it — front heaven and earth with it, in 
 whatsoever words nature and art have made readiest for thee. If 
 one has thoughts not hitherto uttered in English books, I see 
 nothing for it but you must use words not found there, must make 
 words, with moderation and discretion of coui'se. That I have not 
 always done it so proves only that I was not strong enough, an 
 accusation to which I, for one, will never plead not guilty. For 
 the rest, pray that I may have more and more strength ! Surely, 
 too, as I said, all these coal marks of yours shall be duly considered 
 for the first and even for the second time, and help me on my way. 
 But filially do you reckon this really a time for puiism of style, or 
 that style (mere dictionaiy style) has much to do with the worth 
 or unworth of a book ? I do not. With whole ragged battalions of 
 Scott's novel Scotch, with Irish, German, French and even 'news- 
 paper Cockney (where literature is little other than a newspaper) 
 storming in on us, and the whole structure of our Johnsonian 
 English breaking up from its foundations, revolution there is visible 
 as everywhere else. 
 
 * The style ! ah, the style ! ' Carlyle notes nevertheless 
 in liis journal, as if he was uneasy about it ; for in tlie 
 ' Frencli Revolution ' the peculiarities of it were more 
 marked than even in ' Sartor : ' — 
 
 The poor people seem to think a style can be put off or put on, 
 not like a skin but like a coat. Is not a skin verily a product and 
 close kinsfellow of all that lies under it, exact type of the nature 
 of the beast, not to be plucked off without flaying and death ? Tlie 
 Public is an old woman. Let her maunder and mumble. 
 
 Sterling was not satisfied, and again persisted in his re- 
 monstrances. Das wird zu lang^ Carlyle said ; * he made 
 the letter into matches ; ' not loving his friend the less for 
 
36 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 advice wliicli was faithfully given, but knowing in himself 
 that he could not and ought not to attend to it. The style 
 was and is the shin — an essential part of the living or- 
 ganisation. 
 
 But besides the style, Sterling had deeper complaints 
 to make. He insisted on the defects of Carlyle's spiritual 
 belief, being perhaps led on into tlie subject by the failure 
 of Maurice's eloquence. ' Sartor ' was still the text. It 
 had been ridiculed in ' Fraser ' when it first appeared. It 
 had been republished and admired in America, but in 
 England so far it had met with almost entire neglect. 
 Why should this have been ? It was obviously a remark- 
 able book, the most remarkable perhaps which had been 
 published for many years. 
 
 You ask (said Caiiyle) why the leading minds of the country 
 have given the Clothes j^hilosophy no response ? My good friend, 
 not one of them has had the happiness of seeing it ! It issued 
 through one of the main cloacas (poor Fraser) of periodical liter- 
 ature, where no 'leading mind,' I fancy, looks if he can help it. 
 The poor book cannot be destroyed by fire or other violence now, 
 but solely by the general law of destiny; and /have nothing more 
 to do with it henceforth. How it chanced that no bookseller would 
 print it, in an epoch when Satan Montgomery runs, or seems to 
 run, through thirteen editions, and the morning papers, on its 
 issuing through the cloaca, sang together in mere discord over such 
 a creation — this truly is a question, but a different one. Mean- 
 while do not suppose the poor book has not been responded to ; 
 for the historical fact is, I could show very curious response to it 
 here, not ungratifying, and fully three times as much as I counted 
 on, or as the wretched farrago itself deserved. 
 
 Sterling, however, had found another reason for the 
 comparative failure. 
 
 You say finally (Carlyle goes on), as the key to the whole mys- 
 tery, that Teufelsdrockh does not believe in a 'personal God.' It 
 is frankly said, with a friendly honesty for which I love you. A 
 grave charge, nevertheless— an awful charge — to which, if I mis- 
 
CarlyWa Creed. 37 
 
 take not, the Professor, laving his hand on his heart, will reply 
 with some gesture expressing the solemnest denial. In gesture 
 rather than in speech, for the Highest cannot bo spoken of in words. 
 Personal ! Imi)ersonal ! One ! Three ! \Miat meaning can any- 
 mortal (after all) attach to them in reference to such an object ? 
 Wer dnrf Ihn nbnnen ? I dare not and do not. That you dai-e 
 and do (to some greater extent) is a matter I am far from taking 
 oflfence at. Nay, with all sincerity, I can rejoice that you have a 
 creed of that kind which gives you happy thoughts, nerves you for 
 good actions, brings you into readier communion with many good 
 men. My true wish is that such creed may long hold compactly 
 together in you, and be ' a covert from the heat, a shelter from 
 the storm, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.' Well 
 is it if we have a printed litany to pray from ; and yet not ill if wo 
 can pray even in silence; for silence too is audible tliei'e. Finally 
 assure yourself that I am neither Pagan nor Turk, nor circumcised 
 Jew ; but an unfortunate Christian individual resident at Chelsea 
 in this jesiT of grace, neither Pantheist, nor Pot-theist, nor any 
 Theist or 1st whatsoever, having the most decided contempt for all 
 such manner of system-builders or sect-founders — as far as con- 
 tempt may be compatible with so mild a nature — feeling well be- 
 forehand (taught by long experience) that all such are and ever 
 must be wrong. By God's blessing one has got two eyes to look 
 with, also a mind capable of knowing, of believing. That is all 
 the creed I will at this time insist on. And now may I beg one 
 thing : that whenever in my thoughts or your own you fall on any 
 dogma that tends to estrange you from me, pray believe that to be 
 false, false as Beelzebub, till you get clearer evidence ? 
 
 This is an explicit statement, and no one who knew 
 Carlyle or has read his books can doubt the sincerity of it. 
 It is true also that while in London he belonged to no 
 recognised body of believers, regarding all such as ' system- 
 mongers ' with whom he could have nothing to do. lie 
 had attended tlie Presbyterian church in Annandale, for 
 it was the communion in which he was born. He had 
 read the Bible to his household at Craigenputtock. But 
 the Kirk in London was not the Kirk in Scotland. lie 
 made one or two experiments to find something not en- 
 tirely unworthy. 
 
38 Carlyle-s Life in London, 
 
 I tried various chapels (he said to me) ; I found in each some 
 vulgar illiterate man declaiming about matters of which he knew 
 nothing. I tried the Church of England. I found there a decent 
 educated gentleman reading out of a book words very beautiful 
 which had expressed once the sincere thoughts of pious admirable 
 souls. I decidedly preferred the Church of England man, but I 
 had to say to him : ' I perceive, sir, that at the bottom you know 
 as little about the matter as the other fellow.' 
 
 Thus, with the Church of England, too, he had not been 
 able to connect himself, and as it was the rule of his life not 
 only never to profess what he did not believe, but never 
 by his actions to seem to believe it, he stayed away and 
 went to no place of worship except accidentally. 
 
 Meanwhile the fortnight's idleness expired ; he went to 
 work again over his lost volume, but became ' so sick ' that 
 he still made little progress. Emerson continued to press 
 him to move for good and all to America, where he would 
 find many friends and a congenial audience for his teach- 
 ing ; and more than once he thought of leaving the un- 
 lucky thing unwritten and of acting on Emerson's advice. 
 He was very weary, and the books with which he tried to 
 distract himself had no charm. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 May 26, 1835. — Went on Sunday with Wordsworth's new volume 
 to Kensington Gardens ; got through most of it there. A picture 
 of a wren's nest, two pictures of such almost all that abides with 
 me. A genuine but a small diluted man. No other thing can I 
 think of him ; they must sing and they must say whatsoever seems 
 good to them. Coleridge's ' Table Talk, ' also insignificant for 
 most part, a helpless Psyche overspun with Church of England 
 cobwebs ; a weak, diffusive, weltering, ineffectual man. The Nunc 
 Domine's I hear chanted about these two persons had better pro- 
 voke no reply from me. What is false in them passes. What is 
 true deserves acceptance — speaks at least for a sense on their part. 
 
 The book — the poor book — can make no progress at all. I sit 
 down to it every day, but feel broken down at the end of a page ; 
 page too not written, only scribbled. Suppose that we did throw 
 
Coleridge. 39 
 
 it by. It is not by paper alone that a man lives. My bodily health 
 is actually very bad. To get a little rest and bloom up again out 
 of this wintry obstruction, impotence, and desolation, were the 
 firat attainment. To-day I am full of dyspepsia, but also of hope. 
 The world is yiot a bonehouse ; it is a living home, better or worse. 
 Disastrous twilight! dim eclipse! That is the state I sit in at 
 present. Singular, too, how near my extreme misery is to peace, 
 almost to some transient glimpses of happiness. It seems to me I 
 shall either before long recover myself into life (alas ! I have never 
 yet lived) or end it, which alternative is not undesiraJole to me. I 
 am actually learning to take it easier. 
 
 Coleridge's * Table Talk ' insignificant yet expressive of Cole- 
 ridge : a great possibility that has not realised itself. Never did 
 I see such apparatus got ready for thinking, and so little thought. 
 He mounts scaffolding, pulleys, and tackle, gathers all the tools in 
 the neighbourhood with labour, with noise, demonstration, pre- 
 cept, abuse, and sets — three bricks. I do not honour the man. I 
 pity him (with the opposite of contempt) ; see in him one glorious 
 up-struggling ray (as it were) which perished, all but ineffectual, 
 in a lax, languid, impotent character. This is my theory of Cole- 
 ridge — veiy different from that of his admirers here. Nothing, I 
 find, confuses me more than the admiration, the kind of man ad- 
 mired, I see cuiTent here. So measurable these infinite men do 
 seem, so imedifying the doxologies chanted to them. Yet in that 
 also there is something which I really do try to profit by. Tlie 
 man that lives has a real way of living, built on thought of one or 
 the other sort. He is a fact. Consider him. Di-aw knowledge 
 from him. 
 
 No work to-day, as of late days or weeks, neither does my con- 
 science much reproach me. This is rathei- curious. Significant of 
 what? 
 
 It was 6ig:nificant of a growing misgiving on Carlyle's 
 part tliat lie had mistaken his profession, and that as a 
 man of letters — as a tnie and honest man of letters — lie 
 conld not live. Evei^thing was against him. No one 
 wanted him ; no one believed his report ; and even Fate 
 itself was now warning him off with menacing finger. 
 Still in a lamed condition he writes on June 4 to his 
 mother : 
 
40 Carlyles Life in London. 
 
 I have grave doubts about many things connected with this book 
 of mine and books in general, for all is in the uttermost confusion 
 in that line of business here. 'But, God be thanked, I have no 
 doubt about my course of duty in the world, or that, if I am driven 
 back at one door, I must go on trying at another. There are some 
 two or even three outlooks opening on me unconnected with books. 
 One of these regards the business of national education which Par- 
 liament is now busy upon, in which I mean to try all my strength 
 to get something to do, for my conscience greatly approves of the 
 work as useful. Whether I shall succeed herein I cannot with the 
 smallest accuracy guess as yet. Another outlook invites my con- 
 sideration from America, a project chalked out for passing a winter 
 over the water and lecturing there. Something or other we shall 
 devise. I shall probably have fixed on nothing till we meet and 
 have a smoke together, and get the thing all summered and wintered 
 talking together freely once more. 
 
 It was a mere chance at this time that the ' French 
 Revolution ' and literature with it were not flung aside for 
 good and all, and that the Carlyle whom tlie world knows 
 had never been. If Charles Buller, or Molesworth, or any- 
 other leading Radical who had seen his worth, had told 
 the Government that if they meant to begin in earnest on 
 the education of the people, here was the man for them, 
 Carlyle would have closed at once with the offer. The 
 effort of writing, always great (for he wrote, as his brotlier 
 said, ' with his heart's blood ' in a state of fevered tension), 
 the indifference of the world to his past work, his uncer- 
 tain future, his actual poverty, had already burdened him 
 beyond his strength. He always doubted whether he had 
 any special talent for literature. He was conscious of 
 possessing considerable powers, but he would have pre- 
 ferred at all times to have found a use for them in action. 
 And everything was now conspiring to drive him into an- 
 otlier career. If nothing could be found for him at home, 
 America was opening its arms. He could lecture for a 
 season in E^ew England, save sufficient money, and then 
 draw away into the wilderness, to build a new Scotsbrig 
 
Thoughts of Ahandoniivg Literature, 41 
 
 in the western forest. So the possibility presented itself 
 to him in this interval of enforced helplessness, lie would 
 go away and struggle with the stream no more. And yet 
 at the bottom of his mind, as he told me, something said 
 to him, ' My good fellow, you are not fit for that either.' 
 Perhaps he felt that when he was once across the water, 
 America would at any rate be a better mother to him than 
 England, would find what he was suited for, and would 
 not let his faculties be wasted. In writing to his mother 
 lie made light of his troubles, but his spirit was nearly 
 broken. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : June 15, 1835. 
 My poor ill-starred ' French Revolution ' is lying as a mass of 
 unformed rubbish, fairly laid by under lock and key. About a 
 fortnight after writing to you last this was the deliberate desperate 
 resolution I came to. My way was getting daily more intolerable, 
 more inconsiderable, comparable, as I often say, to a man swim- 
 ming in vacuo. There was labour nigh insufferable, but no joy, no 
 furtherance. My poor nerves, for long months kept at the stretch, 
 felt all too waste, distracted. I flung it off by saying, • If I never 
 write it, why then it will never be written. Not by ink alone shall 
 man live or die.' This is the first time in my life I ever did such 
 a thing ; neither do I doubt much but that it was rather wise. It 
 goes abreast with much that is coming to a crisis with me. You 
 would feel astonished to see with what quietude I have laid down 
 my head on its stone pillow in these circumstances, and said to 
 Poverty, Dispiritment, Exclusion, Necessity, and the Devil, * Go 
 your course, friends; behold, I lie here and rest.' In fact, with 
 all the despair that is round about me, there is not in myself, I do 
 think, the least desperation. I feel rather as if, quite possibly, I 
 might be about bursting the accursed enchantment that has hold 
 me, all my weary days, in nameless thraldom, and actually begin- 
 ning to be alive. There has been much given me to suffer, to 
 learn from, this last year. That things should come to a crisis is 
 what I wish. Also how tnie it is, Deiix arfflictions mises e)isemble 
 peuvent devenir une consolation. On the whole I sliall never regret 
 coming to London, where if boundless confusion, some elements 
 of order have also met me j above all things, the real faces and 
 
42 Carlyle^s Life in London, 
 
 lives of my fellow mortals, stupid or wise, so unspeakably instruc- 
 tive to me. ^ Fancy me for the present reading all manner of silly 
 books, and for these late days one pregnant book, Dante's ' In- 
 ferno ; ' running about amongst people and things, looking even of 
 a bright sunset on Hyde Park and its glory ; I sitting on the stump 
 of an oak, it rolling and curvetting past me on the Serpentine 
 drive, really very superb and given gratis. Unspeakable thoughts 
 rise out of it. This, then, is the last efflorescence of the Tree of 
 Being. Hengst and Horsa were bearded, but ye gentlemen have 
 got razors and breeches; and oh, my fair ones, how are ye changed 
 since Boadicea wore her own hair unfrizzled hanging down as low 
 as her hips ! The Queen Anne hats and heads have dissolved into 
 air, and behold you here and me, prismatic light-streaks on the 
 bosom of the sacred night. And so it goes on. 
 
 As writing seemed impossible, Carljle had determined 
 to go to Scotland after all. Ladj Clare had meant to be 
 in England soon after midsummer, bringing John Car- 
 lyle with her. John was now the great man of the fam- 
 ily, the man of income, the travelled doctor from Italy, 
 the companion of a peeress. His arrival was looked for- 
 ward to at Scotsbrig with natural eagerness. Carlyle and 
 he were to go down together and consult with their mother 
 about future plans. Mrs. Carlyle would go with them to 
 pay a visit to her mother. The journey might be an ex- 
 pense, but John was rich, and the fares to Edinburgh by 
 steamer were not considerable. In the gloom that hung 
 over Chelsea this prospect had been the one streak of sun- 
 shine — and unhappily it was all clouded over. Lady Clare 
 could not come home after all, and John was obliged to 
 
 iln the journal under the same date Carlyle says : ' Very often of late has 
 this stanza of Goethe's come into my mind. I translated it in the Wander- 
 jahre^ but never understood it before : — 
 
 " There in others' looks discover 
 
 What thy own life's course has been, 
 And thy deeds of years past over 
 In thy fellow-men be seen." 
 It is verily so. I am painfully learning much here, if not by the wisdom of 
 the people, yet by their existence, nay by their stupidity. Learn— live and 
 learn.' 
 
Book to he Finisfied. 43 
 
 remain with her, though with a promise of leave of ab- 
 sence in the autumn. At Radical Scotsbrig there was m- 
 dignation enough at a fine lady's caprices destroying other 
 people's pleasures. Carlyle more gently * could pity the 
 heart that suffered, whether it beat under silk or nnder 
 sackcloth ; ' for Lady Clare's life was not a happy one. 
 He collected his energy. To soften his wife's disappoint- 
 ment, he invited Mrs. AVelsh to come immediately on a 
 long visit to Cheyne Row. Like his father he resolved to 
 *gar himself ' finish the burnt volume in spite of every- 
 thing, and to think no more of Scotland till it was done. 
 The sudden change gave him back his strength. 
 
 To Margaret Carlyle^ Scotshrig. 
 
 Chelsea : June 30, 1835. 
 As for OTU' own share there is need of a new resolution, and we 
 have gone far to form ours. Jane thinks that if we are to wait till 
 September it will be needless for her to come to Scotland this 
 year. She had, in the main, only her mother to see there, and it 
 seems the shorter way to send for her mother up hither without 
 delay. Jack and I, if he is coming, can go to Scotland by our- 
 selves. At lowest, when Mi*s. Welsh was returning, I would ac- 
 company her, and you would see me at least. I at any rate am to 
 fall instantly to icork agaiji, having now filled up my full measure 
 of idleness. That wretched burnt MS. must, if the gae of life re- 
 mains in me, be replaced. * It shall be done, sir,' as the Cockneys 
 say. After that the whole world is before me, where to choose 
 from. I cannot say I am in the least degree * tining heart ' in 
 these per^jlexities. Nay, I think in general I have not been in so 
 good heart these ten years. London and its quackeries and follies 
 and confusions does not daunt me. I look on all matters that per- 
 tain to it with a kind of silent defiance, confident to the last that 
 the work my Maker meant me to do I shall verily do, let the 
 De%'il and his servants obstnict as they will. The literary craft, 
 as I have often explained to you, seems gone for this generation. 
 I do not see how a man that will not take the Devil into partner- 
 ship — one of the worst partnerships, if I have any judgment — is to 
 exist by it henceforth. Well, then, it is gone. Let it go with a 
 blessing. We will seek for another occupation. We will seek and 
 
44 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 find. It is on one's self and what conies of one's own doings that 
 all depends. However, I must have this book off my hands. 
 Should I even burn it, I will be done with it. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea: July 3. 
 I have decided to falling instantly to work again with vigour. 
 If I can write that ' Eevolution ' volume, the saddest affair I ever 
 had to manage, I will do it. The first wish of my heart is that it 
 were done in almost any way ; weary, most weary am I of it. I 
 will either write it, or burn it, or ... . One thing that will 
 gratify you is the perceptible increase of health this otherwise so 
 scandalous /awZe?i2;en. (idling) has given me. I am also farther than 
 ever from 'tining heart.' Nothing definite yet turns up for my 
 future life. Yet several things turn more decisively down, which 
 is also something ; amongst others literature. I feel well that it 
 is a thing I shall never live by here ; moreover, that there are 
 
 many things besides it in God's universe As a last re- 
 
 sourcfe, in the dim background rises America, rise the kindest in- 
 vitations there. I really could go and open my mouth in Boston 
 to that strange audience with considerable audacity ; perhaps it 
 were the making of me to learn to speak. I really in some moods 
 feel no kind of tendency to whimper or even to gloom. God's 
 world, ruled over by the Prince of the Power of the Air, is round 
 me, and I have taken my side in it, and know what I mean as well 
 as the Prince knows. Fancy me working and not unhappy till I 
 hear from you. I find I could get employment and pay, writing 
 in the ' Times,' but I will have no trade with that. Old Sterling 
 amuses me a little ; has eyes ; has had them on men and men's 
 ways many years now, a trenchant, clean- washed, military old gen- 
 tleman. 
 
 Tilings after this began to brigliten. Mrs. Welsh came 
 up to cheer her daughter, whose heart had almost failed 
 like her husband's, for she liad no fancy for an American 
 forest. Carlvle went vigorously to work, and at last suc- 
 cessfully. In ten days he had made substantial progress, 
 tliough with 'immense difficulty' still. 'It was and re- 
 mained the most ungrateful and intolerable task he had 
 ever undertaken.' Bat he felt that he was getting on 
 
Objectioii8 to Style. 45 
 
 with it, and recovered his peace of mind. He even be- 
 gan to be interested again in the subject itself, which had 
 become for the time entirely distasteful to him, and to 
 regret that he could not satisfy himself better in his treat- 
 ment of it. Notwithstanding his defence of his style to 
 Sterling, he wished the skin were less ' rhinoceros-like.' 
 
 JoumaL 
 
 July lb, 1835. — Tlie book, I do lionestly apprehend, will never 
 be worth almost anything. "What a deliverance, however, merely 
 to have done with it ! This is almost my only motive now. I de- 
 test the task, but am hounded into it by feelings still more detest- 
 able. I am all wrong about it in my way of setting it forth, and 
 cannot mend myself. I think often I have mistaken my trade. 
 That of style gives me great uneasiness. So many persons, almost 
 everybody that speaks to me, objects to my style as * too full of 
 meaning. * Had it no other fault ! I seldom read in any dud of a 
 book, novel, or the like, where the writing seems to flow along 
 like talk (certainly not ' too full ') without a certain pain, a certain 
 envy. Ten pages of that were easier than a sentence or paragraph 
 of mine ; and yet such is the result. What to do ? To write on 
 the best one can, get the free'st, sincerest possible utterance, taking 
 in all guidances towards that, putting aside with best address all 
 misguidances. Truly I feel like one that was bursting with mean- 
 ing, that had no utterance for it, that would and must get one — a 
 most indescribably uneasy feeling, were it not for the hope. 
 
 Gradually the story which he was engaged in telling 
 got possession of him again. The terrible scenes of the 
 Revolution seized his imagination, haunting him as he 
 walked about the streets. London and its giddy whirl of 
 life, that too might become as Paris had been. Ah ! and 
 what was it all but a pageant passing from darkness into 
 darkness ? 
 
 The world (he said in these weeks) looks often quite spectral to 
 me ; sometimes, as in Regent Street the other night (my nerves 
 being all shattered), quite hideous, discordant, almost infernal. I 
 had beeh at Mrs. Austin's, heard Sydney Smith for the first time 
 gufiawing, other persons prating, jargoning. To me through these 
 
46 Cariyle^s Life in London. 
 
 thin cobwebs Death and Eternity sate glaring. Coming home- 
 wards along Regent Street, through street- walkers, through — Aoh 
 Gott! unspeakable pity swallowed up unspeakable abhorrence of 
 it and of myself. The moon and the serene nightly sky in Sloane 
 Street consoled me a little. Smith, a mass of fat and muscularity, 
 with massive Eoman nose, piercing hazel eyes, huge cheeks, 
 shrewdness and fun, not humor or even wit, seemingly without 
 soul altogether. Mrs. Marcet ill-looking, honest, rigorous, com- 
 monplace. The rest babble, babble. Woe's me that I in Meshech 
 ara ! To work. 
 
 Drawing-room society to a man engaged in painting the 
 flowers of hell which had grown elsewhere on a stock of 
 the same genus was not likely to be agreeable. Sydney 
 Smith especially he never heartily liked, tliinking that he 
 wanted seriousness. ' Gad, sir, he believes it all,' Sydney 
 had been heard to say of Lord John Russell when speak- 
 ing of some grave subject. Amidst such ' spectral' feel- 
 ings the writing of the ' French Revolution ' went on. By 
 August 10 Carlyle was within sight of the end of the un- 
 fortunate volume which had cost him so dear, and could 
 form a notion of what he had done. His wife, an excel- 
 cent judge, considered the second version better than the 
 first. Carlyle himself thought it worse, but not much 
 worse ; at any rate he was relieved from the load, and 
 could look forward to finishing the rest. Sometimes he 
 thought the book would produce an effect ; but he had 
 hoped the same from ' Sartor,' and he did not choose to 
 be sanguine a second time. On September 23 he was 
 able to tell liis brother that the last line of the volume was 
 actually written, that he was entirely exhausted and was 
 going to Annandale to recover himself. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : September 23, 1835. 
 By the real blessing and favour of Heaven I got done with that 
 unutterable MS. on Monday last, and have wrapped it up there to 
 
Burnt Volume BewriUe7u 47 
 
 lie till the other two volumes be complete. The work does not 
 seem to myself to be veiy much worse than it was. It is worse in 
 the style of expression, but better compacted in the thought. On 
 the whole I feel like a man who had nearly killed himself in ac- 
 complishing zero. What a deliverance ! I shall never without a 
 kind of shudder look back at the detestable state of enchantment 
 I have worked in for these six months and am now blessedly de- 
 livered from. The rest of the book shall go on quite like child's 
 play in compai*ison. Also I do think it will be a queer book, one 
 of the queerest published in this centuiy, and can, though it can- 
 not be popular, be better than that. My Teufelsdrockh humour, 
 no voluntary one, of looking through the clothes, finds singu- 
 lar scope in this subject. Remarkable also is the ' still death- 
 defiance ' I have settled into, equivalent to the most absolute sov- 
 ereignty conceivable by the mind. I say ' still death-defiance,' 
 yet it is not unblended with a great fire of hope unquenchable, 
 which glows up silent, steady, brighter and brighter. My one 
 thought is to be done with this book. Innumerable things point 
 all that way. My whole destiny seems as if it lost itself in chaos 
 there (for my money also gets done then) — in chaos which I am to 
 recreate or perish miserably — an arrangement which I really re- 
 gard as blessed compai*atively. So I sit here and write, composed 
 in mood, responsible to no man and no thing ; only to God and 
 my own conscience, with publishers, reviewers, hawkers, bill- 
 stickers indeed on the earth around me, but with the stars and the 
 azure eternity above me in the heavens. Let us be thankful. On 
 the whole I am rather stupid ; or rather I am not stupid, for I feel 
 a fierce glare of insight in me into many things. Not stupid, but 
 I have no sleight of hand, a raw untrained savage— for every trained 
 civilised man has that sleight, and is a bred workman by having 
 it, the bricklayer with his trowel, the i^ainter with his brush, the 
 writer with his pen. The result of the whole is * one must just do 
 the best he can for a li^ing, boy,' or, in my mother's phrase, 
 'Never tine heart,' or get provoked heart, which is likewise a 
 danger. 
 
 The journal adds: — 
 
 On Monday last, about four o'clock on a wet day, I finished that 
 MS. I ought to feel thankful to Heaven, but scarcely do suffi- 
 ciently. The thing itself is no thing. Nevertheless, the getting 
 done with it was all in all. I could do no other or better. The 
 
48 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 book, it is to be hoped, will now go on with some impetus. It is 
 not enchanted work, but fair daylight aboveboard work, though 
 hard work, and with a poor workman. I am now for Scotland, to 
 rest myself and see my mother. What a year this has been ! I 
 have suffered much, but also lived much. Courage ! hat firmly 
 set on head, foot firmly planted. Fear nothing but fear. I fancy 
 I shall go in an Edinburgh smack ; not the worst way, and the 
 cheapest though slowest. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 A.D. 1835—6. ^T. 40—41. 
 
 Visit to Scotland— Hard conditions of life — Scotsbrig — Return to 
 London — Effort of faith — Letter from his mother — Schemes 
 for employment — Offer from Basil Montagu — Polar bears — 
 Struggles with the book — Visit from John Carlyle — Despond- 
 ency — Money anxieties — Mrs. Carlyle in Scotland — Letters to 
 her — 'Diamond Necklace ' printed — * French Revolution' fin- 
 ished. 
 
 In the first week in October Carlyle started for his old 
 home, not in a smack, though he had so purposed, but in 
 a steamer to ^Newcastle, whence there was easy access, 
 though railways as yet were not, to Carlisle and Annan- 
 dale. His letters and diary give no bright picture of his 
 first year's experience in London, and fate had dealt 
 hardly with him ; but he had gained much notwithstand- 
 ing. His strong personality had drawn attention wlierever 
 he had been seen. He had been invited with his wife 
 into cultivated circles, literary and political. The Ster- 
 lings were not the only new friends whom they had made. 
 Their poverty was unconcealed ; there was no sham in 
 either of the Carlyles, and there were many persons anx- 
 ious to help them in any form in which help could be 
 accepted. Presents of all kinds, hampers of wine, and 
 suchlike poured in upon them. Carlyle did not speak of 
 these things. He did not feel them less than other peo- 
 ple, but he was chary of polite expressions which are so 
 often but half sincere, and he often seemed indifferent or 
 ungracious when at heart he was warmly grateful. Mrs. 
 Vol. III.— 4 
 
60 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 Carlyle, when disappointed of her trip to Scotland, had 
 been carried off into the country by the Sterlings for a 
 week or two. In August Mrs. Welsh came, and stayed on 
 while Carlyle was away. She was a gifted woman, a little 
 too sentimental for her sarcastic daughter, and trouble- 
 some with her caprices. They loved each other dearly 
 and even passionately. They quarrelled daily and made 
 it up again. Mrs. Carlyle, like her husband, was not 
 easy to live with. But on the whole they were happy to 
 be together again after so long a separation. They had 
 friends of their own who gathered about them in Carlyle's 
 absence. Mrs. Carlyle occupied herself in learning Ital- 
 ian, painting and arranging the rooms, negotiating a sofa 
 out of her scanty allowance, preparing a pleasant surprise 
 when he should come back to his work. He on his part 
 was not left to chew his own reflections. He was to pro- 
 vide the winter stock of bacon and hams and potatoes and 
 meal at Scotsbrig. He was to find a Scotch lass for a ser- 
 vant and bring her back with him. He was to dispose of 
 the rest of the Craigenputtock stock which had been left 
 unsold, all excellent antidotes against spectral visions. He 
 had his old Annandale relations to see again, in whose 
 fortunes he was eagerly interested, and to write long sto- 
 ries about them to his brother John. In such occupation, 
 varied with daily talks and smokes with his mother, and 
 in feeding himself into health on milk or porridge, Carlyle 
 passed his holiday. He walked far and fast among the 
 hills, with an understanding of their charm as keen as an 
 artist's, though art he affected to disdain. 
 
 I am sometimes sad enough (he told his brother), but that, too, 
 is profitable. I have moments of inexpressible beauty, like aui'o- 
 ral gleams on a sky all dark. My book seems despicable ; how- 
 ever I will write it. After that there remains for me — on the whole 
 exactly what God has appointed, therefore let us take it thank- 
 fully/ 
 
Ilolidmj in ScoUcmd, 61 
 
 One characteristic letter to his wife remains, written 
 from Scotsbrig on this visit. It was in reply to her pretty 
 Anglo-Italian epistle of October 26.' 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Scotsbrig : November 2, 1836. 
 All people say, and, what is more to the purpose, I myself rather 
 feel, that my health is greatly improved since I got hither. Alas ! 
 the state of wreckage I was m, fretted, as thou sayest, to fiddle- 
 strings, was enormous. Even yet, after a month's idleness and 
 much recovery, I feel it all so well. Silence for a solar year ; this, 
 were it possible, would be my blessedness. All is so black, con- 
 fused, about me, streaked with splendour too as of heaven ; and I 
 the most helpless of moi-tals in the middle of it. I could say with 
 Job of old, ' Have pity upon me, have x)ity upon me, O my friends,* 
 And thou, my poor Goody, depending on cheerful looks of mine 
 ior thy cheerfulness ! For God's sake do not, or do so as little as 
 possible. How I love thee, what I think of thee, it is not prob- 
 able that thou or any mortal will know. But cheerful looks, when 
 the heart feels slowly dying in floods of confusion and obstniction, 
 are not the thing I have to give. Coumge, however — courage to 
 the last ! One thing in the middle of this chaos I can more and 
 more determine to adhere to — it is now almost my sole i-ule of life 
 — to clear myself of cants and formulas as of i:ioisonous Nessus 
 shirts ; to strip them off me, by what name soever called, and fol- 
 low, were it down to Hades, what I myself know and see. Pray 
 God only that sight be given me, freedom of eyes to see with. I 
 fear nothing then, nay, hope infinite things. It is a great misery 
 for a man to lie, even unconsciously, even to himself. Also I feel 
 at this time as if I should never laugh more, or rather say never 
 sniff and whiffle and pretend to laugh more. The desj^icable titter 
 
 of a * ,' for example, seems4o me quite criminally small. Life 
 
 is no frivolity, or hypothetical coquetr}^ or whifflery. It is a great 
 'world of tnith,' that we are alive, that I am alive ; that I saw the 
 * Sweet Milk well ' yesterday, flowing for the last four thousand 
 years, from its three sources on the hill side, the origin of Middle- 
 bio Burn, and noted the little dell it had hollowed out all the way, 
 and the huts of Adam's posterity built sluttishly along its course, 
 and a sun shining overhead ninety millions of miles off, and eter- 
 
 * Letters and Memorials^ vol. i. p. 40. 
 
52 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 nity all round, and life a vision, dream and yet fact woven with 
 njDroar in the loom of time. Withal it should be said that my bil- 
 iousness is -considerable to-day ; that I am not so unhappy as I 
 talk, nay, perhaps rather happy ; in one word, that my mother in- 
 dulged me this morning in a cup of ! I am actually very con- 
 siderably better than when we parted. 
 
 The sheet is all but done, and no w^ord of thanks for your fine 
 Italian-English letter, which I read three times actually and did 
 not burn. It is the best news to me that you are getting better ; that 
 you feel cheerful, as your writing indicated. My poor Goody ! it 
 seems as if she could so easily be happy ; and the easy means are 
 so seldom there. Let us take it bravely, honestly. It will not 
 break us both. What you say of the sofa is interesting, more than 
 I like to confess. May it be good for us ! I feel as if an immeas- 
 urable everlasting sofa was precisely the thing I w^anted even 
 now. Oh dear ! I wish I was there, on the simple greatness of 
 that one, such as it is, and Goody might be as near as she liked. 
 Hadere nicht mit deiner Mutter, Liehste. Trage, trage ; es wird bald 
 enden.^ 
 
 God bless thee, my poor little darling. I think we shall be 
 happier some time, and oh, how happy if God will ! 
 
 Your ever affectionate 
 
 T. Caklyle. 
 
 The holiday lasted but four weeks, and Carlyle was 
 again at his work at Chelsea. He was still restless, of 
 course, with so heavy a load upon liim : but he did his 
 best to be cheerful under it. Her chief resources were the 
 Sterlings and the Italian lessons, and as long as she was 
 well in health her spirits did not fail. Him, too, the Ster- 
 lings' friendship helped much to encourage ; but he was 
 absorbed in his writing and could think of little else. To 
 his brother John he was regolar in his accounts of him- 
 self, and complained as little as could be expected. 
 
 I could live very patiently (he said) amid this circle of London 
 people. They are greatly the best people I ever walked with. 
 One is freer than anywhere else in the world, esteemed without 
 
 1 Quarrel not with your mother, dearest. Be patient ; be patient. It will 
 Boon end. 
 
Return to Loixdon, 53 
 
 being qnestioned, more at home tlian one has been. I will stay 
 here and try it out to the last ; but indeed my soul is like to grow 
 quite sick, and I feel as if no resting-place waited me on this side 
 the Great Ocean. It is a petulant, weak thought ; neither do I 
 long to die till I have done my task. I think, however, I will quit 
 literature. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 December 23, 1835. — To write of the conditions, external and es- 
 pecially internal, in which I live at present, is impossible for me ; 
 unprofitable were it possible. Bad bodily health added to all the 
 rest makes the ungainliest result of it, frightful, drawing towards 
 what consummation ? Silence is better. Be silent, be calm, at 
 least not mad. On the 4:th of this month, not without remember- 
 ing and bitterly considering, I completed my fortieth year. Spir- 
 itual strength, as I feel, still grows in me. All other things, out- 
 ward fortune, business among men, go on crumbling and decay- 
 ing. Cest egcd. Providence again is leading me through dark, 
 burning, hideous ways towards new heights and developments. 
 Nothing, or almost nothing, is certain to me, except the Divine 
 Infernal character of this universe I live in, worthy of horror, 
 worthy of worship. So much, and what I can infer from that. 
 
 Nothing came of the national education scheme. Car- 
 lyle was not a person to pusli himself into notice. Either 
 Buller and his other friends did not exert themselves for 
 him, or they tried and failed ; governments, in fact, do 
 not look out for servants among men who are speculating 
 about the nature of the universe. Then as always the 
 doors leading into regular employment remained closed. 
 From his mother as far as possible he concealed his anxi- 
 eties. But she knew him too well to be deceived. She, 
 too, was heavy at heart for her idolised son, less on account 
 of his uncertain prospects than for the want of faith, as 
 she considered it, which was the real cause of his trouble, 
 lie told her always that essentially he thought as she did, 
 but she could hardly believe it ; and though she no longer 
 argued or remonstrated, yet she dwelt in lier letters to 
 him, in her own simple way, on the sources of her own 
 
54: Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 consolation. She was intensely interested in his work. 
 She was identifying herself with the progress of it by 
 making him a new dressing-gown which was to be his 
 when the book was finished. Yet what was it all com- 
 pared with the one thing needful ? One of her letters to 
 him — one out of many — may be inserted here as a speci- 
 men of what this noble woman really was. 
 
 Margaret Carlyle to Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 Scotsbrig : December 15, 1835. 
 Dear Son, — I need not say how glad I was to see your hand once 
 more. It had been lying at the post-office for some time, I think, 
 for I had got the Annan ones the day before, which, I think, must 
 have been sent later than it. They were all thrice welcome, I 
 am glad to hear you are getting on with your book, in spite of all 
 the difficulties you have had to struggle with, which have been 
 many. I need not say, for you know already, I wish it a happy 
 and a long life. Keep a good heart. May God give us all grace 
 to stay our hearts on Him who has said in His word, ' He will 
 keep them in perfect peace, whose minds are stayed on Him, be- 
 cause they trust in Him.' 
 
 "Wait on the Lord and be thou strong, 
 
 And He shall strength afford 
 Unto thy heart : yea, do thou wait, 
 
 I say, upon the Lord. 
 What time my heart is overwhelmed 
 
 And in perplexity, 
 Do Thou me lead unto the Rock 
 
 That higher is than I. 
 
 Let us not be careful what the world thinks of us, if we can say 
 with a good conscience with Toplady : 
 
 Careless, myself a dying man, 
 
 Of dying men's esteem ; 
 Happy, oh Lord, if Thou approve, 
 
 Though all beside condemn. 
 
 You will say ' I know all these things.' But they are sooner said 
 than done. Be of courage, my dear son, and seek God for your 
 guide. 
 
 I was glad to hear of John having got to Rome. He has had 
 many wanderings, poor fellow ! When you write, will you thank 
 
Letter from his Mother, 55 
 
 him for his letter ho sent me ? I was got rather nneasy about 
 him. I think there are none that has got so much cause of thank- 
 fulness as I. We are all going on the old way, but it has been 
 such a year as I do not remember for bad weather. It has grown 
 worse and worse. Nevertheless it is better than we deserve, for 
 we are froward children, a sinful generation. God be merciful to 
 us sinners. He has never dealt with us as we deserve. I have 
 been full well all this winter, till I got a face cold and toothache. 
 It is better now, almost gone. I keep good fires and am very dry 
 and comfortable. 
 
 Give my love to your Goody. I am glad to hear she is rather 
 better. I will be glad to see you both here to rest a while when 
 the fight is over. There perhaps never was a greater scrawl. 
 Wink at it. God bless you, my dear children. 
 
 Your affectionate Mother, 
 
 Maegaret a. CablyiiE. 
 
 Another shorter letter followed, to which and to this 
 one Carlyle answered. 
 
 I got your three words, mother, and was right glad of them in 
 the absence of more. I assure you I will be ' canny ' — nay I must, 
 for a little ovei-work hurts me, and is found on the moiTow to be 
 quite the contrary of gain. I have many a rebellious, trouble- 
 some thought in me, i^roceeding not a little from ill health of 
 body. But I deal with them as I best can, and get them kicked 
 out. Pride ! pride ! as I often say. It lies deep in me, and must 
 be beaten out with many stripes. The young clergyman, John 
 Sterling [did he wish innocently to please his mother by the cleri- 
 cal character of his friend?], comes very much about me, and 
 proves by far the lovablest man I have met for many a year. His 
 speech always enlivens me and shortens the long walks we some- 
 times take. 
 
 It was very difficult for Carlyle (as he told mo) to speak 
 witli (n- write to liis mother directly abont religion. She 
 quieted lier anxieties as well as she could by recognising 
 the deep unquestionable piety of her son's nature. It was 
 on the worldly side, after all, that there was real cause for 
 alarm. The little stock of money would be gone now in 
 a few months ; and then what was to be done ? America 
 
6Q Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 seemed the only resource. Yet to allow sncli a man to 
 expatriate himself — a man, too, who would be contented 
 with the barest necessaries of life — because in England he 
 could not live, would be a shame and a scandal ; and va- 
 rious schemes for keeping him were talked over among 
 his friends. The difficulty was that he was himself so 
 stubborn and impracticable. He would not write in the 
 ' Times,' because the ' Times ^ was committed to a great 
 political party, and Carlyle would have nothing to do with 
 parties. Shortly after he came back from Scotland, he 
 was offered the editorship of a newspaper at Lichfield. 
 This was unacceptable for the same reason ; and if he 
 could have himself consented, his wife would not. She 
 could never persuade herself that her husband would fail 
 to rise to greatness on his own lines, or allow him to take 
 an inferior situation. In mentioning this Lichfield pro- 
 posal to his brother John, she said : — 
 
 I declare to you, my dear brother, I can never get myself worked 
 Tip into proper anxiety about how soul and body are to be kept to- 
 gether. The idea of starvation cannot somehow ever be brought 
 home to my bosom. I have always a sort of lurking assurance 
 that if one's bread ceases it will be possible to live on pie-crust. 
 Besides, whose bread ever does entirely cease who has brains and 
 fingers to bake it, unless indeed he be given over to Salthound ^ 
 in the shape of strong liquors, which is not my case happily ? 
 
 A more singular proposition reached Carlyle from an- 
 other quarter, kindly meant perhaps, but set forward with 
 an air of patronage whicli the humblest of men would 
 have resented unless at the last extremity ; and humility 
 was cei-tainly not one of Carlyie's qualities. The Basil 
 Montagus had been among the first friends to whom he 
 had been introduced by Irving when he came to London in 
 1824. Great things had been then expected of him on 
 Irving's report. Mrs. Montagu had interested herself 
 
 1 Carlylean name for Satan. 
 
Projected EnvployiiieixU. 57 
 
 deeply in all his concerns. She had heen initiated into tlie 
 romamje of Jane Welsh's early life, and it was by her in- 
 terference (which liad never been wholly forgiven) that 
 her marriage with Carlyle had been precipitated. For 
 some years a correspondence had been kept np, somewhat 
 inflated on Mrs. Montagu's side, but showing real kind- 
 ness and a real wish to be of use. The acquaintance had 
 continued after the Carlyles settled in Chelsea, but Mrs. 
 Montagu's advances had not been very warmly received, 
 and were suspected, perhaps unjustly, of not being com- 
 pletely sincere. The sympathetic letter which she had 
 ventured to write to Mrs. Carlyle on Irving's death had 
 been received rather with resentment than satisfaction. 
 Still the Montagus remained in the circle of Carlyle's 
 friends. They were aware of his circumstances, and were 
 anxious to help him if they knew how to set about it. 
 It was with some pleasure, and perhaps with some re- 
 morse at the doubts which he had entertained of the sin- 
 cerity of their regard, that Carlyle learned that Basil 
 Montagu had a situation in view for him which, if he 
 liked it, he might have — a situation, he was told, which 
 would secure him a sufficient income, and would leave 
 him time besides for his own writing. The particulars 
 were reserved to be explained at a personal interview. 
 Carlyle had been so eager, chiefly for his wife's sake, to 
 find something to hold on to, that he would not let the 
 smallest plank drift by without examining it. \\q had a 
 vague misgiving, but he blamed himself for his distrust. 
 The interview took place, and the contempt with which 
 he describes Mr. Montagu's proposition is actually savage. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : January 26, 1836. 
 Basil Montagn had a life benefaction all cut out and dried for 
 me — No : it depended on the measure of p^titude whether it was 
 to be ready for me or for another. A clerkship under him at the 
 
58 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 rate of 200^. a year, whereby a man lecturing also in mechanics' 
 institutes in the evening, and doing etceteras, might live.. I lis- 
 tened with grave fixed eyes to the sovereign of quacks, as he 
 mewed out all the fine sentimentalities he had stuffed into this 
 beggarly account of empty boxes — for which too I had been sent 
 trotting many miles of pavement, though I knew from the begin- 
 ning it could be only moonshine — and, with grave thanks for this 
 potentiality of a clerkship, took my leave that night ; and next 
 morning, all still in the potential mood, sent my indicative three- 
 penny. My wish and expectation partly is that Montagudom gen- 
 erally would be kind enough to keep its own side of the pavement. 
 Not very expressible is the kind of feeling the whole thing now 
 raises in me — madness varnished over by lies which you see through 
 and through. One other thing I could not but remark — the faith 
 of Montagu wishing me for his clerk ; thinking the polar bear, re- 
 duced to a state of dyspeptic dejection, might safely be trusted 
 tending rabbits. Greater faith I have not found in Israel. Let us 
 leave these people. They shall hardly again cost me even an ex- 
 change of threepennies. 
 
 The ' polar bear,' it might have occnrred to Carljle, is 
 a difficult beast to find accommodation for. People do 
 not eagerly open their doors to such an inmate. Basil 
 Montagu, doubtless, was not a wise man, and was unaware 
 of the relative values of himself and the person that he 
 thought of for a clerk. But, after all, situations suited 
 for polar bears are not easily found outside the Zoological 
 Gardens. It was not Basil Montagu's fault that he was 
 not a person of superior quality. He knew that Carlyle 
 was looking anxiously for employment with a fixed salary, 
 and a clerkship in his ofiice had, in his eyes, nothing de- 
 grading in it. Except in a country like Prussia, where a 
 discerning government is on the look-out always for men 
 of superior intellect, and knows what to do with them, the 
 most gifted genius must begin upon the lowest step of the 
 ladder. The proposal was of course an absurd one, and 
 the scorn with which it was received was only too natural ; 
 but this small incident shows only how impossible it was 
 
i 
 
 I 
 
 The Wi'ltiiuj of tlie Book. 59 
 
 at this time to do anything for Carlyle except what was 
 actually done, to leave hini to climb the precipices of life 
 by his own unassisted strength. 
 
 Thus, throughout this year 1836, lie remained fixed at 
 liis work in Cheyne Row. lie wrote all the morning. In 
 the afternoon he walked, sometimes with Mill or Sterling, 
 ' more often alone, making his own reflections. One even- 
 ing in January, he writes : - 
 
 I thought to-day up at Hyde Pai-k Comer, seeing all the car- 
 riages dash hither and thither, and so many human bipeds cheerily 
 hurrying along, * There you go, brothers, in your gilt carriages and 
 prosjjerities, better or worse, and make an extreme bother and 
 confusion, the devil very largely in it. And I too, by the blessing 
 of the Maker of me, I too am authorized and equipjied by Heaven's 
 Act of Parliament to do that small secret somewhat, and will do it 
 without any consultation of yours. Let us be brothers, therefore, 
 or at worst silent peaceable neighbours, and each go his own 
 way.' 
 
 Carlyle was radical enough in the sense that he had no 
 respect for the gilt carriages, and knew >vhither they were 
 probably rolling, but he had neither purpose nor wish to 
 be a revolutionary agitator, knowing that revolution meant 
 only letting the devil loose, whom it was man's duty 
 to keep bound. Mrs. Carlyle was confined through the 
 winter and spring with a dangerous cough. He himself, 
 though he complained, was fairly well ; nothing was es- 
 sentially the matter, but he slept badly from overwork, 
 * gaeing stavering aboot the hoose at night,' as the Scotch 
 maid said, restless alike in mind and body. When he 
 paused from his book to write a letter or a note in his 
 journal, it was to discover a state of nerves irritated by 
 the contrast between his actual performance and the sense 
 of what he was trying to accomplish. The ease which he 
 expected when the lost volume was recovered had not 
 been found. The toil was severe as ever. 
 
;60 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 March 22, 1836. — Month after month passes without any notice 
 here. In some four days I expect to be done with the chapter 
 called * Legislative.' It has been a long and sorry task. My 
 health, veiy considerably worse than usual, held me painfully 
 back. The work, it oftenest seems to me, will never be worth a 
 rush, yet I am writing it, as they say, with my heart's blood. The 
 sorrow and chagrin I suffer is very great. Physical pain is bad — 
 dispiritment, gloomy silence of rebellion against myself and all 
 the aiTangements of my existence is worse. I shudder sometimes 
 at the abysses I discern in myself, the acrid hunger, the shivering 
 sensitiveness, the wickedness (and yet can I say at this moment 
 that I think myself rightly wicked?) Confusion clings to a 
 man. 
 
 There is something edifying, however, in the perfectly composed 
 peace of mind with which I have renounced one province of my 
 interests and given it up to Fortune to do her own will with it : 
 the economical province. Oar money runs fast away daily. It 
 will be about done at the time this book is done ; and then — my 
 destiny, as it were, ends. I seem not to care a straw for that ; 
 nay, rather to like it, if anything, as implying the end of much 
 else that is growing insupportable. Some vague outlook, which I 
 half know to be inane, opens in my imagination to America, or 
 some western woods and solitude, far from the fret and confusion 
 of these places ; rest anywhere ; and yet I still do not want gener- 
 ally to rest in the grave. All fame, and so forth, seems the 
 wretchedest mockery. It sometimes appears possible that it may 
 come my way too — for I do not hide from myself that I am above 
 hundreds that have it. But even in that case I say honestly Wozu ? 
 one dies soon — soon — and his fame ! Say it lived three centuries 
 after him I I do pray to God to be guided into some more solid 
 anchor ground, and to leave that as a restless quicksand — mud — 
 which has swallowed up so many, to welter according to its own 
 will. Also, it many times strikes me. Being in ill-health and so 
 miserable, art thou not of a surety wrong ? Wliy not quit liter- 
 ature — with a vengeance to it — and turn, were it even to sheep 
 herding, where one can be well? Dark straits and contentions of 
 will against constraint seem to threaten me — I cannot help it. 
 Peace ! peace ! It is one's own mind that is wrong. 
 
Garden Work. 61 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : March 31, 18S6u 
 It seems as if I were enchanted to this sad book. Peace in the 
 world there will be none for me till I have it done ; and then very 
 generally it seems the miserablest mooncalf of a book, full of 
 Ziererei (affectation), do what I will ; tumbling head foremost 
 through all manner of established rules. And no money to be had 
 for it ; and no value that I can count on of any kind, simply the 
 blessedness of being done with it. It comes across me like the 
 breath of heaven, that I shall verily be done with it in some few 
 weeks now. Then let it go, to be trodden down in the^utters if 
 the poor people like ; to be lifted on poles if they like, to be made 
 a kirk and a mill of. The indifference that I feel about all mortal 
 things is really very considerable. Glory and disgi-ace, poverty 
 and wealth, gig and eight, or torn shoe soles, behold, brethren, it 
 is all alike to me. I too have my indefeasible lot and portion in 
 this God's univei-se of vapour and substance, and grudge you not, 
 and hate you not, rather love you in an underhand manner and 
 wish you speed on your path. 
 
 At the back of Carlyle's house in Cheyne Row is a strip 
 of garden, a grass plot, a few trees and flower-beds along 
 the walls, where are (or were) some bits of jessamine and 
 a gooseberry-bush or two, transported from Haddington 
 and Craigenputtock. Here, wlien spring came on, Car- 
 lyle used to dig and plant and keep the grass trim and 
 tidy. Sterling must have seen him with his spade there 
 when he drew the picture of Collins in the ' Onyx Tling,' 
 which is evidently designed for Carlyle. The digging 
 must have been more of a relaxation for him than the 
 ■walks, where the thinking and talking went on without 
 interruption. Very welcome and a real relief was the 
 arrival of his brother John at last in the middle of April. 
 Lady Clare could not part with him in the autumn, but 
 she had come now herself, bringing the doctor with her, 
 and had allowed him three months' leave of absence. Half 
 his holiday was to be spent in Cheyne Row. The second 
 volume of the ' Revolution ' was finished, and Carlyle gave 
 
62 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 himself up to the full enjoyment of his brother's company. 
 He had six weeks of real rest and pleasure ; for his curi- 
 osity was insatiable, and John, just from Italy, could tell 
 him infinite things which he wanted to know. Scotsbrig, 
 of course, had claims which were to be respected. When 
 these wrecks were over, John had to go north, and Carlyle 
 attended him down the river to the Hull steamer. 
 
 ' Yery cheery to me poor Jack,' he writes when alone at 
 home ao;ain ; ' I feel without him quite orphaned and 
 alone.' *ilone, and at the mercy again of the evil spirits 
 wdiom ' Jack's ' round face had kept at a distance. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 June 1, 1836. — My dispiritment, my sorrow and pain are great, 
 but I strive to keep silent. Silence is the only method. I am 
 weary and heavy-laden, wearied of all things, ahnost of life itself — 
 yet not altogether. It is fearful and wonderful to me. Often it 
 seems as if the only grand and beautiful and desirable thing in 
 this dusty fuliginous chaos were to die. Death ! The unknown 
 sea of rest ! Who knows what hidden harmonies lie there to wrap 
 us in softness, in eternal peace, where perhaps, and not sooner or 
 elsewhere, all the hot longings of the soul are to be satisfied and 
 stilled ? 
 
 An eternity of life were not endurable to any mortal. To me 
 the thought of it were madness even for one day. Oh ! I am far 
 astray, wandering, lost, ' dyeing the thirsty desert with my blood 
 in every footprint.' Perhaps God and His providence. will be bet- 
 ter to me than I hope. Peace, peace ! words are idler than idle. 
 
 I have seen Wordsworth again. I have seen Landor, Americans, 
 Frenchmen — Cavaignac the Kepublican. Be no word written of 
 them. Bubble bubble, toil and trouble. I find emptiness and 
 chagrin, look for nothing else, and on the whole can reverence no 
 existing man, and shall do well to pity all, myself first — or rather 
 last. To work therefore. That will still me a little if aught will. 
 
 The old, old story: genius, the divine gift which men 
 so envy and admire, which is supposed to lift its possessor 
 to a throne among the gods, gives him, with the intensity 
 of insight, intensity of spii'itual suffering. His laurel 
 
J>iscvpline of Genius. 63 
 
 wreath is a crown of tliorns. To all men Carlyle preached 
 the duty of ' consuming their own smoke,' and faithfully 
 he fulfilled his own injunction. lie wrote no ' Werthers 
 I^iden,' no musical 'Childe Harold,' to relieve liis own 
 lieart hy inviting the world to weep with him. So far as 
 the world was concerned, he bore his pains in silence, and 
 only in his journal left any written record^ of them. At 
 home, however, he could not always be reticent ; and his 
 sick wife, whose spirits needed raising, missed John's com- 
 panionship as much as her husband. The household eco- 
 nomics became so pressing that the book had to be sus- 
 pended for a couple of weeks while Carlyle wrote the ar- 
 ticle on Mirabeau, now printed among the ' Miscellanies,' 
 for MilTs Review. Some fifty pounds was made by this ; 
 but by the time the article was finished, Mrs. Carlyle be- 
 came so ill that she felt that unless she could get away to 
 her mother ' she would surely die.' Carlyle himself could 
 not think of moving, unless for a day or two to a friend in 
 the neighbourhood of London ; but everything was done 
 that circumstances permitted. She went first to her uncle 
 at Liverpool, meaning to proceed (for economy) by the 
 Annan steamer, though in her weak state she dreaded a 
 sea voyage. She was sent forward by the coach. John 
 Carlyle met )ier and carried her on to her mother at Temp- 
 land, who had a * purse of sovereigns' ready for her as a 
 birthday present (July 14). Carlyle himself wrote to her 
 daily, making the best of his condition that she might 
 have as little anxiety as possible on his account. After 
 she was gone he paid a visit to John Mill, who was then 
 living in the country. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle at Templand. 
 
 Chelsea : July 34, 183a 
 I mnst tell yon about the Mill visit, for I think I sent you a 
 token that I was Roinf?. I went acoonlinprlj. It is a pretty coun- 
 try—a pretty village of the English straggling wooded sort. The 
 
64 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 Mills have joined some ' old carpenter's shops ' together, and made 
 a pleasant summer mansion (connected by shed-roofed passages), 
 the little drawing-room door of glass looking out into a rose lawn, 
 into green plains, and half a mile off to a most respectable wooded 
 and open broad-shouldered green hill. They were as hospitable 
 as they could be. I was led about, made attentive to innumerable 
 picturesquenesses, &c. &c., all that evening and next day. ... 
 There was little sorrow visible in their house, or rather none, nor 
 any human feeling at all ; but the strangest unheimlich kind of 
 composure and acquiescence, as if all human spontaneity had 
 taken refuge in invisible corners. Mill himself talked much, and 
 not stupidly — far from that — but without emotion of any discerni- 
 ble kind. He seemed to me to be withering or withered into the 
 miserablest metaphysical scrae,'^ body and mind, that I had almost 
 ever met with in the world. His eyes go twinkling and Jerking 
 with wild lights and twitches; his head is bald, his face brown 
 and dry — poor fellow after all. It seemed to me the strangest 
 thing what this man could want with me, or I with such a man so 
 unheimlich to me. What will become of it ? Nothing evil ; for 
 there is and there was nothing dishonest in it. But I think I shall 
 see less and less of him. Alas, poor fellow ! It seems possible 
 too that he may not be very long seeable : that is one way of its 
 ending — to say nothing of my own chances. 
 
 As for the chapter [of the ' French Eevolution '] entitled ' Sep- 
 tember,' the poor Goody knows with satisfaction that it is done. 
 I worked all day, not all night : indeed, oftenest not at night at 
 all ; but went out and had long swift-striding w^alks — till ten — 
 under the stars. I have also slept, in general, tolerably. For the 
 last ten days, however, I have been poisoned again with veal soup, 
 beef being unattainable. I will know again. The chapter is some 
 thirty-six pages : not at all a bad chapter. Would the Goody had 
 it to read ! A hundred pages more, and this cursed book is flung 
 out of me. I mean to write with force of fire till that consumma- 
 tion ; above all with the speed of fire ; still taking intervals, of 
 course, and resting myself. The unrested horse or writer cannot 
 work. But a despicability of a thing that has so long held mo, 
 and held us both down to the grindstone, is a thing I could almost 
 swear at and kick out of doors; at least most swiftly equip for 
 walking out of doors. Speranza, thou spairkin Goody ! Hope, my 
 little lassie ! It will all be better than thou thinkest. For two or 
 1 Scrae^ ' an old shoe ' (Dumfriesshire). 
 
Letter to his Wife. 65 
 
 three days I have the most perfect rest now. Then Louis is to be 
 tried and guillotined. Then the Gironde, &c. It all stands pretty 
 fair in my head, nor do I mean to investigate much more about it, 
 but to splash down what I know in large masses of colours, that it 
 may look like a smoke-and-flame conflagration in the distance, 
 which it is. . . . 
 
 My dear little Janekin, I must leave thee now. Write a long 
 letter. They are icdl very pleasant, very good for me ; but the * re- 
 posing humour ' would give me the most pleasure of all. Gehab 
 click wohl ! Sey hold mir ! Iloffe ; zweifie nicht. (Keep well ! Be 
 good to me ! Hope ; do not tine heart.) Kiss your kind mother 
 for me. Adieu ! Au revoir ! 
 
 Ever affectionately thine, 
 
 T. CARLYIiE. 
 
 His heart was less light than he tried to make it appear. 
 The journal of August 1 says : — 
 
 Have finished chapter i. (September) of my third volume, and 
 gone idle a week after, till as usual I am now reduced to a caput 
 mortuum again, and do this day begin my second chapter, to be 
 called 'Regicide.' Jane in Dumfriesshire these three weeks or 
 more, shattered vdth agitation. I see no one — not even the French- 
 men * — for above two weeks ; very dreary of outlook ; one sole 
 guiding star for me on eai-th, that of getting done with my book. 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle was scarcely better off, Scotch air having 
 done little for her. He writes to her a week later. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : August 8. 
 Du armes Kind, — The letter, which I opened with eagerness 
 enough, made me altogether wae. No rest for the poor wearied 
 one. In her mother's house, too, she must wake * at four in the 
 morning,' and have frettings and annoyances. It is veiy hard. 
 The world is so wide ; and for my poor Jane there is no place 
 where she can find shelter in it. Patience, my poor lassie ! It is 
 not so bad as that : it shall not be so bad. 
 
 Since there is no good to be done in Scotland, what remains but 
 that you come back hither with such despatch as suits? There is 
 quietude here ; there is liberty ; you shall have bread to eat. We 
 » Gamier and Godefroi Cavaignao. See Leitera and^MemoriaU^ vol. L 
 Vol. III.-5 
 
66 Carlyle's Life in London., 
 
 can even procure you a little milk, for the man comes yowling 
 regularly at the stroke of seven. I wish to heaven I were better, 
 cheerfuller ; but I take heaven to witness I will be as cheerful as 
 I can. I will do what is in me, and swim with myself and thee. 
 I do not think the waves can swallow us. Open thy heart out 
 again to me ; have hope, courage, softness — not bitterness and 
 hardness — and they shall not swallow us. In any case, what refuge 
 is there but here ? Here is the place for my poor Goody ; let us 
 sink or swim together. 
 
 If I did not know how little advice could profit in such matters, 
 how it even exasi^erates and makes the case worse, I would pray 
 earnestly in the meantime for that very thing which we so often 
 laugh at in poor Jack — meekness, submission to the will of Heaven. 
 Open thy eyes from those Templand windows. The earth is green, 
 jewelled with many a flower. The sky arches itself, also beautiful, 
 overhead. It is not, in the name of God, a place of bitter hope- 
 lessness for any living creature, but it is emphatically the place of 
 hope for all. Oh ! that Edinburgh style of mockery ! Me too 
 with its hard withering influence, its momentary solacement, fatal- 
 ler than any j)ain, it had wellnigh conducted to Hades and Tophet. 
 But I flung it off, and am alive. Oh that my poor much-suffering 
 Jane had done so too ! — flung it off from the very heart for ever 
 — and in soft devoutness of submission (wherein lies what the man 
 calls the ' divine depth of sorrow ') had recognised once that the 
 stern necessity was also the just ; that the thing, stronger than we, 
 was also the better — wiser. But I will preach no more. I will 
 pray and wish rather, in my heart of hearts. Nay, I will prophesy 
 too ; for nothing shall ever make me believe that a soul so ty^ue 
 and full of good things can continue strangling itself in that man- 
 ner, sore, sore, though its perjilexities be. Oh my poor lassie, 
 what a life thou hast led ! — and I could not make it other. It was 
 to be that, and not another. 
 
 And so, after all, then, what is to be done but come back again 
 by easy stages, and do the best we can ? This visit to Scotland will 
 not have been in vain. It exhausts another possibility. It ren- 
 ders one quieter. Nay, in spite of all these splashings of rain, 
 weary waitings for some one rising, these annoyances and disap- 
 pointments, I believe the very change of scene, of habitual speech 
 and course of thought, will be of salutaiy influence. The din of 
 London is stilled in you by this time. The mind will be fresh to 
 take it up again, and find it more harmonious than it was. Gehab 
 
Letter to his Wife. 67 
 
 dich tpohl ! Bo peaceable, my j^oor weary Bhattered bairn. Har- 
 den not thy heart, but soften it. Open it to hope and me. Say all 
 that is kind to your mother for me. Forgive her * ways of doing.' 
 They are her ways, though very tormenting. 
 
 It is half-past four, and I am still in my dressing-gown. Addio, 
 carissima. God be with thee, my wee Goody ! 
 
 T. CarlyiiE. 
 
 John came back with the fall of the summer to rejoin 
 Lady Clare, and passed a few more days alone with his 
 brother. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : Augugt 24. 
 
 Parliament being dissolved, prorogued I believe, there are no 
 franks. Jack said on Saturday, * Here is a ticket Lady Clare has 
 sent me ; will you not go and see the King prorogue Parliament ? ' 
 * Sir,' I answered, * if he were going to blow up Parliament with 
 gunpowder, I would hardly go, being busy elsewhere.' . . . 
 Lie still, thou poor wearied one. Stir not till the hour come for 
 travelling hither again. After all, I calculate the journey will not 
 prove useless. A healthy influence lies in the veiy change of ideas 
 and objects — such a total change as that. Seated by our own 
 hearth again, much that was a burble will begin to unravel itself. 
 There are better days coming : I say it always, and swear it, with 
 a kind of indestructible faith. But we must be ready for the bad, 
 for the worse, and meet, not in bitter violence, but in courageous 
 genial humour, as quiet at least as may be. . . . 
 
 If a Goody were well, and a good, acli Gott, why should we not 
 be happy enough, in spite of twenty poverties ? Patience, lassie ! 
 let us take it quietly. The book will be done. I shall rest, bo 
 better ; all will be better. Consider this fact, too, which really 
 has a truth in it. Great sorrow never lasts. It is like a stream 
 stemmed — must begin flowing again. There is really, I say, a 
 truth in that, grounded in the nature of things. Oh my poor 
 bairn, be not faithless, but believing. Do not fling life away as 
 insupportable, despicable, but let us work it out and rest it out 
 together, like a true twoy though under sore obstnictions. Fools 
 in all circumstances, sliort of Tophet, very probably in Tophet it- 
 self, have one way of doing ; wise men have a different, infinitely 
 better. I say * infinitely,* for that also is a fact; and so God di- 
 
 k 
 
68 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 rect us and help us ! God send thee soon, and safe back again ; 
 and so ends my sermon. 
 
 It lias pleased Carljle to admit the world behind the 
 scenes of his domestic life. He has allowed us to see that 
 all was not as well there as it might have been, and in his 
 own generous remorse he has taken the blame upon him- 
 self. 1^0 one, however, can read these letters, or ten 
 thousand others like them, without recognising the affec- 
 tionate tenderness which lay at the bottom of his nature. 
 Iso one also can read between the lines w^ithout observing 
 that poverty and dispiritment and the burden of a task too 
 heavy for him was not all that Carlyle had to bear. She 
 on her part, no doubt, had much to put up with. It was 
 not easy to live with a husband subject to strange fits of 
 passion and depression ; often as unreasonable as a child, 
 and with a Titanesque power of making mountains out of 
 molehills. But she might have seen more clearly than 
 she did, in these deliberate expressions of his feeling, the 
 soundness of his judgment, and the genuine simple truth 
 and loyalty of his heart. Let those married pairs who 
 never knew a quarrel, whose days run on unruffled by a 
 breeze, be grateful that their lot has been cast in pleasant 
 circumstances, for otherwise their experience will have 
 been different. Let them be grateful that they are not 
 persons of ^genius' or blessed or cursed with sarcastic 
 tongues. The disorder which had driven Mrs. Carlyle to 
 Scotland w^as mental as well as bodily. The best remedy 
 for it lay, after all, at home ; and she came back, as she 
 said, after two months' absence, ' a sadder and a wiser 
 woman.' Carlyle had gone off intending to meet her at 
 the office, but the coach was before its time, or he had 
 mistaken the hour. 
 
 I had my luggage (she said) put on the backs of two porters, 
 and walked on to Cheapside, when I presently found a Chelsea 
 omnibus. By-and-by the omnibus stopped, and amid cries of ' No 
 
Style once More. 69 
 
 room, sir; can't get in,' Carlyle's face, beautifully set off by a 
 broad-brimmed white hat, gazed in at the door like the Peri * who, 
 at the gate of Heaven, stood disconsolate.' In huiiying along the 
 Strand, his eye had lighted on my trunk packed on the top of the 
 omnibus, and ho recognised it. This seems to me one of the most 
 indubitable proofs of genius -which he ever manifested. 
 
 She had returned mended in spirits. Jolin had gone 
 two days before, and was on his way to Italy again, but 
 the effects remained of his cheery presence, and all things 
 were looking better. The article on Mirabeau was printed, 
 and had given satisfaction. The ' Diamond Kecklace ' was 
 to come out in parts in Fraser, and bring in a little money. 
 Carlyle had never written anything more beautiful ; and 
 it speaks indifferently for English criticism that about this, 
 w^hen it appeared, the newspapers were as scornful as they 
 had been about * Sartor ' — a bad omen foi- the * French 
 Eevolution,' for the ^ Diamond JS'ecklace ' was a prelimi- 
 nary chapter of the same drama. But the opinions of the 
 newspapers had long become matters of indifference. The 
 financial pressure would be relieved at any rate, and the 
 air in Cheyne Row, within doors and without, was like a 
 still autumn afternoon, when the equinoctials have done 
 blowing. The book was nearly finished. John Carlyle 
 had read the MS. and had criticised. The style had 
 startled hinj, as the style of ' Sartor' had startled Sterling. 
 Carlyle had listened patiently, and had made some change 
 in deference to his brother's opinion. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : September 12, 1836. 
 As to what you admonished about style, though you goodna- 
 turedly fall away from it now, there actually was some profit in it, 
 and some effect. It reminds me once more that there are always 
 two parties to a good style — the contented -writer and the contented 
 reader. Many a little thing I propose to alter with an eye to 
 greater cleaniess ; but the grand point at present is to get done 
 briefly. I find I have only eighty-eight pages in all, and infinite 
 
70 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 matter to cram into them. I pui-pose investigating almost no far- 
 ther, but dashing in what I akeady have in some compendious, 
 grandiose, massive way. I really feel veiy well at present. The 
 joy I anticipate in finishing this book is considerable. Go, thou 
 unhappy book ! Thou hast nearly wrung the life out of me. Go 
 in God's name or the Devil's ; one will be free after that, and look 
 abroad over the world to see what it holds for one. I am reading 
 Eckermann's ' Conversations with Goethe,' borrowed from Mrs. 
 Austin. It does me great good for the time : such a clear serene 
 enjoyment, so different from this Revolution one ; and yet it is 
 not my environment now — will not yield me Obdacli (shelter) here 
 and now. Goethe is great, brown -visage d, authentic-looking, in 
 this book, yet rdthselhaft (enigmatic) here and there to me. . . . 
 Enough, enough. Do not conjugate ennuyer, dear Jack, if you 
 can help it ; conjugate esperer rather. Depend upon it, working, 
 trying, is the only remover of doubt. It is an immense truth that. 
 The stream looks so cold, dreary, dangerous. You stand shiver- 
 ing. You plunge in. Behold, it carries you : you can swim. 
 Take my blessing and brotherly prayers with you. T. 0. 
 
 As the end of the book came in view, the question — 
 what next ? began to present itself. It was as morning 
 twilight after a long night, and surrounding objects 
 showed in their natural form. Evidently Carlyle did not 
 expect that it would bring liim money or directly better 
 his fortunes. All that he looked for was to have acquitted 
 his conscience by writing it : lie would then quit literature 
 and seek other work. The alternative, indeed, did not 
 seem to be left to him — literature as a profession, fol- 
 lowed with a sacred sense of responsibility (and without 
 such a sense he could have nothing to do with it), refused 
 a living to himself and his wife. For her sake as well as 
 his own, he nmst try something else. He was in no hurry 
 to choose. His plan, so far as he could form one, was 
 that, as soon as the book was published, his wife should 
 return for a while to her mother. He, like his own 
 Teufelsdrockh, would take staff in hand, travel on foot 
 about the world like a mediaeval monk, look about liim. 
 
Future Prospects. 71 
 
 and then decide. Ten years before, he had formed large 
 hopes of what he might do and become as a man of let- 
 ters. He concluded now that he had failed, and the lan- 
 guage in which he wrote about it is extremely manly. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 October 23. — ^Nothing noted here for a long time. It has grown 
 profitless, wearisome, to write or speak of one so sick, forlorn as 
 myself. Cap. 3 (Girondins) finished about a week ago. Totally 
 worthless, according to my feeling of it. I persist, nevertheless. 
 'Diamond Necklace* to be printed in 'Fraser.* Sitting for my 
 pictui-e to a man named Lewis, who begged it, * that it might do 
 him good.' Jane insisted. I at length assented. Cul bono? 
 Empty as I am in purse and in hope, what steads the oil shadow 
 of me in these circumstances ? Rather let such a man be alto- 
 gether sui)i)ressed. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea: October 29. 
 
 Our life is all hanging in the wind — for me, however, against 
 the next spring I have it all so cunningly arranged that, as it were, 
 neither ill luck nor good luck can be other than welcome to me. 
 This is really tnie and very curious. Such an infinitude of differ- 
 ent annoyances and menaces come pressing on me from all points 
 of the compass, that I merely fortify my own chest and rib work, 
 and say, ' Messrs. the Annoyances, do, if you j^lease, make out 
 the result among yourselves ; my ribs with heaven's help will not 
 yield, and I shall cheerfully be ready to move whichever way the 
 curi'ent goes.' Here, witli only literature for shelter, there is, I 
 think, no continuance. Better to take a stick in your hand, and 
 roam the earth Teufelsdrockhish ; you will get at least a stomach 
 to eat Ijread— even that denied me here. Es icoUte kein Hund so 
 leben (no dog would lead such a life). Nor will I. The only mle 
 is silence, uttermost composure, and open eyes. The beggarly 
 economical part of this existence on earth seems to me the more 
 beggarly the longer I look at it ; the existence itself the more 
 tragical, sublime. Not a hair of our heads but was given to us by 
 a God. 
 
 My chief pity in general, iiv these circumstances of mine, is for 
 Jane. She hoped much of me ; had great faith in me ; and has 
 endured much beside me, not murmuring at it. I feel as if I had 
 
72 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 to swim both for her deliverance and my own. Better health will 
 be granted me ; better days for us both. 
 
 It is my fixed hope at present either to go to Scotland or to 
 Italy next summer, stick in hand. If any offer occur to detain me 
 here, it shall be well ; if none, it shall be almost better. ' This is 
 what I meant above by being balanced amid annoyances and men- 
 aces. Therefore be of good cheer, my brave brother. The world 
 shall not beat us, much as it may try. We will make a wrestle or 
 two first at any rate. Thou see'st I am to have done with this 
 sorrowful enterprise of a book, with France and Eevolutions for 
 evermore. Then I take stick in hand, silently go to comj)ose my 
 body and soul a little, and so take the world on the other side. I 
 feel strong yet ; as if I had years of strength in me. London has 
 been like a course of mercury to body and mind ; hard enough, 
 but not unmedicative. We will not complain of London, not fear 
 it, not hope from it ; let it go its way, we going ours. If thou 
 prosper at Eome, I may come to thee. If not, why then come 
 thou hither. It shall be good either way. 
 
 So the year wore out, and in this humour the ' History 
 of the French He volution ' was finished. The last sen- 
 tence was written on tlie 12tli of January, 1837, on a 
 damp evening, just as light w^as failing.' Carlyle gave 
 the MS. to his wife to read, and went out to w^alk. Be- 
 fore leaving the house he said to her : ' I know not 
 whether this book is worth anything, nor what the world 
 will do with it, or misdo, or entirely forbear to do, as is 
 likeliest ; but this I could tell the world : You have not 
 had for a hundred years any book that comes more direct 
 and flamingly from the heart of a living man. Do what 
 you like -wdth it, you — .' Five days later he announced 
 the event to Sterling, w4io was spending the winter at 
 Bordeaux. 
 
 To John Sterling. 
 
 Chelsea : January 17, 1837. 
 Five days ago I finished about ten o'clock at night, and was 
 ready both to weep and pray, but did not do either, at least not 
 
 i So Carlyle said later ; but in the letter to Sterling he says ten o'clock at 
 night. Perhaps he added a word or two. 
 
" Frendi Ilevdlutioii'* Finished. 73 
 
 visibly or audibly. The bookseller lias it, and the printer has it ; 
 I expect the first sheet to-morrow. In not many more weeks I 
 can hoi>e to wash my hands of it for ever and a day. It is a thing 
 disgusting to me by the faults of it : the merits of which — for it 
 is not without merit — will not be seen for a long time. It is a 
 wild savage book, itself a kind of French Revolution, wliich 2)er- 
 haps, if Providence have so ordered, the world had better not 
 accept when offered it. With all my heai-t. What I do know of 
 it is that it has come hot out of my own soul, born in blackness, 
 whirlwind, and sorrow ; that no man for a long while has stood, 
 speaking so completely alone, under the eternal azure in the char- 
 acter of man only, or is likely for a long wliile so to stand : finally, 
 that it has gone as near to choking the life out of me as any task 
 I should like to undertake for some years to come, which also is 
 an immense comfort, indeed the greatest of all. 
 
 The Mason's ways are 
 A type of existence, 
 And his persistence 
 Is as the days are 
 Of men in this world. 
 
 The future hides in it 
 Gladness and sorrow ; 
 We press still thorough, 
 Naught that abides in it 
 Daunting us, onward. 
 
 And solemn before us 
 Veiled the dark Portal, 
 Goal of all Mortals ; 
 St irs silent rest o'er us, 
 Graves under us silent. 
 
 While earnest thou gazest 
 Comes boding of terror, 
 Comes phantasm and error, 
 Perplexes the bravest 
 With doubt and misgiving. 
 
 But heard are the voices, 
 Heard are the sage's, 
 The world's, and the age's. 
 Choose well : your choice is 
 Brief and yet endless. 
 
74 CadyWs Life 'in London, 
 
 Here eyes do regard you 
 In eternity's stillness, 
 Here is all fulness, 
 Ye brave to reward you. 
 Work and despair not.* 
 
 Is not that a piece of psalmody ? It seems to me like a piece of 
 marcliing music to the great brave Teutonic kindred as they march 
 through the waste of time — that section of eternity they were ap- 
 pointed for. Ohen die Sterne und unten die Grdber, <&c. Let us all 
 sing it and march on cheerful of heart. 'We bid you to hope.' ' 
 So say the voices, do they not ? 
 
 This poem of Goethe's was on Carlyle's lips to the last 
 days of his life. When very near the end he quoted the 
 last lines of it to me when speaking of what might lie be- 
 yond, ' We bid you to hope.' 
 
 1 Goethe's song — 
 
 ' Die Zukunf t decket 
 Schmerzen und Gliick.' 
 
 Carlyle gives the original in writing to Sterling. I take Carlyle's own trans- 
 lation from ' Past and Present. ' 
 
 2 The literal translation of the last line, 
 
 ' Wir heissen euch hoffen.* 
 
I 
 
 CHAPTEK IV. 
 A.D. 1837. ^T. 42. 
 
 Character of Carlyle's writings— The * French Revolution' as a 
 work of art— Political neutrality — Effect of the book on Car- 
 lyle's position — Proposed lectures — Public speaking — Delivery 
 of the first course — Success, moral and financial — End of money 
 difficulties — Letter to Sterling — Exhaustion — Retreat to Scot- 
 land. 
 
 I HAVE been thus particular in describing the conditions 
 under which the ' History of tlie French Revolution' was 
 composed, because this book gave Carlyle at a single step 
 his unique position as an English man of letters, and be- 
 cause it is in many respects the most perfect of all his 
 writings. In his other wo)*ks the sense of form is defec- 
 tive. He throws out brilliant detached pictures, and large 
 masses of thought, each in itself inimitably clear. There 
 is everywhere a unity of purpose, with powerful final effects. 
 But events are not left to tell their own story. He appears 
 continually in his own person, instructing, commenting, 
 informing the reader at every step of his own opinion. 
 His method of composition is so original that it cannot be 
 tried by common rules. The want of art is even useful 
 for the purposes which he has generally in view ; but it 
 interferes with the simplicity of a genuine historical nar- 
 rative. The ' French Revolution ' is not open to this ob- 
 jection. It stands alone in artistic regularity and com- 
 pleteness. It is a prose poem with a distinct beginning, a 
 middle, an end. It opens with the crash of a corrupt sys- 
 tem, and a dream of liberty which was to bring with it a 
 
76 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 reign of peace and happiness and universal love. It pur- 
 sues its way through the failure of visionary hopes into 
 I'egicide and terror, and the regeneration of mankind by 
 the guillotine. It has been called an ejpic. It is rather an 
 ^scliylean drama composed of facts literally true, in which 
 the Furies are seen once more walking on this pi'osaic 
 earth and shaking their serpent hair. 
 
 The form is quite peculiar, unlike that of any history 
 ever written before, or probably to be written again. [Ro 
 one can imitate Cai-lyle who does not sincerely feel as Car- 
 lyle felt. J^ut it is complete in itself. The story takes 
 shape as it grows, a definite organic creation, wdth no dead 
 or needless matter anywhere disfiguring or adhering to it, 
 as if the metal had been smelted in a furnace seven times 
 heated, till every particle of dross had been burnt away. 
 As in all living things, there is the central idea, the ani- 
 mating principle round which the matter gathers and de- 
 velopes into shape. Carlyle was writing what he believed 
 would be his last word to his countrymen. He was not look- 
 ing forward to fame or fortune, or to making a position 
 for himself in the world. He belonged to no political 
 party, and was engaged in the defence of no theory or in- 
 terest. For many years he had been studying painfully 
 the mystery of human life, wholly and solely that he 
 might arrive at some kind of truth about it and understand 
 his own duty. He had no belief in the virtue of special 
 'Constitutions.' He was neither Tory, nor Whig, nor 
 lladical, nor Socialist, nor any other ' ist.' He had stripped 
 himself of ' Formulas ' ' as a J^essus shirt,' and flung them 
 fiercely away from him, finding ' Formulas' in these days to 
 be mostly ' lies agreed to be believed.' In the record of God's 
 law, as he had been able to read it, he had found no com- 
 mendation of ' symbols of faith,' of church organisation, or 
 methods of government. He wrote, as he said to Sterling, 
 ' in the character of a man ' only ; and of a man without 
 
Tlve *' French Revolution^ 77 
 
 earthly objects, without earthly prospects, who had been 
 sternly handled by fate and circumstances, and was left alone 
 with the elements, as Prometheus on the rock of Caucasus. 
 Struggling thus in pain and sorrow, he desired to tell the 
 modern world that, destitute as it and its affairs appeared 
 to be of Divine guidance, God or justice was still in the. 
 middle of it, sternly inexorable as ever; that modern na- 
 tions were as entirely governed by God's law as the Israel- 
 ites had been in Palestine — laws self-acting and inflicting 
 their own penalties, if man neglected or defied them. And 
 these laws were substantially the same as those on the 
 Tables delivered in thunder on Mount Sinai. You shall 
 reverence your Almighty Maker. You shall speak truth. 
 You shall do justice to your fellow-man. If you set truth 
 aside for conventional and convenient lies; if you prefer 
 your own pleasure, your own will, your own ambition, to 
 purity and manliness and justice, and submission to your 
 Maker's commands, then are whirlwinds still provided in 
 the constitution of things which will blow you to atoms. 
 Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians, were the whips which 
 were provided for the Israelites. Germans and Huns 
 swept away the Roman sensualists. Modern society, 
 though out of fear of barbarian conquerors, breeds in its 
 own heart the instruments of its punishment. The hungry 
 and injured millions will rise up and bring to justice their 
 guilty rulers, themselves little better than those whom they 
 throw down, themselves powerless to rebuild out of the 
 ruins any abiding city ; but powerful to destroy, powerful 
 to dash in pieces the corrupt institutions which have been 
 the shelter and the instrument of oppression. 
 
 And Carlyle heliemd this — believed it singly and simply 
 as Isaiah believed it, not as a mode of speech to be used 
 in pulpits by eloquent preachers, but as actual literal fact, 
 as a real account of the true living relations between mau 
 and his Maker. The established forms, ci-eeds, liturgies, 
 
78 Carlyles Life in London. 
 
 articles of faith, were but as the shell round the kernel. 
 The shell in these days of ours had rotted away, and men 
 supposed that, because the shell was gone, the entire con- 
 ception had been but a dream. It was no dream. The 
 kernel could not rot. It was the vital force by whicli 
 human existence in this planet was controlled, and would 
 be controlled to the end. 
 
 In this conviction he wrote his spectral ' History of the 
 French Revolution.' Spectral, for the actors in it appear 
 without their earthly clothes : men and women in their 
 natural characters, but as in some vast phantasmagoria, 
 .with the supernatural shining through them, working in 
 fancy their own wills or their own imagination ; in reality, 
 the mere instruments of a superior power, infernal or di- 
 vine, whose awful presence is felt while it is unseen. 
 
 To give form to his conception, Carlyle possessed all 
 the qualities of a supreme dramatic poet, except command 
 of metre. He has indeed a metre, or rather a melody, of 
 his own. The style which troubled others, and troubled 
 himself when he thought about it, was perhaps the best 
 possible to convey thoughts whicli were often like the 
 spurting of volcanic fire ; but it was inharmonious, rough- 
 liewn, and savage. It may be said, too, that he had no 
 ' invention.' But he refused to allow that any real poet 
 had ever ' invented.' The poet had to represent, truths, 
 not lies^ or the polite form of lies called fiction. Homei-, 
 Dante, believed themselves to be describing real persons 
 and real things. Carlyle ' created ' nothing ; but with a 
 real subject before him he was the greatest of historical 
 painters." He took all pains first to obtain an authentic 
 account of the facts. Then, with a few sharp lines, he 
 could describe face, figure, character, actiori, with a com- 
 plete insight never rivalled except by Tacitus, and with a 
 i3ertain sympathy, a perennial fiashing of humour, of which 
 Tacitus has none. He produces a gallery of human por- 
 
The ''French Revolution^ 79 
 
 traits each so distinctly drawn, that whenever studied it 
 can never be forgotten, lie possessed besides another 
 quality, the rarest of all, and the most precious, an inflex- 
 ible love of truth. It was first a moral principle with him ; 
 but he had also an intellectual curiosity to know every- 
 thing exactly as it was. Independently Of moral objections 
 to lies, Oarlyle always held that the fact, if you knew it, 
 was more interesting than the most picturesque of fictions, 
 and thus his histoncal workmanship is sound to the core. 
 He spared himself no trouble in investigating; and all 
 his effort was to delineate accurately what he had found. 
 Dig w^here yon will in Carlyle's writings, 3^ou never come 
 to water. Politicians have complained that Carlyle shows 
 no insight into constitutional principles, that he writes as 
 if he were contemptuous of them or indifferent to them. 
 Revolutionists have complained of his scorn of Robes- 
 pierre, and of his tenderness to Marie Antoinette. Cath- 
 olics find Holy Church spoken of without sufficient respect, 
 and Tories find kings and nobles stripped of their fine 
 clothes and treated as vulgar clay. But Constitutions had 
 no place in Carlyle's Decalogue. He did not find it 
 written there that one form of government is in itself 
 better than another. He held with Pope : — 
 
 For forms of government let fools contest ; 
 Whate'er is best administered is best. 
 
 His sympathies were with purity, justice, truthfulness, 
 manly courage, on whichever side he found them. His 
 scorn was for personal cowardice, or cant, or hollow places 
 of any kind in the character of men ; and when nations 
 are split into parties, wisdom or folly, virtue or vice, is 
 not the exclusive property of one or the other. 
 
 A book written from such a point of view had no ' pub- 
 lic' prepared for it. When it appeared, partisans on both 
 sides were offended ; and to the reading multitude who 
 
80 Carlyle's L'ife in London. 
 
 wish merely to be amused without the trouble of thinking, 
 it had no attraction till they learned its merits from others. 
 But to the chosen few, to those who had eyes of their own 
 to see with, and manliness enough to recognise when a \\y- 
 ing man was speaking to them, to those who had real in- 
 tellect, and could therefore acknowledge intellect and 
 welcome it wliether they agreed or not with the writer's 
 opinions, the high quality of the ' French Revolution ' 
 became apparent instantly, and Carlyle was at once looked 
 up to, by some who themselves were looked np to by the 
 world, as a man of extraordinary gifts ; perhaps as the 
 highest among them all. Dickens carried a copy of it 
 with him wherever he went. Southey read it six times 
 over. Thackeray reviewed it enthusiastically. Even Jef- 
 frey generously admitted that Carlyle had succeeded upon 
 lines on which he had himself foretold inevitable failure. 
 The orthodox political philosophers, Macaulay, Hallam, 
 Brougham, though they perceived that Carlyle's views 
 were the condemnation of their own, though they felt in- 
 stinctively that he was their most dangerous enemy, yet 
 could not any longer despise him. They with the rest 
 were obliged to admit that there had arisen a new star, of 
 baleful perhaps and ominous aspect, but a star of the first 
 magnitude in English literature. 
 
 But six months had still to pass before the book could 
 be published, and I am anticipating. Carlyle had been so 
 long inured to disappointment, that he expected nothing 
 from the world but continued indifference. His only 
 anxiety was to be done with the thing, and it had still to 
 be printed and corrected. The economical crisis had been 
 postponed. Life could be protracted at Cheyne Kow for 
 another six months on the proceeds of ' Mirabeau ' and 
 the ' Diamond Xecklace,' and he wrote in fair spirits to 
 his mother, enclosing a printed page from a proof sheet. 
 
The *• French Revolution.^ 81 
 
 To Margaret Carlyle^ Scotsbrig. 
 
 Chelsea : Jan. 23, 1837. 
 
 The book is actually done ; all written to the last line ; and now, 
 after much higgling and maffling, the printers have got fairly afloat, 
 and we are to go on with the wind and the sea. There is still a 
 good deal of constant business for me in correcting the press — as 
 much as I can do, we will hope, for they are to print with all the 
 rapidity they are capable of ; and I make a good many improve- 
 ments as we go on, especially in the first volume. It will be six 
 weeks yet, and then the book will be about ready. Take this 
 scrap of print meanwhile as a good omen, like the leaf that Noah's 
 dove brought in the bill of it. I have had a veiy sore wi'estle for 
 two years and a half, but it is over, you see, and the thing is there. 
 I finished on Friday gone a week, really with a feeling of thankful- 
 ness, of icaeness and great gladness. I could have grat, but did 
 not. Jane treated me to a bread-pudding next day, which bread- 
 pudding I consumed with an appetite got by walking far and wide, 
 I dare say about twenty miles over this * large and populous city.' 
 My health is really better than anybody could expect. The foun- 
 dations of this lean frame of mine must be as tough as wire. If I 
 were rested a little, I shall forget the whole thing, and have a de- 
 gree of freedom and a lightness of heart unknown to me for a long 
 while. 
 
 As to the reception the book is like to meet with, I judge that 
 there will be ten enemies of it for one friend ; but also that it will 
 find friends by-and-by ; in fine, that, as brave old Johnson said, 
 * useful diligence will at last prevail.' It is not altogether a bad 
 book. For one thing I consider it to be the sincerest book this 
 nation has got ofi'ered to it for a good few years, or is like to get 
 for a good few. And so I say to them : ' Good Chiistian people, 
 there it is. Shriek over it, since ye will not shout over it. Tram- 
 ple it and kick it, and use it all ways ye judge best. If ye can kill 
 it and extinguish it, then in God's name do. If ye cannot, why 
 then ye will not. My share in it is done.' That is the thing I 
 propose to say within my own mind. One infallible truth, pre- 
 cious for us all, is that I am shot of it, and you are shot of it. 
 
 Printing a book is like varnishing a picture. Faults 
 and merits both become more conspicuous. Carlyle, who 
 was hard to please with his own work, and had called it 
 Vol. ni;— tf 
 
82 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 worth nothing while in progress, found it in the proofs 
 better than he expected. 
 
 It is a book (he said of it again) that makes no complaint about 
 itself, but steps out in a quite peaceable manner, hoping nothing, 
 fearing nothing. Indeed I never knew, till looking at it this 
 second time, what a burly torque of a thing it was : a perfect oak 
 clog, which all the hammers in the world will make no impression 
 on. Of human things it is j^erhaps likest a kind of civilised An- 
 drew Bishop, the old crier of ballads ; the same invincible breadth 
 of body, a shaggy smile on its face, and a depth of voice equal to 
 that of Andrew. Many a man will find it a hard nut to crack ; but 
 it is they that will have to crack it, not I any more. 
 
 He made no foul copy of this or of anything that he 
 wrote in these early days. The sentences completed them- 
 selves in his head before he threw them upon paper, and 
 only verbal alterations were afterwards necessary ; but he 
 omitted many things in his proof sheets, redivided his 
 books and chapters, and sharpened the lights and shadows. 
 
 To John Carlyle, Rome. 
 
 Chelsea: Feb. 17, 1837. 
 We are got near the hot work of the taking of the Bastille. I 
 call each chapter that was, a book, and have subdivided all these 
 into chapters. The longest list 'of chapters as yet is ten, the short- 
 est /b?<r. Each chapter has a brief (briefest) title, generally with 
 something of the epigrammatic character in it. Each book, too, 
 has a title, and each volume. The list of these will be the table 
 of contents, without other, index or aj)pendage. The notes are 
 merely references. I do not add anything beyond the text. On 
 the other hand I am really conscientious in cutting out. You will 
 be delighted to miss not a few of your old friends. I have divided 
 many a paragraph, many a sentence ; and so with chaptering to.o ; 
 have let in a great deal of daylight (of blank, at least) into it ; and 
 on the whole it seems to me incredibly improved. I find on a 
 general view that the book is one of the savagest written for several 
 centuries. It is a book wTitten by a loild man, a man disunited 
 from the fellowship of the world he lives in, looking king and beg- 
 gar in the face with an indifference of brotherhood and an indif- 
 ference of contempt. That is really very extraordinary in a respect- 
 
Proposed Lectures. 83 
 
 able coiuitry. The critic of a respectable natnre Cannot but be 
 loud, falls er nichi schweif/t (unless he says nothing), which really I 
 shall be well content that he do. But I think he will not. In 
 that case I will grant him fi^e scope. There is no word in his 
 belly harder than the words it utters, by implication or directly, 
 about him and his ... A wild man — pray God it be a man, 
 an(f then buff away, smite and spare not. The thing you can kill, 
 I say always, deserves not to live. On the whole I think it is not 
 Naught, and have it there as a thing done by me. The critics are 
 welcome to lay on. There is a kind of Orson life in it which they 
 will not kill. 
 
 Meantime tlie economic problem, though postponed, 
 was still unsolved. The book was finished, but no money 
 could be expected from it, at least for a considerable 
 time ; and, unless something could be done, it was likely 
 that London, and perhaps England, would lose Carlyle 
 just at the moment when they were learning the nature of 
 the man to whom they were refusing ordinary mainte- 
 nance. His circumstances were no secret. His friends 
 were doubtless aware tha<^^ he had been invited to lecture 
 in America. A large number of persons, more or less 
 influential, knew vaguely that he Was a remarkable man, 
 and some of them cast about for means to prevent such a 
 scandal. One of the most anxious and active, be it 
 recorded to her honour, was Harriet Martineau. This 
 lady had introduced herself into Cheyne Row in the pre- 
 ceding November, as Carlyle had informed his mother. 
 
 Two or three days ago (he wrote) there came to call on us a 
 Miss Martineau, whom you have perhaps often heard of in the 
 •Examiner." A hideous portrait was given of her in' 'Fraser' 
 one month. She is a notable litei-ary woman of her day, has been 
 travelling in America these two years, and is now come home to 
 write a book about it. " She pleased us far beyond expectation. 
 She is veiy intelligent-looking, really of pleasant countenance, 
 was full of talk, though unhappily deaf almost as a post, so that 
 
 « The ' Examiner ' was sent r^ularly to Carlyle, and by hun forwarded to 
 
 Scotsbrig. 
 
84 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 you have to speak to her through an ear-tmmpet. She must be 
 some five-and-thirty. As she professes very 'favourable senti- 
 ments' towards this side of the street, I mean to cultivate the 
 acquaintance a little. 
 
 To Miss Martinean, to Miss Wilson, another accom- 
 plished ladj friend, and to several more, it occurred that if 
 Carljle could be wanted to lecture in Boston, he might 
 equally well lecture in London. If he could speak as well 
 in public as he could talk in private, he could not fail of 
 success ; and money, a little, but enough, might be realised 
 in this way. The Royal Institution was lirst thought of, 
 but the pay at the Royal Institution was small, and the 
 list, besides, was full for the year. The bold ladies turned 
 their disappointment to better advantage. Carlyle gave a 
 grumbling consent. They canvassed their acquaintance. 
 They found two hundred persons ready each to subscribe 
 a guinea to hear a course of lectures from him in a room 
 engaged for himself only. The ' French Revolution ' was 
 not to appear till the summer. That so many lords and 
 ladies and other notabilities should have given their 
 names for such a purpose implies that Carlyle's earlier 
 writings had already made an impression. London society 
 loves novelties, but it expects that the novelties shall be 
 entertaining, and does not go into a thing of this kind en- 
 tirely on hazard. Carlyle was spared all trouble. All 
 tliat he had to do was to prepare something to say ; and 
 Willis's Rooms were engaged for him, the lectures to be- 
 gin on May 1. He shuddered, for he hated display, but 
 he felt that he must not reject an opening so opportunely 
 made for him. He had no leisure for any special study, 
 but he was full of knowledge of a thousand kinds. He 
 chose the subject which came most conveniently for him, 
 since he had worked so hard upon it at Craigenputtock — 
 German literature. There were to be six lectures in all. 
 A prospectus was drawn up and printed, intimating that 
 
Notice of Lectures. 85 
 
 on shell and such days Thomas Carlyle would deliver 
 addresses — 
 
 1. On the Teutonic People, the German Language, 
 Ulfilas, the Northern Immigration, and the Niebelungen 
 Lied. 
 
 2. On the Minnesinger, Tauler, Reineke Fuchs, the 
 Legend 'of Faust, the Eeformation, Luther, Ulrich von 
 Hutten. 
 
 3. On the Master Singers, Ilans Sachs, Jacob Boh me, 
 Decay of German Literature, Anton Ulrich Duke of 
 Brunswick, Opitz, Leibnitz. 
 
 4. On the Resuscitation of German Literature, Lessing, 
 Klopstock, Gellert, Lavater, Efflorescence of German Litera- 
 ture, Werther, Goetz. 
 
 5. On the Chai-acteristics of New-German Literature, 
 Growth and Decay of Opinion, Faust, Philosophy, Kant, 
 Fichte, Schelling, Art and Belief, Goethe. 
 
 6. On the Drama, Schiller : Pseudo-Drama, Klinger, 
 Kotzebue, Werner: Romance, Tieck, Novalis, Pseudo- 
 Romance, Hoffmann : Poetry and German Literature, Her- . 
 der, Wieland, the Schlegels, Jean Paul ; Results, Anticipa- 
 tions. 
 
 A copious bill of fare ! A more experienced hand would 
 have spread the subjects of any one of. these lectures into 
 the necessary six, watering them duly to the palate of 
 fashionable audiences. But Carlyle, if he undertook any- 
 thing, chose to do it in a way that he could think of with- 
 out shame. He was sulky and even alarmed, for he did 
 not intend to read. He had undertaken to speak^ and 
 speak he would, or else fail altogether. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea: March 31. 
 The grand news of all. I am to lecture on German literature in 
 May next. Ach Oott ! It makes my heart tremble when I think 
 of it ; but it is to be done. The Royal Institution having failed, 
 
86 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 the Wilsons (it was Miss Wilson, mainly) determined that we 
 would get an audience of our own, and a Willis's Rooms of our 
 own. So they have tickets printed, and a book open at Saunders 
 and Ottley's ; and the Marchioness of Lansdowne and honourable 
 women have their names down, and prospectuses circulate ; and on 
 the whole, on Monday, May 1, from 3 to 4 o'clock, and five lectures 
 after that, two each week, I am to commence and speak. Heaven 
 knows what I shall say. There will not, with those dilatory print- 
 ers, be a single moment devotable rightly to preparation. I feel 
 as if I were to be flung overboard and bid swim or drown. On the 
 whole, however, it is best. I have long wished to try that thing, 
 and now it is to be tried. Nay, I am sure farther I can succeed in 
 it with a fair chance. Courage ! Swim or drown. . . . This 
 year we are in will probably settle something as to me. I seem as 
 if I were going to make what a sei-vant of ours called ' an explosure 
 in the Kent Road, ma'am. ' I am driven not to care two straws 
 whether or not. Fortune has had me aux abois for a good while, 
 and I have looked defiance in the teeth of her. The longer I live, 
 fame seems to me a more wretched * Kimmera,' really and truly a 
 thing to be shied of if it came. I think of Rousseau's case some- 
 times, and pray God I might be enabled to break whinstone rather, 
 or cut peats, and maintain an unfevered heart. God keep us all, 
 I pray again, from the madness of popularity. I never knew one 
 whom it did not injure. I have known strong men whom it killed. 
 
 The mother, of course, Lad to be informed. 
 
 I am to lecture (he wrote to her) , actually and bodily to make my 
 appearance. They are gathering an audience of Marcliionesse.<, 
 Ambassadors, ah me ! and what not : all going like a house on fire. 
 The comfort is that I know something about the subject, and have 
 a tongue in my head ; one way or another doubtless I shall come 
 through. 
 
 There was additional anxiety. Mrs. Carljle in the cold 
 spring weather had caught an influenza, and was seriously 
 ill again. 
 
 She has lain there six days (the same letter continued) in great 
 distress, with very little, sometimes with no sleep, coughing con- 
 siderably. My poor Goody ! We have a doctor, a skilful sort of 
 man, I think, the Sterlings' doctor. He looks grave about it, says 
 
Public Speaking. 87 
 
 that at present there is no alai-m, but that we must take care. You 
 cau fancy me sitting up to the neck in books and papers, and hear- 
 ing the sore cough on the other side of the wall. I have sent for 
 Mrs. Welsh, or rather I have told her to be getting ready. She 
 will probably come very soon. It is a great blessing that my own 
 health holds out so well. 
 
 Tl»e alarm about Mrs. Carlyle passed off ; a cliange of 
 weather carried away the influenza ; Mrs. Welsh came up, 
 and was most welcome, though the occasion of tlie sum- 
 mons was gone. All thoughts in Cheyne liow were now 
 directed to the lectures. Carlyle had never spoken in 
 public, save a few w^ords once at a dinner at Dumfries. 
 With all his self-assertion he was naturally a shy man, 
 and only those who are either perfectly un-selfcoriscious 
 or pei-fectl}' impudent can look without alarm to a first ap- 
 pearance on a platform. As the appointed day approached 
 there was a good deal of anxiety among his friends. Men 
 of high sincerity seldom speak well. It is an art to which 
 they do not incline, being careful about truth, and know- 
 ing how difficult it is to adhere to truth in rapid and ex- 
 cited delivery. With skill and tiaining even a sincere 
 man can speak tolerably without telling many lies; but he 
 is weighted heavily against competitors who care for 
 nothing but effect. Carlyle, quoting Goethe, compared 
 speech -making to svVimming. It is more like skating. 
 When a man stands on skates upon ice for the first time, 
 his feet seem to have no hold under him ; he feels that if 
 he stirs he will fall ; he does fall ; the spectators laugh ; 
 he is asliamed and angry at himself ; he plunges off some- 
 how, and finds soon that if he is not afraid he can at least 
 go forward. This much the sincere man arrives at on tlie 
 platform without extraordinary difficulty ; and if he lias 
 any truth to utter he can contrive to utter it, so that wise 
 hearers will understand him. The curving and winding, 
 the graceful sweeps this way and that way in endless cou- 
 
'88 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 volutions, he leaves to the oratorical expert, with whom 
 he has no desire to put himself in competition. 
 
 I lie quiet (Caiiyle wrote to liis mother three days before the 
 exhibition), and have the greatest appetite in the world to do 
 nothing at all. On Monday at three o'clock comes my first lect- 
 ure, but I mean to take it as coolly as possible. It is neither 
 death nor men's lives, whether I speak well or speak ill or do 
 nothing but gasp. One of my friends was enquiring about it 
 lately. I told him some days ago I could speak abundantly and 
 cared nothing about it. At other times I felt as if, when the Monday 
 came, the natural speech for me would be this : ' Good Chris- 
 tians, it has become entirely impossible for me to talk to you 
 about German or any literature or terrestrial thing; one request 
 only I have to make, that you would be kind enough to cover me 
 under a tub for the next six weeks and to go your ways with all 
 my blessing.' This were a result well worth remarking; but it 
 is not likely to be this. On the whole, dear mother, fear nothing. 
 One great blessing is that in three weeks it must be done one way 
 or another. It will be over then, and all well. 
 
 J^obody could feel assured that something strange might 
 not happen. One acquaintance was afraid he would spoil 
 all by beginning with ' Gentlemen and ladies,' putting the 
 ladies last. It was more likely, his wife said, that he 
 would begin with ^ Men and women,' or with ' Fool creat- 
 ures come hither for diversion.' 
 
 In point of fact, Carlyle acted like himself — not like 
 other people, for that he could not do. He had the usual 
 difficulties. Even when he was at ease, his speech, if he 
 was in earnest, was not smooth and flowing, but turbid 
 like a river in a flood. In the lecture-room he had the 
 invariable preliminary fear of breaking down. He had to 
 pause often before words would come, for he was scrupu- 
 lous to say nothing which he did not mean. When he 
 became excited, he spoke with a broad Annandale accent 
 and with the abrupt manners which he had learnt in his 
 father's house. But the end of it was that the lectures 
 were excellent in themselves and delivered \nth strange 
 
I 
 
 Success of Lectures. 89 
 
 impressiveness. Though unpolislied, he was a gentleman 
 in every fibre of him, never to be mistaken for anything 
 else ; and the final effect was the same as that which was 
 produced by his writings, that here was a new man with 
 something singular to say which well deserved attention. 
 Of the first lecture Carlyle writes : — 
 
 There was plenty of incondite stuff, and a furious determination 
 on the poor lecturer's pai-t not to break down. I pitied myself, so 
 agitated, terrified, driven despemte and furious ; but I found I 
 had no remedy, necessity compelling. 
 
 AVlien all was over, he sent a full account to his brother. 
 
 To John Carlyle^ RoTne. 
 
 Chelsea : May 30, 1837. 
 
 As to the lectures the thing went off not without eflfect, and I 
 have great cause to be thankful I am so handsomely quit of it. 
 The audience, composed of mere quality and notabilities, was 
 very humane to me. They seemed indeed to be not a little as- 
 tonished at the wild Annandale voice which occasionally grew 
 high and eatnest. In these cases they sate as still under me as 
 stones. I had, I think, two hundred and odd. The pecuniary 
 net result is 135/., the expenses being great; but the ulterior 
 issues may be less inconsiderable. It seems possible I may get 
 into a kind of way of lecturing, or otherwise speaking direct to 
 my fellow-creatures, and so get delivered out of this awful quag- 
 mire of diflBculties in which you have so long seen me struggle 
 and wriggle. Heaven be thanked that it is done this time so 
 tolerably, and we here still alive. I hardly ever in my life had 
 such a moment as that of the commencement when you were 
 thinking of me at Rome. My printers had only ceased the day 
 before. I was wasted and fretted to a thread. My tongue, let 
 me drink as I would, continued dry as charcoal. The people were 
 there ; I was obliged to tumble in and start. Ach Gott ! But it 
 was got through, and so here we are. Our mother was black-baised, 
 though I had written to her to be only white-haised. But she read 
 the notice in the * Times,' and * wept,' she tells me, and again read 
 it. Jane went to the last four lectures and did not faint. 
 
 And now I am delving in the garden to compose myself, and 
 meaning, to have things leisurely bottlod up here, and then start 
 
90 Carlyles Life in London. 
 
 for Scotland. I shonld much approve of yonr scheme of our going 
 all in a body. Indeed I have tried it every way, but it will not do. 
 Quiet observation forces on me the conclusion that Jane and her 
 mother cannot live together. Very sad and miserable, you will 
 say. Truly, but so it is ; and I am further bound to say that the 
 chief blame does verily not lie at our side of the house. Nay, 
 who would be in haste to lay any blame anywhere ? But poor 
 Mrs. Welsh, wdth litei-ally the best intentions, is a person you can- 
 not live with peaceably on any other terms I could ever discover 
 than those of disregarding altogether the whims, emotions, ca- 
 prices, and conclusions she takes up chameleonlike by the thou- 
 sand daily. She and I do very well together on these terms : at 
 least I do. But Jane and she cannot live so. MrS. Welsh seems 
 to think of going off home in a short time. Jane prefers being 
 left here, and thinks that she could even do better without the 
 perpetual pouting and fretting she is tried with. 
 
 My own health is not fundamentally hurt. Best will cure me. 
 I must be a toughish kind of a lath after all; for my life here 
 these three years has been sore and stern, almost frightful ; noth- 
 ing but eternity beyond it, in which seemed any peace. Perhaps 
 better days are now beginning. God be thanked we can still do 
 without such ; still and always if so it be. ... I grow better 
 daily ; I delve, as you heard ; I walk much, generally alone through 
 the lanes and parks ; I have lived much alone for a long time, 
 refusing to go anywhere ; finding no pleasure in going anywhere 
 or speaking with anyone. 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle was allowed to read this letter with the 
 remarks on her mother, for she adds a P.S. 
 
 I do not find that my husband has given you any adequate notion 
 of the success of his lectures ; but you will make large allowance 
 for the known modesty of the man. Nothing that he has ever 
 tried seems to me to have carried such conviction to the public 
 heart that he is a real man of genius, and worth being kept alive 
 at a moderate rate. Lecturing were surely an easier profession 
 than authorship. We shall see. My cough is quite gone, and 
 there is no consumj^tion about me at present. I expect to grow 
 strong, now that he has nothing more to worry him. 
 
 Miss Wilson and Miss Martineau had done well for 
 Carlyle with their lecture adventure. Tliej had .brouglit 
 
Success of Lectures. 91 
 
 him directly under the public eye at an important moment 
 of his life ; but far more than that, they had solved the 
 problem whether it was possible for him to continue in 
 London and follow his trade. 135^., to the modest house- 
 hold in Cheyne Row, was not only, as Carlyle called it, 
 * financial safety ' for a year to come, but it was wealth 
 and luxury. Another course had been promised for the 
 season following, the profits of which could hardly be less, 
 and with a safe income of 150^. a year the thrifty pair 
 would feel superior to fortune. At all events the heavy 
 veil on the future had now lifted. There would be no 
 more talk of the American backwoods, or of a walk over 
 Europe like Teufelsdrockh. Ko ' roup ' need be feared in 
 Cheyne liow, or even such pinch of penury as had been 
 already experienced there. Life and labor were now made 
 possible on honest terms, and literary recognition, if it 
 was to come at all, could be waited for without starvation. 
 It was as if some cursed enchanter's spell had been broken. 
 How the fetters had galled, Carlyle hardly knew till he 
 began to stretch his limbs in freedom. The * French 
 lie volution ' was published immediately afterwards. It 
 was not ' subscribed for ' among the booksellers. The 
 author's name was unknown to most of them, and the rest 
 had no belief in him. The book itself, style and matter, 
 was so new, so unlike anything that had ever been seen 
 before, that the few who read it knew not what to say or 
 think. The reviewers were puzzled. Such a fabric could 
 not be appraised at once like a specimen from a familiar 
 loom. The sale at first was slow, almost nothing; but 
 Carlyle was not dissatisfied with the few opinions which 
 reached him. *■ Some,' he said, ' condemn me, as is very 
 natural, for affectation ; others are hearty, even passionate 
 [as Mill], in their estimation ; on the whole, it strikes me 
 as not unlikely that the book may take some hold of the 
 English people, and do tlicui and itself a little good.' 
 
92 Carhjle^s Life in London. 
 
 One letter especially pleased him. ' Jeffrey,' he said, 
 writes to me full of good augury, of praise and blame, and 
 how I shall infallibly be much praised and much blamed, 
 and, on the whole, carry my point : really a kind hearty 
 letter from the little man.' This was well enough, but 
 months would pass before anything could be gathered like 
 a general verdict ; and Carlyle, after the long strain, was 
 sinking into lassitude. 
 
 To John Sterling. » 
 
 Chelsea : June 7, 1837. 
 
 Eeviews and magazines, and the other Egyptian plagues of what 
 is called literature, do in these days fill me with a kind of sacred 
 horror, equal at least to the plague of frogs ; intrusive into your 
 very bread -oven. Seriously, however, I am heartily glad to know 
 that you are writing, publishing in this vehicle or the other. One 
 must take such vehicles as there are. Lay thy manna on the dog's- 
 meat tray, since there is no other, and let the hawker hawk it 
 among his quadrupeds. If by chance a biped pass that way, he 
 will snatch it and appropriate it, thou knowest not how. . . . 
 Verily, this whole world grows magical and hyper-magical to me : 
 death written on all, yet everlasting life also written on all. How 
 Homers, and Mahomets, and Bulwers, and snuffy Socinian 
 preachers, and all people and things that sojourned on earth, go 
 marching, marching, towards the Inane, till, as your boys say. 
 Flop ! they are not. I have done nothing of late but dig earth 
 and brick rubbish in ihis little garden so called, and walk solitary 
 in the lanes, avoiding rather than seeking the face of man. Very 
 spectral I am every way. 
 
 Your father and I go along very lovingly, with a certain broad- 
 side of logic now and then, each to show the other that he does 
 carry gunpowder. Smoke over the masthead on these occasions ; 
 but it seems to purify the air between us, and then we sail along 
 in the sweetest manner, gentle as babes in the wood. 
 
 I met Maurice in the Strand yesterday. He is growing broader, 
 thicker, and gets a clerical air. I know not why I should not wish 
 him clerical as an English clergyman, yet I never do. His vehe- 
 ment earnestness in twisting such a rope of sand as I reckon that 
 to be, occasions me at times a certain misgiving — written very 
 legible to my eyes stands the doom of that thing. 
 
Holiday at Scotsh'ig. 93 
 
 I cannot say a word to you of the book or of the lectnreB, except 
 that by the imspeakable blessing of Heaven they are finished. 
 My heai-ers were mixtiform dandiacal of both sexes, Diyasdustical 
 (Hallam, &c.), ingenuous, ingenious, and grew, on the whole, 
 more and more silent. As to the book, I rather avoid hearing 
 about it ; what clash there may be about it, of lamentation, admo- 
 nition. The style ! oh the style ! ! 
 
 You announce that you are rather quitting philosophy and the- 
 ology — I predict that you will quit them more and more. I give 
 it you as my decided prognosis that the two provinces in ques- 
 tion are become Theorem, bi*ain-web and shadow, wherein no 
 earnest soul can find solidity for itself. Shadow, I say ; yet the 
 shadow projected from an everlasting reality that is within our- 
 selves. Quit the shadow, seek the reality. 
 
 Mili is in better health, still not in good. The set of people he 
 is in, is one that I have to keep out of. No class of mortals ever 
 profited me less. There is a vociferous platitude in them, a 
 mangy hungry discontent ; their very joy like^ that of a thing 
 scratching itself under disease of the itch. Mill was infinitely too 
 good for them ; but he would have it, and his fate would. I love 
 him much as a friend frozen in ice for me. ' 
 
 A few days after the date of this letter, Carljle fled to 
 Scotland fairly broken down. He had fought and won 
 his long battle. The reaction had come, and his strangely 
 organised nervous system was shattered. He went by sea 
 from Liverpool to Annan. His brother Alick had come 
 to meet him at Annan pier, and together they walked up 
 to Ecclefechan. The view from the road across the Sol- 
 way to the Cumberland mountains is one of the most 
 beautiful in the island. The brother having some busi- 
 ness in a cottage, Carlyle was left alone leaning on a mile- 
 stone and looking back on the scene. ' Tartarus itself,' he 
 says, ' and the pale kingdoms of Dis, could not have been 
 more pretei-natural to me — most stern, gloomy, sad, grand 
 yet terrible, yet steeped in woe.' The spot had been 
 familiar to him from childhood. The impression was not 
 
 1 The last two paragraphs are taken from another htter to Sterling, and are 
 
 added hero for brevity. 
 
94 Carlyle's Life in Londo7i. 
 
 a momentary emotion, but abode with him for many years. 
 Let not the impatient reader call it affectation or exaggera- 
 tion. If he does, he will know nothing of Carlyle. These 
 spectral visions were part of his nature, and always 
 haunted him when his mind had been overstrained. He 
 stayed at Scotsbrig two months, wholly idle, reading 
 novels, smoking pipes in the garden with his mother, 
 hearing notices of his book from a distance, but not look- 
 ing for them or caring about them. ' The weather,' he 
 says in a letter, 'after a long miserable spring, is the 
 beautifullest I ever saw. The trees wave peaceful music 
 in front of my window, which is shoved np to the very 
 top. Mother is washing in the kitchen to my left. The 
 sound of Jamie building his peat-stack is audible, and they 
 are storing potatoes down below. . . . My soul's one 
 wdsli is to be left alone, to hear the rustle of the trees, the 
 music of the burn, and lie vacant, as ugly and stupid as I 
 like. There is soothing and healing for me in the green 
 solitude of these simple places. I bless myself that the 
 broiling horror of London is far away. A favourable re- 
 view in the " Chronicle ; " a favourable review in the 
 ^'London and Westminster," &c., &c. — no one of these 
 have I yet set eyes on. I find it at bottom hurtful to look 
 after the like — one has a prurient titillability of that kind 
 extremely despicable, which it is better wholly to steer 
 clear of.' 
 
 A very beautiful letter follows, to Sterling. 
 
 To John Sterling. 
 
 Scotsbrig : July 28, 1837. 
 There is no idler, sadder, quieter, more ghostlike man in the world 
 even now than I. Most weary, fiat, stale, seem to me all the elec- 
 tioneerings, and screechings, and jibberings, that the earth is filled 
 with, in these, or indeed in any days. Men's very sorrows, and 
 the tears one's heart weeps when the eye is dry, what is in that 
 either ? In an hour, will not death make it all still again ? Never- 
 theless the old brook — Middlebie Burn we call it — still leaps into 
 
Holiday at ScoUh^lg. 95 
 
 its *car«/ran' here, gushes clear as crystal through the chasms 
 and dingles of its ' Linn,' singing me a song with slight variations 
 of score these several thousand years — a song better for me than 
 Pasta's ! I look on the sapphire of St. Bees head and the Solway 
 mirror from the gable window. I ride to the top of Blaweery, and 
 see all round from Ettrick Pen to Helvellyn, from Tyndale and 
 Northumberland to Cairnsmuir and Ayrshire. Voir dest avoir. A 
 brave old earth after all, in which, as above said, I am content to 
 acquiesce without quarrel, and, at lowest, hold my peace. One 
 night, late, I rode through the village where I was bom. The 
 old kirkyard tree, a huge old gnarled ash, was nestling itself 
 softly against the' great twilight in the north. A star or two 
 looked out, and the old graves were all there, and my father and 
 my sister ; and God was above us all.' 
 
 To bis wife he wrote regularly, but in a tone somewhat 
 constrained. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Scotsbrig : July 23, 1837. 
 
 Many thanks, my dear Bairn, for thy two long lively letters, the 
 faithful reflex of that cockney-laud phantasmagory, all glittering 
 and whirling with changeful sights and sounds, from oj^era soirees 
 to madhouse cells, in which, however, this one satisfactory fact 
 evinces itself, that my poor Jeannie is tolerably well in it, and 
 enjoys herself a little there. Suave mari magna. I, sitting here 
 on the safe brink, have not had two gladder hours than thy two 
 franks gave me. It is a pity, and perhaps not a pity, that so lively 
 a pen did not turn itseK to writing of books. My coagitor, too, might 
 become a distinguished female. Nay, after all, w ho knows ? But 
 perhaps we are better as we are, ' probably just as well.* I know 
 not why, did pure Utilitarian intellect rule us, I should write a 
 letter to-day. A newspaper, and two strokes to indicate from the 
 bottom of my ditch that nothing is wrong with me, and a third, 
 if that were at any time needful, to indicate that I do with my 
 whole soul wish you well — this really is the amount of all that, 
 with quires of paper, I could wi-ite. I am doing nothing : wit- 
 nessing nothing. My stupidity is gi-eat, my sadness, my tran- 
 quillity. Nothing more ghostlike diversifies anywhere the green 
 surface of July in this world. But yet if to anybody on earth, 
 then surely to thee, its partner of good and evil, does the poor 
 worn-out soul of me turn. I will clatter and croak with thee for 
 
96 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 an lionr. They say I am growing better, looking 'better. I do 
 believe it is a kind of road towards betterness that I am travelling. 
 This is the sum of all my news. Very generally the history of my 
 day is somewhat thus : Breakfast shortly after such hour as I 
 awake at, any time from seven till nine ; shaving, dawdling, read- 
 ing, smoking, till dinner about two or three ; a ride on a little 
 violent walking pony of Jamie's, oftenest to the top of Blaweery, 
 where I have the benefit of total solitude, and a prospect of wide 
 miles of sea and air ; then tea, succeeded again by dawdling, 
 smoking, reading, and clatter, till porridge come, and eleven 
 o'clock and sleep. No man need do less. I cannot be said to 
 think of anything. I merely look and drowsily muse. When tide 
 and weather serve, I ride down to bathe. Alick or Maiy gets me 
 up some victual, I smoke a pipe, and amble home again. 
 
 Spenser's knight, sorely wounded in his fight with the 
 dragon, fell back under the enchanted tree whence 
 
 flowed, as from a well, 
 A trickling stream of balm most sovereign. 
 Life and long health that gracious ointment gave, 
 And deadly wounds could heal, and rear again 
 The senseless corse appointed for the grave. 
 Into that same he fell which did from death him save. 
 
 What that tree was to the bleeding warrior, the poor 
 Annadale farmhouse, its quiet innocence, and the affec- 
 tionate kindred there, proved then as always to Carlyle, 
 for he too had been fighting dragons and been heavily 
 beaten upon. One more letter may be given, which ex- 
 plains the tone in which he had written to Chelsea. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Scotsbrig : August 12. 
 
 Our good mother keeps very well here. She and I have been, 
 out once or twice for two hours, helping Jamie with his hay. She 
 is ' waul as an eel ' while working. She cooks our little meal which 
 we eat peaceably together. She mends clothes, bakes scons, is 
 very fond of newspapers, especially Eadical ones, and stands up 
 for the rights of man. She has toiled on into near the end of the 
 second volume of the * French Ee volution,' not without consider- 
 
^French lievclution.^ 97 
 
 able understandinpf of it, though tlie French names are a sad clog. 
 She will make it out pretty completely by-and-by. 
 
 Jane represents herself as better than she was, but far enough 
 from well. I do not at all like the state she is in, but I cannot 
 niter it. I try always to hope it will alter. She wiites in gi-eat 
 spirits ; but there is no fund of real cheerfulness. There is not 
 even a seiious melancholy visible. My poor Jane ! 
 
 Cavaignac is angry with me for my treatment of the Sea-green 
 man ' and bnpartialUe generally. I take no side in the matter. 
 How very singular ! As to the success of the book I know almost 
 nothing, but suppose it to be considerably greater than I expected. 
 I understand there have been many reviews of a veiy mixed char- 
 acter. I got one in the * Times ' last week. The writer is one 
 Thackeray, a half-monstrous Cornish giant, kind of painter, Cam- 
 bridge man, and Paris newspaper correspondent, who is now writ- 
 ing for his life in London. I have seen him at the Bullers' and at 
 Sterling's. His article is rather like him, and I suppose calculated 
 to do the book good. 
 
 » Robespierre. 
 Vol. ni.~7 
 
CHAPTEE Y. 
 
 A.D. 1837-8. MT. 42-43. 
 
 Effects of the book — Change in Caiiyle's position — Thoughts on 
 the cholera — Article on Sir Walter Scott — Proposals for a col- 
 lection of miscellanies — Lord Monteagle — The great world — 
 T. Erskine — Literature as a profession — Miss Martineau — 
 Popularity — Second course of lectures — Financial results — 
 Increasing fame. 
 
 Autumn, as usual, brought back the migratory London 
 flocks, and among them Carlyle. He found his wife bet- 
 ter in health, delighted to have him again at her side, and 
 in lightened humour altogether. She knew, though he, 
 so little vain was he, had failed as yet to understand it, 
 that he had returned to a changed position, that he was 
 no longer lonely and neglected, but had taken his natural 
 place among the great writers of his day. Popular he 
 might not be. Popularity with the multitude he had to 
 wait for many a year ; but he was acknowledged by all 
 whose judgment carried weight with it to have become 
 actually what Goethe had long ago foretold that he would 
 be — a new moral force in Europe, the extent of which 
 could not be foreseen, but must be great and might be im- 
 measurable. He was still poor, wretchedly poor accord- 
 ing to the modern standard. But the Carlyles did not 
 think about standards, and on that score had no more 
 anxieties. He had no work on hand or immediate desire 
 for any. He was able to tell his brother John that, 
 ' having no book to write in the coming year, he would 
 
Success of the Booh, 99 
 
 not feel so fretted and would fret no one else : there would 
 be a clieei-fnller houseliold than of old.' An article on 
 Sir Walter Scott had been promised to Mill, and a subject 
 had to be thonojht of for the next Spring's lectures. Both 
 of these would be easy tasks. Meanwhile, he discovered 
 that his wife was right. 'He was to be considered as a 
 kind of successful man. The poor book had done him 
 real service in truth, had been abundantly reviewed and 
 talked about and belauded; neither, apparently, had it 
 yet done.' lie sent to Scotsbrig cheery accounts of him- 
 self. 'I find John Sterling here,' he said, 'and many 
 friends, all kinder each than the other to me. With talk 
 and locomotion the days pass cheerfully till I rest and gird 
 myself together again. They make a great talk about 
 the book, which seems to have succeeded in a far higher 
 degree than I looked for. Everybody is astonished at 
 every other body's being pleased with this wonderful per- 
 formance.' 
 
 To Margaret Carlyle^ Scotsbrig. 
 
 Chelsea: October 9, 1837. 
 People all say, ' How much better you look ! ' The gi-and im- 
 provement I trace is that of being far calmer than I was, the im- 
 mense fuff having subsided into composure, ... I have seen 
 most of my friends that are here. All people are very good to me. 
 Doubt not, dear mother, I shall be able to do better now, have 
 a far better chance. My book has been abundantly reviewed, 
 praised, and discussed. Fraser also tells me it is steadfastly mak- 
 ing way. Also I must mention a strange half -daft Edinburgh gen- 
 tleman that called here last week to congi-atulate. He however 
 went upon the old article * Characteristics,* and illustrified us at a 
 great rate ; an elder of the Kirk, brimful of religion, a very queer 
 man indeed. At bottom I fancy you, dear mother, apprehensive 
 now that we shall err in the other way, that it will * tak haV d thee^ 
 Tom.'' No fear, no fear at all ! When one is turned of forty and 
 has almost twenty years of stomach disease to draw upon, there 
 is great safety as to that. A voice from the interior of the liver 
 cries out too sternly ' What's ta use on't ? ' 
 
100 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 . In his extremest poverty Carlyle liad always contrived 
 his little presents to give his mother comforts which she 
 would never have allowed to herself. Xow, feeling him- 
 self easy and on the way to what, in his estimate of such 
 things, w^ould be riches, he sent her a more generous of- 
 fering. ' And what picture is this, dear mother % ' he 
 said, enclosing a bank note. ' It is to buy you a little keg 
 of ale, and some warm things through the winter. The 
 money I gave you last you gave wholly away again, or almost 
 wholly. It is a thing totally absurd. I beg you to accept 
 this, and I insist upon it ; and write me, when }'ou next 
 take up the pen, not useless speech, but an account of all 
 the warm clothings and furnishings Jenny ^ and you have 
 laid in by my order.' Then, as always, Carlyle's gener- 
 osity was in an 'inverse ratio' to his means. His expend- 
 iture on himself was to the last thrifty, even to parsimony, 
 w^iile he scarcely seemed to know what he gave away to 
 others. 
 
 John Carlyle, not finding sufficient occupation in attend- 
 ing on Lady Clare, was practising as a physician at Eome 
 on his own account. The cholera had broken out there, 
 and he w^as giving his service gratis among the poor. 
 There were universal terror, selfishness, and inhumanity ; 
 tlie Pope and the Monsignori had shown particular cow- 
 ardice ; the inferior priests had been brave and devoted. 
 John had written about all this to Chelsea. 
 
 Men are great blockheads (Carlyle answered) and very miserable. 
 Your letter is a true emblem of a country suffering dreadfully by 
 Heaven's visitation, and still more by its own folly and frenzy. We 
 remember well enough how it was in Dumfriesshire, yet with this 
 difference in our favour, that village was not shut against village, 
 and we had only the madness of fear in an isolated inorganic shape. 
 God preserve you, dear brother, in the midst of these perils ! As 
 I used to say to myself, * Are we not at all times near to deaths 
 separated from us by a mere film ? ' God will preserve us till our 
 
 * The youngest sister, still living at Scotsbrig. 
 
Tluyuglds on ilm Cholera. 10 L 
 
 days and their work are done. Therefore, at leaat, -we will not 
 live in bondage to the vile tyranny of fear. Expose not yourself 
 without duty to do ; but with duty again one will dread no expos- 
 ure. As for you, you had a distinct call to go and seek your daily 
 bread. "Would to Heaven it were well over for you aU ! 
 
 Another interesting letter came about the heroism of 
 the poorer clergy, which led to a long reply. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : November 7, 1837. 
 Danger of death is something ; but the madness of mortals un- 
 der base panic storming round one is more insupportable than 
 any danger. We had reports last week that cholera was in Lon- 
 don too ; but the news did not take. Indeed Cockneydom is too 
 busy to yield lightly to j^anic. Cholera, as I used to tell the gab- 
 bling blockheads, holds nothing in it that the pitifullest catarrh, 
 the fall of a roof, the breakdown of a hackney-coach may not hold. 
 Death ! That is the utmost the crash of the whole solar and stel- 
 lar system could bring on us ; and to that we have been used for 
 G,000 years now, or nearly so. For the rest we will honour the 
 Jesuits and other poor priests, and pity the Monsignori and the 
 * Holiness of our Lord,' to whom the faith of a common Russian 
 soldier does not seem to have been vouchsafed in this instance. 
 But it was so at Dumfries too. Only one clergyman dared enter 
 their horror of a hospital there, and he was an old Roman Cath- 
 olic. Walter Dunlop carried it at length so far that he ventured 
 on pmying through a window, with or without benefit. . . . For 
 myself (he goes on now to speak of other things) there is little to be 
 bragged of, but yet nothing specially to be complained of. I feel 
 a great change in me accomplished and going on ; a state of hu- 
 mour in many points new, unnamed, of which in its present state 
 it is above all unpleasant and useless to apeak. My life is full of 
 sadness, streaked with wild gleamings of a very strange joy, but 
 habitually sad enough. The dead seem as much my companions 
 as the living ; death as much present with me as life. The only 
 wise thing I can do is to hold my tongue and see what will come 
 of it. In regard to temporals, I believe if I had these two, health 
 and impudence, I might make great way here ; but having neither 
 of them, one sees not so well how it will be ; one knows not 
 which may be best. Alas ! I trace in myself such a devilish dispo- 
 
102 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 sition on many sides, such abysses of self-conceit, disgust, and in- 
 satiability, I think many times it were better and safer I were kept 
 always sunk, pinched in the ice of poverty and obscurity till death 
 quietly received me and I were at rest. If you call this hypochon- 
 driacal, consider the unutterable discrepancy that lies in these two 
 facts ; a man becoming notable as a light or rushlight of his gen- 
 eration, and possessed of resources to serve him three or four 
 months without an outlook beyond. I suppose I shall have to 
 lecture again in spring, God knows on what. No blessing in the 
 world were dearer to me than that of being allowed now to hold 
 my peace for a twelvemonth. If I had wings I would fly to Italy, 
 fly to Saturn, somewhither where I could be let alone. And yet, 
 dear Jack, through all this black weather of sorrow and imbecility 
 there is verily one glance of imjirovement very generally discern- 
 ible, the deep settled invincible determination to be at rest. In 
 my saddest moments I say, * Well, then, we shall go to ruin, to 
 death if thou wilt. But we will not rage about it ; we will rest. 
 There will be rest then ; I hope, and really almost believe, there 
 is the beginning of a new life for me in this symptom, which is a 
 deep and genuine one.' 
 
 His mother need not liave been afraid that ' it would 
 tak' hal' o' thee, Tom.' In spite of the ' devilish disposi- 
 tion,' the 'abysses- of conceit,' that he spoke of, Carlyle 
 did not mean to be spoilt by becoming notable. 
 
 There is nothing I am thankfuller for (he said) than to feel my- 
 self pretty well assured that neither the staying out of fame, nor 
 still more the coming of it in any quantity, can at this time do me 
 much mischief. The liveliest image of hell on earth that I can 
 form to myself is that of a poor bladder of a creature, blown up 
 by j)opular wind, and bound to keep himself blown under pain of 
 torment very severe, and with torment all the while, and the 
 cracking to pieces of all good that was in him. I have looked on 
 this close at hand, and do shudder at it as the sternest doom that 
 can befall a son of Adam. Let me break stones on the highway 
 rather, and be in my own heart at peace. It is this that I reckon 
 to be the great reward of my fierce fight of these later years. I 
 do feel peaceable, and with a peace not dependent on other men 
 or outward things, but on myself. God be thanked for it, and 
 make it grow ! 
 
Article on Sir Walter Scott. 103 
 
 Tke Journal, which had been silent for almost a year, 
 now begins to speak again. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 November 15, 1837. — ^Not a word writfen here till now. Jane 
 fell sick (to the extent of terrifying me) in the saddest circum- 
 stances every way, directly after lecture on German literature, in 
 the first week in May. Horrid misery of that in my then state of 
 nerves ! Book out about 1st of June. Jane's mother here. I oflf 
 to Scotland on the 20th of that month, where I lay like one buried 
 alive till the middle of September, when I returned hither in a 
 kind of dead-alive state, for which there was no name, of which 
 there was no wTiting. Why chronicle it? The late long effort 
 had really all but killed me ; not the writing of the book, but the 
 writing of it amid such sickness, poverty, and despair. The re- 
 ception of it, everyone says, is good, and so good. It may be so ; 
 but to me the blessing of blessings is that I am free of it. 
 
 Did I not need humbling ? Have I not got it ? Have I yet got 
 enough of it ? That last is the question. I have felt in a general 
 way as if I should like never to write any line more in the world. 
 Literature ! Oh Literature ! Oh 'that Literature had never been 
 devised ! Then, perhaps, were I a living man, and not a half- 
 dead enchanted spectre-hunted nondescript. 
 
 On the whole, however, resting and * lazily simmering ' will no 
 longer do. This day I must begin writing again— article — bad 
 luck to it — on Sir Walter Scott, for Mill's Review. I retui-n, not 
 like a warrior to his battle-field, but like a galley-slave scourged 
 back by the whip of necessity. Surely in a few years I shall 
 either get out of this dreadful state by some alleviation, or else 
 die and sink under it. I feel in general that my only hope is to 
 die. Take up the oar, however, and tug, since it must be so. 
 
 The Scott article was written as it appears unaltered in 
 the * Miscellanies.' Carlyle was not himself pleased with 
 it, and found the task at one moment disgusting. He be- 
 «ran it with indifference. The * steam got up,' and he fell 
 into what he called *the old, sham happy, nervously ex- 
 cited mood too well known to him.' The world was sat- 
 isfied, and what such a man as Carlyle had deliberately to 
 say about Scott will always be read with interest ; but he 
 
lOi Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 evidently did not take to the subject with cordial sym- 
 pathy. A man so sternly in earnest could never forgive 
 Sir Walter for squandering such splendid gifts on amus- 
 ing people, and for creating a universal taste for amuse- 
 ment of that description. He did not perhaps improve 
 his humour by reading, while he was writing the paper, 
 the strongest imaginable contrast to the ' Waverley Nov- 
 els,' Dante's ' Inferno.' He found Dante ' uphill work,' 
 'but a great and enduring thing.' 'It is worth noting,' he 
 says with a glance at Scott, ' how loth we are to read great 
 works ; how much more willingly we cross our legs, back 
 to candles, feet to fire, over some " Pickwick " or lowest 
 trash of that nature. The reason is, we are very indolent, 
 very wearied, and forlorn, and read oftenest chiefly that 
 we may forget ourselves. Consider what popularity in 
 that case must mean.' 
 
 Signs appeared, nevertheless, that the public could now 
 find something, either amusement or instruction, or pleas- 
 ure of some kind, in Carlyle's own writings. The ' French 
 Revolution ' had made an alteration in this respect. The 
 publishers spoke to him about reprinting ' Sartor,' about 
 an edition of his collected articles.' The question had be- 
 come one of terms only, for the risk could be ventured. 
 ' Changed times,' as he half bitterly observed to his 
 mother. ' Eraser sent for me the other day to propose 
 that he should reprint Teufelsdrockh and my review arti- 
 cles collected into volumes. The wind has chans^ed there 
 at any rate. The last time he heard of Teufelsdrockh he 
 shrieked at the very notion. Seriously it is good news 
 this, an infallible sign that the other book prospers — nay, 
 still better, a sign that I shall either now or at some time 
 get a little cash by these poor scattered papers. I have re- 
 solved that Fraser, for his old scream'' s sake and for my own 
 sake, shall not have the printing of the volumes without 
 some very respectable sum of money now, and not screams.' 
 
Sterling and Goethe. 105 
 
 Sterling had gone abroad again for tlie winter, and with 
 liim the correspondence was renewed. He was deeply at- 
 tached to Sterling, and his letters to him are always char- 
 acteristic. They Iiad disputed, it seems, about Goethe, 
 Sterling refusing, as it seemed, to see Goethe as Carlyle 
 saw him, and holding to the theory common in England 
 about a great intellect with a depraved heart, &c. 
 
 To John Sterling. 
 
 Chelsea: December 25, 1837. 
 
 Nothing can equal my languor, my silent stagnation. In this 
 state I wrote a long rigmarole on Walter Scott, a thing deserving 
 instant fire-death. No mortal could have less wdsh to speak a syl- 
 lable about Scott, or indeed about anything in heaven or in earth, 
 than I then and now. But the will of destiny must be obeyed. 
 My sole wish is that I could get to hold my tongue for twelve 
 months to come. It is a wish and almost a necessity, for which I 
 am occasionally devising schemes. 
 
 "We will go on hoping — the thing that I used to call * desperate 
 hope.* Nay, on the whole, I really do always believe that I am 
 on the way towards peace and health, both of body and mind. I 
 go along like a planet Juj^iter with his five belts, which are sup- 
 posed to be five storm-zones full of tempests, rain, and thimder 
 and lightning, Jupiter himself very ti-anquilly progi-essing in the 
 middle of them. There ! see if you can do the like. Yon clear 
 Phosphorus smiling always in the sun's face, clear Mercury living 
 always in the Sun's arms, and at a temperature, they say, hotter 
 than redhot iron. Such planets, are they not extremely peculiar 
 in the world ? . . . As to Goethe, no other man whatever, as 
 I say always, has yet ascertained what Christianity is to us, and 
 what Paganity is, and all manner of other anities, and been alive at 
 all points in his own year of grace with the life appropriate to that. 
 This, in brief, is the definition I have always given of the man since 
 I first knew him. The sight of such a man was to me a Gospel of 
 Gospels, and did literally, I believe, save me from destruction out- 
 ward and inward. We are far parted now, but the memory of him 
 shall be ever blessed to me as that of a deliverer from death. But 
 on the whole — oh John ! — what a belief thou host in the devil ! I 
 declare myself an entire sceptic in that faith. Was there, is there, 
 or will there be a great intellect ever heard tell of without first a 
 
106 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 true and great heart to begin with ? Never, if my experience and 
 faith in this God's world have taught me anything at all. Think 
 it not, suspect it not. Worse blasphemy I could not readily utter. 
 Nay, look into your own heart, and consider if the devil's name is 
 darkness^ and that only — Eigendunkel : the blackest kind of dark- 
 ness, and wicked enough for any purpose. 
 
 Fear no seeing man, therefore. Know that he is in heaven, who- 
 ever else be not ; that the arch-enemy, as I say, is the arch-stujjid. 
 I call this my fortieth Church Article, which absorl^s into it and 
 covers up in silence all the other thirty-nine. 
 
 Internally at his own home things were going brightly 
 with Carlyle. It was the coldest winter remembered in 
 England, Murphy's winter, w^hen the Thames was frozen 
 from Oxford to Reading; but his wife remained well 
 without signs of cough, and from all sides came signs of 
 goodwill for the ^ great writer' who was now become 
 famous. Scotsbrig sent its barrels of meal and butter. 
 *Alick,' who, farming having gone ill with him, had 
 started a shop in Ecclefechan, sent an offering of first-rate 
 tobacco. ' Poor Alick ! ' his brother said, ' the first of his 
 shop goods : we received them with a most wistful thank- 
 fulness glad and wae.' This was no more that usual ; but 
 Peers and Cabinet Ministers began to show a wish for a 
 nearer acquaintance with a man who was so much talked 
 of, and a singular compliment was paid him which later 
 history makes really remarkable. 'Some people,' he said, 
 'are beginning to imitate my style and such like. The 
 "French Revolution" I knew from the first to be savage, 
 an Orson of a book ; but the people have seen that it has 
 a genuineness in it, and in consideration of that have par- 
 doned all the rest. Coeur-de-Lion in the "Times" news- 
 paper, whom some thought me, proves to be Ben Disraeli, 
 they say. I saw three of his things, and thought them 
 rather good, of the grotesque kind.' 
 
 Among the established 'great,' the first who held out a 
 hand was Mr. Spring Pice, Lord Monteagle, afterwards 
 
Acquaintances in t/ic Great World. 107 
 
 Chancellor of tlio Exclieqner in the Liberal Ministry. 
 Spring Kice was a statesman of the strict official school, 
 not given to Carlyleaii modes of thinking; but he was 
 ready to welcome a man of genius, however little he might 
 agree with him. IJis eldest son, Stephen Spring Kice, 
 wlio died before his father, being untied to officiality, 
 could admire more freely ; and one at least of his sisters 
 had been a subscriber to the lectures on German literature. 
 Accordingly there came an invitation to Cheyne Row to 
 an evening party. Carlyle would have refused, but his 
 wife insisted that he should go. ' X. brilliant-looking thing 
 it was,' he said, 'all very polite. Marchionesses, ifec.,' with 
 feelings exactly like ours, 'as my dear mother said of the 
 foreign persons in AVilhelm Meister.' 
 
 But he thought that Scotsbrig would be interested in 
 hearing about the ' fine folks ' among whom ' Tom ' was 
 beginning to move ; so he sent a particular account of the 
 adventure. 
 
 To Margaret Carlyle, Scotsbrig. 
 
 Chelsea: February 15, 183S. 
 We live quite quietly among a small circle of people who sec us 
 from time to time, yet not so often as usual iu the bitter weather. 
 I do not go out much to dinners or soirCes ; Jane does not go out 
 at all, not even in the daytime, and accordingly has grown very 
 impatient for mild weatlier again. However, she takes really 
 handsomely to her indoor life, and has not been better, I think, 
 these good many winters. We are generally alone in the even- 
 ings, tranquil over our books and papei-s. What ^dsitors and 
 visiting wo have are in the middle of the day. With my will I 
 would go out nowhere in the evening. It never fails to do mo 
 more or less harm. My most remarkable party for a great while 
 was at no smaller personage's than — who think you ? — the Chan- 
 cellor of the Exchequer. I went for the curiosity, for the honour 
 of the thing. I could not help thinking : ' Here is the man tliat 
 disposes annually of the whole revenue of P^ngland ; and here is 
 another man who has hardly enough cash to buy potatoes and 
 onions for himself. Fortune has for the time made these two 
 
108 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 tenants of one drawing-room.' The case, I believe, is that Miss 
 Spring Rice, the Chancellor of the Exchequer's eldest daughter, 
 was one of my German hearers last year, and took a fancy for my 
 notability ; so her mother. Lady Theodosia, was obliged to be * at 
 home ' for me. The i^eople were very kind ; Spring Rice himself 
 a substantial good-humoured shifty-looking man of fifty. The 
 rooms were genial with heat and light as the sun at noon. There 
 were high dames and distinguished males simmering about like 
 people in the press of a June fair. The whole thing went off very 
 well, and I returned about one in the morning with a headache that 
 served me for more than a day after. * It will help your lectures,' 
 Jane said. May be so ; but in the mean time it has quite hindered 
 my natural sleep and composure. 
 
 Windsor Castle was another novelty with which Carlyle 
 made acquaintance, having gone to visit a young Mr. 
 Edgeworth ' there. I mention this merely for his char- 
 acteristic comment. 
 
 The Castle and outside are very beautiful indeed, and sufficient 
 to lodge a much larger figure than poor little Queen Victory. The 
 kings hang there all in rows, with their gauderies about them, 
 poor old King William the last, like so many shadows of a dream. 
 Each hovers there for a year or two, and then eternity swallows him, 
 and he lies as straight as old Wull Moor, the Galloway Hushel.^ 
 
 Yarious other persons he fell in with, some of whom 
 he had known before, some whom he met for the first 
 time. His likes and dislikes of particular individuals 
 tlirow marked light upon his own character. What he 
 thought of Frederick Maurice has been already seen. 
 
 The Maurices (he says again) are wearisome and happily rare. 
 All invitations * to meet the Maurices ' I, when it is any way pos- 
 sible, make a point of declining. One of the most entirely unin- 
 teresting men of genius that I can meet in society is poor Maurice 
 to me ; all twisted, screwed, wiredrawn, with such a restless 
 sensitiveness, the utmost inability to let nature have fair play with 
 him. I do not remember that a word ever came from him be- 
 tokening clear recognition or healthy free sympathy with any- 
 
 » Frank Edgeworth. See Life of Sterling, p. 160. 
 2 Hnshel, ' an old worn-out person or implement.' 
 
Tlwnuis ErsJdne, 109 
 
 thing. One must really let him alone till the prayers one does 
 oflfer for him (pure-hearted, earnest creature as he is) begin to 
 take e£fect. > 
 
 It was uot for his hdief that Carlyle felt misgivings 
 about Maurice, nor for want of personal respect, but for 
 tlie strange obliquity of intellect which could tliink that 
 bhick was white, and white because it was black, and the 
 whiter always, the blacker the shade. Genuine belief 
 Carlyle always loved wherever he found it. 
 
 Did you ever see Thomas Erskine, the Scotch saint ? (he says in 
 writing to his brother John). I have seen him several times 
 lately, and like him as one would do a draught of sweet rustic 
 mead, served in cut glasses and a silver tray ; one of the gentlest, 
 kindliest, best bred of men. He talks greatly about ' Symbols,' 
 and other Teufelsdrockhiana ; seems not disinclined to let the 
 Christian religion pass for a kind of mythus, provided men can re- 
 tain the spirit of it. . . . On the whole I take up with my old 
 love for the Saints. No class of persons can be found in this 
 country with so much humanity in them, nay, with as much toler- 
 ance as the better sort of them have. The tolerance of others is 
 but doubt and indifference. Touch the thing they do believe and 
 value t their own self-conceit: tJiey are rattlesnakes then.^ 
 
 Carlyle's regard for Mr. Erskine of Linlathen, and 
 Erskine's for him, ripened into an affection which was 
 never clouded as long as they both lived. Each felt that, 
 however they seemed to differ, they were at one in the 
 great battle of the spirit against the flesh. Mrs. Carlyle 
 admired Erskine too, but scarcely with so entire a regard. 
 She spoke of him generally, in half-playful mockery, as 
 St. Thomas. 
 
 On the whole, in this beginning of the year 1838, Car- 
 lyle could say of himself : ' I lead a strange dreamy dawn- 
 ering life at present ; in general not a little relieved and 
 quieted, yet with all the old features of Burton's " melan- 
 
 ' The italics are mine, for the words— true as any Carlyle ever spoke — de- 
 serve them. 
 
110 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 cliolie man : " to-daj full of peaceable joy (ah, no ! not 
 peaceable entirely ; there is a black look through it still), 
 then to-morrow, for no assignable cause, sunk into sad- 
 ness and despondency. But verily the book has done me 
 great good. It was like a load of fire burning up my 
 heart, which, by Heaven's favour, I have got thrown out 
 of me. IN'ay, even in my blackest despondencies, when 
 utter obstruction and extinction seem to threaten me, I 
 say, "Well, it shall take my life, but my quiescence it 
 shall spare." ' And again, a few days later, to his brother : 
 ' Blessed be God, there is a kind of light-gleam in the 
 inner man of me which whoso will quietly, humbly, 
 silently follow, it shall be well with him. Silently above 
 all. Why, therefore, do I now speak? In a word, oh 
 brother Jack, I do endeavour to thank Heaven for much 
 mercy to me on this side also. Yes, these long years of 
 martyrdom and misery, which I would not suffer again to 
 buy the world, were not utterly in vain. My mood of 
 mind at present is not nearly so wretched. .1 am wae^ very 
 loae and sad, but entirely peaceable ; and such sadness 
 seems almost as good as joy. Deliver me, ye Supreme 
 Powers, from self-conceit ; ah ! do this, and then what 
 else is your wdll.' 
 
 ' Literature,' so the fates had decided, was to remain 
 Carlyle's profession. He had meant to abandon it, but 
 the cord which held him to his desk, thougli strained, had 
 not broken. Yet it was a ' bad best,' he thought, for any 
 man, more trying to the moral nature, and in his own case, 
 so modestly he rated his powers, less likely to be useful, 
 than any other honest occupation. He would still have 
 gladly entered the public service if employment had been 
 offered liim, as offered it would have been, in any country 
 but England, to a man who had shown ability so marked. 
 He was acknowledged as a man of genius, and in England 
 it is assumed that for a man of genius no place can be 
 
Miss Martineau, 111 
 
 found. He is too good for a low situation. He is likely 
 to be troublesome in a higher one, and is thus the one 
 man distinctly unpromotable. Foiniun hahet in cornu — 
 avoid him above all men. Carlyle had to accept his lot, 
 since such had been ordered for him. But his distaste 
 continued, and extended to other members of the craft 
 who were now courting his acquaintance. He found them 
 hores^ a class of persons for whom he had the least charity. 
 Even poor Miss Martineau, sincerely as he at heart re- 
 spected her, was not welcome if she came too often. 
 
 Journal. 
 February 19. — All Saturday sick and nervous. At night IMiss 
 Martineau and Darwin. The visit, as most of those from that too 
 hajipy and too noisy distinguished female, did nothing but mako 
 me miserable. She is a formulist, limited in the extreme, and for 
 the present altogether triumphant in her limits. The all-conquer- 
 ing smallness of that phenomenon, victorious mainly by its small - 
 ness, and which not only waves banners in its own triumph, but 
 insists on your waving banners too, is at all times nearly insup- 
 portable to me. She said among other things that Jesus Christ 
 had lived, she thought, one of the most * joyous ' lives ; that she 
 had once met a man who seemed not to believe fully in immor- 
 tality. The trivial impious sayings of this extraordinary man were 
 retailed to us at boundless length. Then the martyr character, 
 the hyi^er-prophetic altogether splendid and unspeakable excel- 
 lence of Dr. Priestley ; the regiment of American great men ; the 
 (fee, &c. Ach Gott ! I wish this good Harriet would be happy by 
 herself. . . . A small character, totu^ teres atque rotundus, is at 
 all times very wearisome. Fill it with self-conceit, at least with 
 an expectation of praise greater far than you can give it ; with a 
 notion of infallibility which you are forced to conti-adict inwardly 
 at every turn, and outwardly as often as the necessity of conversa- 
 tion forces you to speak, a chai-acter withal that never by any 
 chance utters anything that is new or interesting to you — it may 
 be good, or it may be better and best, but you have a right to say 
 ' it tires mo to death. Schnff es mtr vom Halse.^ The good Haiiiet 
 admires me greatly, and is very friendly to me. This is the only 
 coutmdictory circumstance. The whole cackle and rigmarole of 
 such an existence is absurd to me whenever I see it. 
 
112 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 The Speddings ^ here told me of Hartley Coleridge, whom they 
 esteemed a man of real genius — of his falling out of one high 
 possibility down through another lower, till he had become a poor 
 denizen of tap-rooms in the village of Ambleside — sad to hear of. 
 It often strikes me as a question whether there ought to be any 
 such thing as a literary man at all. He is surely the wretchedest 
 of all sorts of men. I wish with the heart occasionally I had never 
 been one. I cannot say I have seen a member of the guild whose 
 life seems to me enviable. A man^ a Goethe, will be a man on 
 paper too ; but it is a questionable life for him. Canst thou alter 
 it ? Then act it. Endure it. On with it in silence. 
 
 Let young men who are dreaming of literary eminence 
 as the laurel wreath of their existence reflect on these 
 words. Let them win a place for themselves as high as 
 Carlyle won, they will find that he was speaking no more 
 than the truth, aucl will wish, when it is too late, that they 
 had been wise in time. Literature — were it even poetry 
 — is but the shadow of action ; the action the reality, the 
 poeti-y an echo. The ' Odyssey ' is but the ghost of 
 Ulysses— immortal, but a ghost still ; and Homer himself 
 would have said in some moods with his own Achilles — 
 
 Bov\oi[xr]v K enapovpos eoov $r)T€V€p.€v aXXco 
 'Avbpl Trap' a.<\i]p(o, a p.Tj ^iotos noiXi/s et?;, 
 *H naaiv veKvecra-i KaTa<p6ip.evoiaiv dvdaaciu. 
 
 Rather would I in the sun's warmth divine 
 Serve a poor churl who drags his days in grief, 
 Than the whole lordship of the dead were mine. 
 
 Jeffrey, while congratulating his friend on the success of 
 the ' French Eevolution,' yet could see ' that the business 
 of an author was not the happiest or the most healthful 
 for a person of Carlyle's temper. Contact with the com- 
 mon things of life would make him more tolerant of a 
 world which -if not perfect w^as better than it had ever 
 
 1 Tom and James, sons of Mr. Spedding, of Mirehouse, in Cumberland. 
 Tom Spedding succeeded his father in the family propertj^ James, a friend 
 of Sterling, whose splendid gifts were never adequately unfolded, is known 
 only to the world as the biographer of Bacon. 
 
Second Course of Lectures. 113 
 
 been before, and would give him a better chance of mend- 
 ing it, while he despised it less.' But it was not to be, 
 and even to Carlyle authorship was better than idleness. 
 When he was idle the acids ate into the coating of his 
 soul. 
 
 He did nothing all the winter. With the spring he had 
 to prepare liis second course of lectures. 
 
 To Margaret Carlyle, Scotshrig. 
 
 Chelsea: March &, 183a 
 Lecturing is coming on. I am to start and try myself again. 
 We have a far better room than last year : an unexce2>tionable 
 room, all seated for the purpose, quiet, and lighted from the roof. 
 The only drawback is the distance — three miles from me, and 
 rather out of the beat of our fashionable patrons.* I am to give 
 twelve lectures this year, and charge two guineas. If I have a 
 good audience, it will mount up fast — one cannot say as to that — 
 we must just try. The subject is to be the history of literature. 
 I shall have to speak about Greeks and Romans first, then about 
 other nations — in short, about the most remarkable books and 
 persons that I know. . . . Wish me good speed, dear mother, 
 and do not fear but I shall get through it not unhandsomely. I 
 have many a good friend here, I do believe. The proportion of 
 scoundrels in London is great ; but likewise there is a proportion 
 of better people than you can easily find in the great world. Let 
 us keep our hearts quiet, as I say. Let us give no ear to vain- 
 glory, to self-conceit, the wretchedest of things, the devil's chief 
 •work, I think, here below. 
 
 I yesterday dined with Mr. Erskine, a veiy notable man among 
 the religious people of Scotland, who seems to have taken a con- 
 siderable fancy for me. He is one of the best persons I have met 
 with for many a long year. We were very cheerful, a small quiet 
 jmrty, and had blithe serious talk. I afterwards, on the way home, 
 went to a sohve of Miss Martineau's. There were fat people and fair 
 people, lords and others, fidgeting, elbowing, all very braw and 
 hot. * Wliat's ta use on't ? ' I said to myself, and came off early, 
 while they were still aniving, at eleven at night. I go as rarely as 
 I can to such things, for they always do me ill. A book at home 
 is suitabler, with a quiet pipe twice in the evening, innocent 
 
 ' The room was in Edward Street, Portman Square. 
 
 Vol. IIL--8 
 
114 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 spoonful of porridge at ten, and bed at eleven, with such compos- 
 ure as we can. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 Chelsea : March 30, 1838. 
 
 As for me, I have but one interest in the wind at present, that 
 of my lectures. It is like the harvest of the whole year. I am 
 not quite in such a dreadful fuff about it as I was this time twelve- 
 months ; but it is again agitating enough, and I think often that 
 if I had any money to live upon, there is no power in the world 
 that would tempt me to such a feat in such circumstances. Per- 
 haps it is so ordered that I have no money, in order to oblige me 
 to open my jaw — I cannot say. I can say only I had infinitely rather 
 continue keeping it shut. But on the whole they have got me a 
 lecture-room, and I have drawn up a scheme of my twelve lectures 
 — two lectures a week, six weeks instead of four. The subject is 
 about all things in the world ; the whole spiritual history of man, 
 from the earliest times till now. Among my audience I am likely 
 to have some of the cleverest people in this country ; and / to 
 speak to them. We will fight it through one way or another. The 
 very pain of it and miserable tumbling connected with it is a 
 kind of schooling for one. Thou must not ' tine heart,' thou must 
 gird thyself into forced composure. This is the season, this and 
 onwards till midsummer, when London is most thronged with 
 people, with meetings and speeches, with dinners, parties, balls, 
 and doings. I know not what I should do if I were to become an 
 established popular. With the popularity I have it is almost like 
 to be too hard for me at times. Nothing naturally seems to me 
 more entirely wretched and barren than the life of people literary 
 and others, that give themselves up to that sort of matter here. 
 I firmly believe it to be the darkest curse God lays upon a man or 
 woman. Carrying the beggar's wallet I take to be bad, but far 
 from so bad. The very look of the face of one of these peoj^le 
 seems to say, ' Avoid me if thou be wise.' ' Dinna gang to dad 
 tysel' a' abroad,' said Lizzie Herd to WuU once, and I many times 
 remember the precept here. ' To be dadded a' abroad ' is per- 
 cisely the thing I want above all things to avoid. 
 
 As to the people I see, the best class of all are the religious peo- 
 ple, certain of whom have taken, very strangely, a kind of affection 
 for me, in spite of my contradictions toward them. It teaches me 
 again that the best of this class is the best one will find in any 
 class whatsoever. The Eadical members, and ambitious vain 
 
Popxdaritij cmd the Value of it. 115 
 
 political people, and literary people, and fashionable people are to 
 be avoided in comparison. One of the best men I have seen for 
 many a year is Thomas Ei-skine, a gentleman of great fortune and 
 celebrated in the religions world. Most strange it is how such a 
 man has taken to me. Nay, he has been heard to say that * very 
 few of them are at bottom so orthodox as Carlyle.' What thiiA. 
 you of that ? 
 
 I tell you nothing of the tilings they continue to tell me about 
 my book. When grand people and beautiful people pay me grand 
 beautiful compliments, and I grope in my pocket and find that I 
 have 80 few pounds sterling there to meet my poor wants with, I 
 can but say with Sandy CJorrie * What's ta use on't ? ' or with the 
 cow in the fable, 
 
 Gie me a pickle pease strae. 
 
 The first set of lectures Carljle had been obliged to 
 deliver out of his acquired knowledge, having no leisure to 
 do more. For the second he prepared carefully, especially 
 the Greek and lionian parts. Classics are not the strong 
 point of an Edinburgh education, and the little which he 
 had learned there >vas rusty. ' I have read Thucydides 
 and Herodotus,' he wrote in April, ^part of Niebuhr, 
 Michelet, &c., the latter two with small fruit and much 
 disappointment, the former two not. I should have several 
 good things to say and do very well were I in health, were 
 I in brass.' But trouble had come into Cheyne Row 
 again. Without any definite ailment, Mrs. Carlyle seemed 
 unwell in mind and body. There was even a thought of 
 sending her to Italy when the lectures were over, if there 
 were means to do it. Carlyle even thought of going 
 thither himself, or at any rate of leaving London alto- 
 gether. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : April 13, 1838. 
 
 Jane keeps very quiet, and suffers what is inevitable as well as 
 
 j)os8ible. I fancy Italy, as you say, might be of real service to her. 
 
 To me also the one thing needful seems that of getting into any 
 
 tranquil region under or above the sun. Positively at times tho 
 
116 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 whirl of this dusty deafening chaos gets into the insupportable 
 category. There is a shivering precipitancy in me which makes 
 emotion of any kind a thing to be shunned. It is my nei^ves, my 
 nerves. The poor chaos is bad enough, but with nerves one might 
 stand it. There are symptoms of capability to grow a lion by-and- 
 by. Fluch dem ! Good never lay there, lie where it might. Also I 
 imagine it possible I might learn to subsist myself here, earning 
 the small needful of money literally with my heart's blood. You 
 can fancy it with such a nervous system as I have ; the beautiful 
 and brave saying in their sumptuosity here and there, ' Oh Thomas, 
 what an illustrious character thou art ! ' and Thomas feeling in his 
 breast for comfort and finding bilious fever ; in his pocket, and 
 finding emptiness ; round him for fellowship, and finding solitude, 
 ghastly and grinning masks. But I do on the whole adhere to one 
 thing, that of holding my peace. I really am better too in the in- 
 ward heart of me. There is no danger of man, I feel always, while 
 his heart is not mad. 
 
 Going through the Green Park yesterday, I saw her little 
 Majesty taking her bit of departure for Windsor. I had seen 
 her another day at Hyde Park Corner, coming in from the daily 
 ride. She is decidedly a pretty-looking little creature : health, 
 clearness, graceful timidity, looking out from her young face, 
 'frail cockle on the black bottomless deluges.' One could not 
 help some interest in her, situated as mortal seldom was. 
 
 In the evening a Bullerian rout. 'Dear Mrs. Eigmarole, the 
 distinguished female; great Mr. Eigmarole, the distinguished 
 male.' Radical Grote was the only novelty, for I had never 
 noticed him before — a man with strait upper lip, large chin, 
 and open mouth (spout mouth) ; for the rest, a tall man with dull 
 thoughtful brows and lank dishevelled hair, greatly the look of a 
 prosperous Dissenting minister. 
 
 Your notions about Rome for us are in their vagueness quite 
 analogous to mine. Jane takes very kindly to your scheme. As 
 for me, I know only that I should infinitely rejoice to be quiet 
 anywhere. I think I will not stay here to have the brain burnt 
 out of me. I will go out of this. Jane likes it far better than I. 
 Indeed, was it not for her, I might quite easily cut and run before 
 long ; which at bottom, I admit, were perhaps not good for me. 
 
 This letter indicates no pleasant condition of mind, not 
 a condition in wliicli it could have been agreeable to take 
 
SeeoiuL Course of Lectures. 117 
 
 to the platform again and deliver lectnres. But Carlyle 
 could command himself when necessary, however severe 
 the burden that was weighing upon him. This time he 
 succeeded brilliantly, far better than on his first experi- 
 Ufient. The lectures were reported in the 'Examiner' and 
 other papers, and can be recovered there by the curious, 
 lie did not himself reprint them, attaching no importance 
 to what he called ' a mixture of prophecy and play-acting.' 
 It will suffice here to observe what he said himself on the 
 subject at the time. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 May 15, 1838 —Delivered yesterday, at the Lecture Rooms, 17 
 Edward Street, Portman Square, a lecture on. Dante, the fifth 
 there. Seven more are yet to come. A curious audience; a 
 curious business. It has been all mismanaged ; yet it prospers 
 better than I expected once. The conditions of the thing ! Ah, 
 the conditions ! It is like a man singing through a fleece of wool. 
 One must submit ; one must stiTiggle and sing even so, since not 
 otherwise. I sent my mother off a newspaper. Hunt's criticism 
 no longer friendly ; not so in spirit, though still in letter ; a 
 shade of spleen in it ; very natural, flattering even. He finds me 
 grown to be a something now. His whole way of life is at death- 
 variance with mine. In the 'Examiner' he expresses himself 
 afflicted with my eulogy of thrift, and two days ago he had multa 
 gemens to borrow two sovereigns of me. It is an unreasonable 
 existence gam und gar. Happily I have next to nothing to do 
 with Hunt, with him or with his. Felix sit/ 
 
 Saturday, May 20. — Yesterday lectured on Cervantes and the 
 Spaniards, a huiried loose flowing but earnest wide-reaching sort 
 of thing, which the people liked better than I. The business is 
 happily half done now. Tliat is the happiest part of it. 
 
 May 31. — Lecture on Luther and the Reformation ; then on 
 Shakespeare and John Knox, my best hitherto ; finally on Voltaire 
 and French scepticism, the worst, as I compute, of all. To-morrow 
 is to be Lecture 10, on Johnson, &e. There an^ then but two re- 
 maining. On the Voltaire day I was stupid and sick beyond ex- 
 pression; also I did not like the man, a fatal cirenmstance of 
 itself. I had to hover vaguely on the surface. The people seemed 
 
118 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 content enough. I myself felt sincerely disgusted. That is the 
 word. To-morrow perhaps we shall do better. It is one of the 
 saddest conditions of this enterprise to feel that you have missed 
 what you meant to say ; that your image of a matter you had an 
 image of remains yet with yourself, and a false impotent scrawl is 
 what the hearers have got from you. This too has to be suffered, 
 since the attempt was necessary and not possible otherwise. Our 
 audience sits entirely attentive — a most kind audience — and seems 
 to have almost doubled since we began. Courage ! On the 
 Shakespeare day I entered all palpitating, fluttered with sleep- 
 lessness and drug-taking, with visitors, and the fatal et ccetera of 
 things. 
 
 News from Jack above a week ago that, probably he is not coming 
 to us this summer. Alas ! alas ! I had counted on the true brother 
 to commune with a little ; to break the utter solitude of heart in 
 which I painfully live here. Lonelier probably is no man. Ai/ de 
 7711 ! and now he is not coming. This also is not to be granted us. 
 He says we must come to Italy for the winter. We think of it. 
 My unhappy sick wife might be benefited by it. For me the ciy 
 of my soul is, ' For the love of God let me alone ; ' or rather it has 
 ceased to be a cry, and sunk down into a voiceless prayer, which 
 knows it will not be granted. Hardly a day has passed since I 
 returned hither in autumn last, in which I have not stormfully re- 
 solved to myself that I would go out of this dusty hubbub, should 
 I even walk off with the staff in my hands, and no loadstar what- 
 ever. My wife, herself seemingly sinking into weaker and weaker 
 health, points out to me always that I cannot go ; that I am tied 
 here, seemingly as if to be tortured to death. So in my wild mood 
 I interpret it. Silence on such subjects ! Oh ! how infinitely 
 preferable is silence ! Perhaps, too, my wife is right. Indeed, I 
 myself feel dimly that I have little to look for else than here. Be 
 still, thou wild weak heart, convulsively bursting up against the 
 bars. Silence alone can guide me. Suffer, suffer, if it be neces- 
 sary so to learn. Last night, weary and worn out with dull block- 
 headism, chagrin (next to no sl6ep the night before), I sate down 
 in St. James's Park and thought of these things, looking at the 
 beautiful summer moon, and really quieted myself, became peace- 
 able and submissive for the tijne — for the time ; and afterwards, 
 alas ! I was provoked, and in my weak state said foolish words 
 and went sorrowful to bed. I am a feeble fool. Fool, wilt thou 
 never be wise ? 
 
Scrond Course of Lectures. 119 
 
 Tho excitement of lecturing, so elevating and agreeable 
 to most men, seemed only to depress and irritate Carlyle. 
 He was anxious about many things, his brain was over- 
 wrought, his nerves set on edge. In this condition even 
 liis dearest friends ceased to please him. He goes on : — 
 
 Breakfast one morning lately at Milnes's, with Landor, Rogers, 
 T. Moore, &c. A brilliant firework of wits, worth being fretted 
 into fever with for once. Dinner that same day, if I remember, 
 22nd of May, at Marshall's, Grosvenor Street, the wealthiest of 
 houses, the people hearers of mine. Empson, the Sj)ring Bices, 
 there ; Miss Spring Rice, especially, very brilliant, exciting. 
 Such happiness is purchased too dear. Dull dinner the day before 
 yesterday — indeed, liinc illcE lacrymoe, for I had a cup of green tea 
 too — at the Wilsons'; Spedding, Maurice, John Sterling, and 
 women. Ah me ! Sterling particularly argumentative, babbla- 
 tive, and on the whole unpleasant and unprofitable to me. Memo- 
 randum not to dine where he is soon, without cause. He is much 
 spoiled since last year by really no great quantity of praise and 
 flattery ; restless as a whirling tormentum ; superficial, ingenious, 
 of endless semifrothy utterance and argument. Keep out of his 
 way till he mend a little. A finer heart was seldom seen than 
 dwells in Sterling, but, alas ! under what conditions ? Ego et Rex 
 mens. That is the tune we all sing. Down with ego ! Enough 
 written for one day. I am very sickly, but silent. 
 
 The lecture course was perhaps too prolonged. Twelve 
 orations such as Carlyle was delivering were beyond the 
 strength of any man who meant every word that he 
 uttered. It ended, however, with a blaze of fireworks — 
 ' people weeping ' at the passionately earnest tone in which 
 for once they heard themselves addressed. The money 
 result was nearly 300/., after all expenses had been paid. 
 ' A great blessing,' as Carlyle said, * to a man that liad 
 been haunted by the squalid spectre of beggary.' There 
 were prospects of improved finances from other quarters 
 too. Notwithstanding all the talk about the * French 
 Revolution,' nothing yet had been realized for it in Eng- 
 land, but Emerson held out hopes of remittances on the 
 
120 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 American edition. ' Sartor,' ' poor beast,' as Mrs. Carlyle 
 called it, was at last coming out in a volume, and there 
 was still a talk of reprinting the essays. But Carlyle 
 was worn out. Fame brought its accompaniments of in- 
 vitations to dinner which could not be all refused ; the 
 dinners brought indigestions ; and the dog days brought 
 heat, and heat and indigestion together made sleep impos- 
 sible. His letters to his brother are full of lamentation, 
 and then of remorse for his want of patience. At the 
 close of a miserable declamation against everything under 
 the sun, he winds up : — 
 
 Last niglit I sat down to smoke in my night-shirt in the back 
 yard. It was one of the beautifullest nights ; the half- mo on clear 
 as silver looked out as from eternity, and the great dawn was 
 streaming up. I felt a remorse, a kind of shudder, at the fuss I 
 was making about a sleepless night, about my sorrow at all, with 
 a life so soon to be absorbed into the great mystery above and 
 around me. Oh ! let us be patient. Let us call to God with our 
 silent hearts, if we cannot with our tongues. 
 
 The Italian scheme dissolved. It had been but a vapour 
 which had taken shape in the air for a moment. Cooler 
 weather came. The fever abated, and he was able to send 
 a pleasant account of the finish to his mother the day 
 after all was over. From her he was careful to conceal 
 liis unquiet thoughts. 
 
 To Margaret Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : June 12, 1838. 
 The lectures went on better and better, and grew at last, or 
 threatened to grow, quite a flaming affair. I had people greeting 
 yesterday. I was quite as well pleased that we ended then and did 
 not make any further racket about it. I have too good evidence 
 (in poor Edward Irving's case) what a racket comes to at last, and 
 want for my share to have nothing at all to do with such things. 
 The success of the thing, taking all sides of it together, seems to 
 have been very considerable, far greater than I at all expected, 
 My audience was supposed to be the best, for rank, beauty, and 
 intelligence, ever collected in London. I had bonnie braw dames. 
 
Results of L<< tares, 121 
 
 IjaJios this, Lmlies tliat, though I dared not look at them for fear 
 they shoukl put me out. I had old men of four score ; men 
 middle-aged, witli fine steel-grey beards ; young men of the Uni- 
 vei-sities, of the law profession, all sitting quite mum there, and 
 the Annandale voice gollying at them. Very strange to consider. 
 They proposed giving me a dinner, some of them, but I declined 
 it. • Literary Institutions ' more than one expressed a desire that 
 I would lecture for them, but this also (their wages being small 
 and their lectures generally despicable) I decline. My health did 
 not suffer so much as I had reason to dread. I was awaking at 
 three in the morning when the thing began, but afterwards I got 
 to sleep till seven, and even till eight, and did not suffer nearly so 
 much. I am no doubt shaken and stirred up considerably into a 
 
 * raised ' state which I like very ill, but in a few days I shall get 
 still enough, and probably even too still. One must work either 
 with long moderate pain or else with short great pain. The short 
 way is best according to my notion. 
 
 As usual, the first thought with Carlyle wlien in posses- 
 sion of his 'riches' was to send a present to Scotsbrig. 
 He enclosed 5Z. to his niotlier, to be divided among his 
 sisters and herself, a sovereign to each. Thej were to buy 
 bonnets with it, or any other piece of finery, and call them 
 
 * The Lecture.' On July 27th he wrote at length to his 
 brother John. 
 
 Chelsea : July 27, 1838. 
 The lectures terminated quite triumphantly. Thank Heaven ! 
 It seems pretty generally expected that I am to lecture next year 
 again, and subsequent years, having, as they say, made a new pro- 
 fession for myself. If dire famine drive me, I must even lecture, 
 but not otherwise. Whoever he may be that wants to get into the 
 centre of a fuss, it is not I. Freedom under the blue sky — ah me ! 
 with a bit of brown bread and peace and pepticity to eat it with, 
 this for my money before all the glory of Portman Square, or the 
 solar system itself. But we must take what we. can get and be 
 thankful. After the lectures came a series of dinner-work and 
 racketings ; came hot weather, coronation uproare, and at length 
 sleeplessness, collapse, inertia, and at times almost the feeling of 
 nonentity. I like that existence very ill ; my nerves are not made 
 for it. I correcteil a few proof sheets. I read a few books, dull 
 
122 Carlyles Life in London. 
 
 as Lethe. I have done nothing else whatever that I could help, 
 except live. Frequently a little desire for some travel, a notion 
 that change of scene ^and objects would be wholesome, has come 
 upon me ; but in my condition of absolute imbecility, especially 
 in the uncertainty we stood in as to your movements, nothing could 
 be done. The weather has now grown cool. I find it tolerable 
 enough to lounge at Chelsea for the time. My digestion is very 
 bad ; I should say, however, that my heart and life is on the whole 
 sounder than it was last year. Now, too, all is getting very quiet ; 
 streets quite vacant within these two weeks. I am not like to stir 
 from this unless driven. As for Jane, she is much improved ; in- 
 deed, almost well since summer came. She does not wish to stir 
 from her quarters at all. 
 
 The Americans are getting out 'Carlyle's miscellanies.' I know 
 not whether I shall not import two hundred copies or so of this 
 edition and save myself the trouble of editing here. The matter 
 is as good as obsolete to me. There is no bread or other profit in 
 it. The Swedenborgians have addressed a small book and letters 
 to me here. The New Catholics are making advances. Jane says 
 I am fated to be the nucleus for all the mad people of my gen- 
 eration. 
 
 John Sterling wanted me to accept a dinner from some Cam- 
 bridge men, then to go with him to Cambridge for three days, 
 then to &c., &c.; lastly, to go this same week down to Julius Hare's 
 and bathe in the sea. The sea was tempting. Hare too, whom I 
 have seen, is a likeable kind of man. But vis inertice prevailed, 
 and to this, as to all the rest, I answered : ' Impossible, dear Ster- 
 ling.' Indeed, John is dreadfully locomotive since his return. 
 Some verses printed in Blackwood, and a considerable bluster of 
 Wilson's about them, have sorrowfully discomposed our poor John, 
 and proved what touchy and almost flimsy stuff there must be in 
 him. I love him as before, but keep rather out of his way at 
 present. 
 
 Mill is plodding along at his dull Review under dull auspices, 
 restricts himself to the Fox Taylor circle of Socinian Eadicalism— 
 a lamed cause at this time — and very rarely shows face here. His 
 editor, one Eobertson, a burly Aberdeen Scotchman of seven-and- 
 twenty, full of laughter, vanity, pepticity, and hope, amuses me 
 sometimes considerably more. He * desires exceedingly that I 
 would do something for the October number.' My desire that 
 way is faint indeed. How many things in this world do not smell 
 
Hemdta of Lectures. 123 
 
 sweet to me ! To how many things is one tempted to say with 
 emphasis, ' Du Galgenansf (Thou gallows-carrion). There is some 
 relief to me in a word like that. But pauca verba, as Nym has it. 
 I told all the people in those lectures of mine that no speech ever 
 uttered or utterable was worth comparison with silence. John 
 Sterling in particular could not understand it in the least, but has 
 it still sticking in him indigestible. 
 
 Your affectionate brother, 
 
 T. CABLYIiE. 
 
CHAPTER yi. 
 
 A.D. 1838-9. MT. 43-44. 
 
 Visit to Kirkcaldy — Sees Jeffrey — * Sartor ' — ^Night at Manchester 
 — Eemittances from Boston — Proposed article on Cromwell — 
 • Want of books — London Library — Breakfast with Monckton 
 Milnes — Third course of Lectures — Chartism — Eadicalism — 
 Correspondence with Lockhart — Thirlwall — Gift of a horse — 
 Summer in Scotland — First journey on a railway. 
 
 Carlyle's annual migrations were like those of Mrs. 
 Primrose from the blue room to the brown — from Lon- 
 don to Scotland. Thither almost always, seldom any- 
 where else. He had meant to stay all through the 
 summer in Chelsea, but an invitation from his friends, 
 the Ferguses at Kirkcaldy, tempted him, and in the 
 middle of August he went by Leith steamer to the old 
 place where he had taught little boys, and fallen in love 
 with Miss Gordon, and rambled with Edward Irving. It 
 was ' melodiously interesting,' he said. He bathed on the 
 old sands. He had a horse which carried him through 
 the old familiar scenes. While at Kirkcaldy he crossed 
 to Edinburgh and called on Jeffrey. 
 
 He sat waiting for me at Moray Place. We talked long in the 
 style of literary and philosophic clitter-clatter. Finally it was 
 settled that I should go out to dinner with him at Craigcrook, and 
 not return to Fife till the morrow. At the due hour I joined the 
 Duke * at his town house, and we walked out together as in old 
 times. The Empsons were still there. Mrs. Jeffrey and they 
 welcomed me all alone. The evening was not, on the whole, equal 
 
 * The Carlyle name for Jeffrey was Duke ot Craigcrook. 
 
Lett&i's from Home, 125 
 
 to a good solitary one. The Dnke talked immensely, and made 
 me talk ; but it struck me that he was grown weaker. We seemed 
 to have made up our nunds not to contradict each other ; but it 
 was at the expense of saying nothing intimate. My esteem for 
 Jeflfrey could not hide from me that at bottom our speech was, as 
 I said, clatter. In fact, he is becoming an amiable old fribble, 
 very cheerful, very heartless, very forgettable and tolerable. 
 
 After a week or too in Fife he made for Scotsbrig, 
 where news met him that 50Z. had been sent from America 
 as a royalty on the edition of the * French Revolution,' 
 and that more would follow. * What a touching thing is 
 that ! ' he said. * One prays that the blessing of him that 
 was rather ill off may be with them, these good friends. 
 Courage ! I feel as if one might grow to be moderately 
 •content with a lot like mine.' 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Scotsbrig : September 1.5, 183a 
 Many thanks for those bright little letters you sent me. They 
 are the liveliest of letters, which gives me pleasure, because it 
 shows a lively Goody, cheerful and well. They send good news 
 otherwise too, and seem to have the faculty of finding good news 
 to send. Our mother charges me to thank you most emphatically 
 for your letters to her, which made her * as light as a feather all 
 day.' She says, * Whatever sort of mother-in-law she be, you are 
 the best of daughters-in law.' Such a swift-despatching little 
 Goody ! Drive about while you can, and keep your heart light, 
 and be well when I come. 
 
 At Edinburgh I wanted a copy of * Sartor,' * poor beast ! ' They 
 had got no copy, had never heard of it, and only then wrote off 
 for some. Depend on it, therefore, my bonny little Bairn, all 
 these vague things they tell thee about * Sartor ' are mere vague 
 blarney ; and think further that we will not care a straw whether 
 they are or not. No. A certain fair critic long ago, among the 
 I)eat bogs, declared ' Sartor * ' to be a work of genius ; ' and such 
 it is, and shall continue, though no copy of it should be seen these 
 hundred years. Alick is not altogether right yet, but much better 
 than formerly. His traffic prosi)er8 beyond what could be looked 
 for, and he seems more quieted, reconciled to his allotment. It 
 
126 Carlyle^s Life in London, 
 
 gives me the strangest feeling to plump suddenly into view of 
 these conditions of existence — hearts so kind, a lot so sequestered, 
 the sweep of Time passing on in these little creeks too, as on the 
 wide sea where I have to navigate. One can say nothing ; one's 
 heart is full of unutterabilities. But our whole life is all great 
 and unutterable ; the little Ecclefechan shop, as the gi'and Napo- 
 leon Empire, is embosomed in eternity ; a little dream and yet a 
 great reality, one even as the other. Adieu, dear life partner ! 
 dear little Goody of me. Be well, and love me. 
 
 Thine, T. Cablyle. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 Scotsbrig : September 27, 1838. 
 MacDiarmid ^ has faithfully paid me nine sovereigns for you for 
 Puttock, which coins I have, or will account for. He has not 
 succeeded well this year for the letting of Puttock, but has a 
 better outlook for a near future. A colonel somebody, of Mabie, 
 has the house and game this season, at the easy rate of U., there 
 being no game. But he will preserve the game this year, and in 
 future years give 10/., and perhaps plague us less about it. As for 
 Goody, she, with MacDiarmid's instalments in her pocket, will 
 really be in funds for the present, able to bind * Revolution ' books 
 and what not — considering the savings bank, too — according to 
 her own sweet will. Nay, there are other funds too, I guess— a 
 letter from your mother, wwrefusable, but which seemed to me to 
 hold cash — a truly monied Goody. ... I saw Burns's house ; 
 the little oblique-angled hut, where the great soul had to adjust 
 itself, and be a king without a kingdom. It seems vacant since 
 the widow's death. Some dirty children sat on the door-sill, and 
 the knocker seemed torn half off. The soul of the man is now 
 happily far away from all that. Jean and Jamie are both as kind 
 as could be. They are prosperous both, I think. Jean received 
 your parcel with great expressions of thankfulness. Mary, too, at 
 Annan was emphatic in her gratitude, in her affectionate remem- 
 brance of you — all which was pleasant to hear. At Annan I found 
 Goody's letter, review of 'Sartor,' gift to my mother — all as 
 right as it could be. Thanks to thee, my good wife — though very 
 hot-tempered one. Oh, my dear Jeanie, I have more regard for 
 thee than, perhaps, thou wilt ever rightly know. But let that 
 pass. The Angel, as thou sayest, does stir the waters more ways 
 » Agent for Craigenputtock. 
 
A Night at Manchester. 127 
 
 than one. Surely our better days are still coming. All here 
 salute you right heartily. My mother is proud of her gifts. 
 
 Ever your own, 
 
 T. Cablyle. 
 
 On liis way home, in October, he spent a day or two 
 with a sister who had married a Mr. llanning, in Man- 
 chester, and met with an adventnre there. He had been 
 pnt to sleep in an old bed, which he remembered in his 
 father's house. 
 
 I was just closing my senses in sweet oblivion (he said), when 
 the watchman, with a voice like the deepest groan of the Highland 
 bagpipe, or what an ostrich comcraik might utter, groaned out 
 Groo-o-o-o close under me, and set all in a gallop again. 
 Groo-o-o-o ; for there was no articulate announcement at all in it, 
 that I could gather. Groo-o-o-o, repeated again and again at vari- 
 ous distances, dying out and tlien growing loud again, for an hour 
 or more. I grew impatient, bolted out of bed, flung up the 
 window. Groo-o-o-o. There he was advancing, lantern in hand, 
 a few yards off me. ' Can't you give up that noise ? ' I hastily ad- 
 dressed him. * You are keeping a person awake. Wliat good is 
 it to go howling and groaning all night, and deprive people of 
 their sleep ? ' He ceased from that time — at least I heard no more 
 of him. No watchman, I think, has been more astonished for 
 some time back. At five in the morning all was as still as sleej) 
 and darkness. At half-past five all went off like an enormous mill- 
 race or ocean-tide. The Boom-m-m, far and wide. It was the 
 mills that were all starting then, and creishy ^ drudges by the 
 million taking jjost there. I have heard few sounds more impres- 
 sive to me in the mood I was in. 
 
 At home he found all well. He arrived at midnight, 
 finding Mrs. Carlyle improved in health, and sitting up for 
 him ; himself quite rested, and equal to work again. 
 
 I have been eight weeks in Scotland (he noted in his Jouraal), 
 looked on the stones of Edinburgh city, wondered whether it was 
 solid or a dream ; then to Annandale, finally drifted back hither — 
 foolish drift log on the sea of accident, where I since lie high and 
 dry not a whit wiser. How many tragedies, epics, Haynes Baily 
 » Creishy^ ' greasy.* 
 
128 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 ballads, and ' bursts of Parliamentary eloquence ' would it take to 
 utter this one tour by an atrabilian lecturer on things in general ? 
 
 Evidences were waiting for him that he was becoming 
 a person of consequence notwithstanding. Presents had 
 been sent by various admirers. There was good news 
 from America. The English edition of the ' French 
 Revolution ' was ahnost sold, and another would be called 
 for, while there were numberless applications from review 
 editors for articles if he would please to supply them. 
 Another 50Z. had come from Boston, and he had been 
 meditating an indulgence for himself out of all this pros- 
 perity in the sliape of a horse, nothing keeping him in 
 health so much as ridino- ; but his first thouojht was of 
 Scotsbrig and a Christmas gift to his mother, which he 
 sent with a most pretty letter. 
 
 To Margaret Carlyle, Scotsbrig. 
 
 Chelsea : December 29, 1838. 
 I have realised my American draft of dollars into pounds ster- 
 ling. I send my dear Mother five off the fore end of it. The kit- 
 lin ought to bring the auld cat a mouse in. such a case as that — an 
 American mouse. It is very curious that cash should come in 
 that way to good Annandale industry across 3,000 miles of salt 
 water from kind hands that we never saw. * French Eevolution ' 
 is going off briskly, and a new edition required. Both from the 
 ' Miscellanies ' and it I hope to make a little cash. I understand 
 the method of bargaining better now, and the books do sell — no 
 thanks to booksellers, or even in spite of them. It does not seem 
 at all likely that I shall ever have much money in this world ; but 
 I am not now so terribly hard held as I used to be. Such bitter 
 thrift may perhaps be less imperative by-and-by. 
 
 Out of the suggestions made by editors for articles one 
 especially had attracted Carlyle. Mill had asked him to 
 WTite on Cromwell for the ' London and "Wesminster.' 
 There is nothing in his journals or letters to shows that 
 Cromwell had been hitherto an interesting figure to him. 
 An allusion in one of his Craigenputtock papers shows that 
 
Oliver Cromwell. 129 
 
 he then shared tlie popular prevailing opinions on tlio 
 subject. He agreed, however, to Mill's proposal, and was 
 preparing to begin with it when the negotiation was 
 broken off in a manner specially affronting. Mill had 
 gone abroad, leaving Mr. Kobertson to manage the Re- 
 view. Robertson, whom Carlyle had hitherto liked, wrote 
 to him coolly to say that he need not go on, for ' he meant 
 to do Cromwell himself.' Carlyle was very angr3\ It 
 was this incident which determined him to throw himself 
 seriously into the history of the Commonwealth, and. to 
 expose himself no more to cavalier treatment from * able 
 editors.' His connection with the ' London and West- 
 minster ' at once ended. 
 
 Have nothing to do with fools (he said). They are the fatal 
 species. Nay, Robei-tson, withal, is fifteen years younger than I. 
 To be ' edited ' by him and by Mill and the Benthaniic formula ! 
 Oh heavens ! It is worse than Algiers and Negro Guiana. Noth- 
 ing short of death should drive a white man to it. 
 
 From this moment he began to think seriously of a life 
 of Oliver Cromwell as his next important undertaking, 
 whatever he might have to do meanwhile in the way of 
 lectures or shorter papers. 
 
 To John Carlyle, 
 
 Chelsea : January 13, 1839. 
 I dare say I mentioned that I was not intending to work any fur- 
 ther at present in the * Westminster Review,' but to write by-and- 
 by something more to my mind. I have my face turned partly 
 towards Oliver Cromwell and the Covenant time in England and 
 Scotland, and am reading books and meaning to read more for the 
 matter, for it is large and full of meaning. But what I shall make 
 of it, or whether I shall make anything at all, it would be prema- 
 ture to say as yet. The only thing clear is that I have again some 
 notion of writing, which I had not at all last year or the year be- 
 fore—a sign doubtless that I am getting into heart again, and not 
 so utterly bewildered and beaten down as I was at the conclusion 
 of the • Revolution ' struggle. Anything that I write now would 
 t^ll better than former things, and I think indeed would be pretty 
 Vol. IIX— 9 
 
130 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 sure to bring me in a trifle of money in the long run. . . . 
 Yon may picture us sitting snug here most evenings in * stuffed 
 chairs,' in this warm little parlour, reading, or reading and sewing, 
 or talking with some rational visitor that has perhaps dropped in. 
 Some people say I ought to get a horse with my American money 
 before lecture-time, and ride, that I might be in a better bodily 
 condition for that enterprise. I should like it right well if it were 
 not so dear. We shall see. 
 
 Want of books was his great difficulty, with such a sub- 
 ject on hand as the Commonwealth. His Cambridge 
 friends had come to liis help by giving him the use of the 
 books in the University Library, and sending them up for 
 liim to read. Yery kind on their part, as he felt, 'con- 
 sidering what a sulky fellow he was.' But he needed re- 
 sources of which he could avail himself more freely. The 
 British Museum was, of course, open to him ; but he re- 
 quired to have his authorities at hand, where his own 
 writing-tackle lay round him, where he could refer to them 
 at any moment, and for this purpose the circulating libra- 
 I'ies were useless. New novels, travels, biographies, the 
 annual growth of literature which today was and to- 
 morrow was cast into the oven — these he could get ; but 
 the records of genuine knowledge, where the pertnanent 
 thoughts and doings of mankind lay embalmed, were to 
 be found for the most part only on the shelves of great 
 institutions, could be read only there, and could not be 
 taken out. Long before, when at Craigenputtock, it had 
 occurred to him that a county town like Dumfries, which 
 maintained a gaol, might equally maintain a public library. 
 He was once at Oxford in the library of All Souls' College, 
 one of the best in England, and one (in my day at least) 
 so little used that, if a book was missed from its place, the 
 whole college was in consternation.* Carlyle, looking 
 wistfully at the ranged folios, exclaimed : ' Ah, books, 
 
 1 The Fellows might take books to their rooms, but so seldom did take them 
 there that any other explanation seemed more likely. 
 
Tfie *^ London JAhfary!* 131 
 
 books ! you will have a poor account to give of yourselves 
 at the day of judgment. Here have you been kept warm 
 and dry, with good coats on your backs, and a good roof 
 over your heads ; and whom have ye made any better or 
 any wiser than he was before ? ' Cambridge, more liberal 
 •than Oxford, did lend out volumes with fit securities for 
 their safety, and from this source Carlyle obtained his 
 Clarendon and Eush worth ; but he determined to try 
 whether a public lending library of authentic worth could 
 not be instituted in London. He has been talked of 
 vaguely as 'unpractical.' Ko one living had a more prac- 
 tical business talent when he had an object in view for 
 which such a faculty was required. He set on foot an 
 agitation.' The end was recognised as good. Influential 
 men took up the question, and it was carried through, and 
 the result was the infinitely valuable institution known as 
 the * London Library ' in St. James's Square. Let the 
 tens of thousands who, it is to be hoped, are ' made better 
 and wiser' by the books collected there remember that 
 they owe the privilege entirely to Carlyle. The germ of 
 it lay in that original reflection of his on the presence of a 
 gaol and the absence of a lii)rary in Dumfries. His sur- 
 cessful effort to realise it in London began in this winter 
 of 1839. 
 
 Meanwhile a third remittance from America on the 
 * Revolution ' brought the whole sum which he had re- 
 ceived fi'om his Boston friends to 150Z. He felt it deeply, 
 for as yet ' not a penny had been realised in England.' In 
 acknowledging the receipt, he said that he had never re- 
 ceived money of which he was more proud. * It had been 
 sent almost by miracle.' He showed the draft to Fraser, 
 his English publisher, and told him he ought to blush. 
 
 » Among the pernons whom he tried to interest waji Babbage, whom ho did 
 not take to. ' Did you ever Bee him ? ' he writes to his brother ; * a mixturo 
 of craven terror and venomooB-looking vehemence ; with no chin too— cross 
 between a frog and a viper, as somebody called him. ' 
 
132 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 The poor creature did blush, but what could that serve ? He 
 has done with his edition too, all but seventy-live copies. Above 
 a thousand i^ounds has been gathered from England from that 
 book, but none seems to belong to the writer ; it all belongs to 
 oLher people— the sharks. They charge above 40 per cent., I find, 
 for the mere function of selling a book, the mere fash of handing 
 it over the counter. 
 
 A strange reflection, to which, however, the publishers 
 have an answer ; for, if some books sell, others fail, and 
 the successful must pay for the unsuccessful. Without 
 publishers and without booksellers, books could not be 
 brought out at all ; and they, too, must ' earn their living.' 
 
 Few men cared less about such things than Carlyle did 
 as long as penury was kept from his door. Apart from 
 his business with the London Library, he was wholly oc- 
 cupied with the records of the Commonwealth, and here 
 are the first impressions which he formed. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea: February 15, 1839. 
 I have read a good many volumes about Cromwell and his times ; 
 I have a good many more to read. Whether a book will come of 
 it or not — still more, when such will come — are questions as yet. 
 The pabulum this subject yields me is not very gi-eat. I find it 
 far inferior in interest to my French subject. But, on the whole, 
 I want to get acquainted with England — a great secret to me al- 
 ways hitherto — and I may as well begin here as elsewhere. There 
 are but two very remarkable men in the period visible as yet — 
 Cromwell and Montrose. The rest verge towards wearisomeness. 
 Indeed, the whole subject is Dutch-built : heavy-bottomed, with 
 an internal fire and significance indeed, but extremely wrapped in 
 buckram and lead. We shall see. In the meanwhile, I have got 
 a large portmanteau of books about the thing from Cambridge. 
 Here they actually stand, sent me by persons whom I never saw ; 
 a most handsome and encouraging phenomenon. The visible 
 agent is one Douglas Heath, a promising young barrister, who 
 sometimes comes here ; is a Cambridge man, and a zealous reader 
 
 of zaine 150/. sent by Emerson for the ' French 
 
 Kevolution ! ' Was any braver thin g ever heard of? 150/. from 
 
Breakfast with Mil/ne8. 133 
 
 beyond the salt sea, wliile not a sixpence could be realised here in 
 one's own country by the thing I I declare my American friends 
 are ri^ht fellows, and have done their aflkirs with effect. It seems 
 I am going to make some cash after all by these books of mine. 
 Tout va bien ; neither need we now add, le pain manque. 
 
 Seldom had Carlyle seemed in better spirits than now. 
 For once his outer world was going well with him. lie 
 had occasional fits of dyspepsia, which, indeed, seemed to 
 afflict him most when he had least that was real to com- 
 plain of. He was disappointed about Montrose for one 
 thing. He had intended, naturally enough as a Scotch- 
 man, to make a principal figure of Montrose, and had 
 found that he could not, that it was impossible to discover 
 what Montrose was really like. But the dyspepsia was 
 the main evil — dyspepsia and London society, which in- 
 terested him more than he would allow, and was the cause 
 of the disorder. He was plagued, too, with duties as a 
 citizen. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 Feh'nary 22, 1839. — The day is rainy and bad. Jane gone out, 
 perhaps not veiy prudently. At seven o'clock I am to dine with 
 the IMarshalls. Me miser am ! Why do I ever agree to go and dine ? 
 Were it revealed to me as tuft-hunting, I would instantly give it 
 up for ever. But it seems to be the only chance of society one 
 has. In this kind I have too much already. Lectures coming 
 too, and on Monday I am to dine with a certain Baring ; and last 
 week, for two days, I was a special juryman. I am a poor creature. 
 I am no longer so poor, but I do not feel any happiness. I must 
 start up and try to help myself. Gott hilf mir ! 
 
 Monckton Milnes had made his acquaintance, and in- 
 vited him to breakfast. He used to say that, if Christ was 
 again on earth, Milnes would ask Him to breakfast, and 
 the Clubs would all be talking of the ' good things ' that 
 Christ had said. But Milnes, then as always, had open 
 eyes for genius, and reverence for it truer and deeper thaa 
 most of his conteniporaricB. 
 
134 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 A month ago (Carlyle writes to his brother) Milnes invited me 
 to breakfast to meet Bunsen. Pusey ^ was there, a solid, judicious 
 Englishman, very kind to me. Hallam was there, a broad, old, 
 positive man, with laughing eyes. X. was there, a most jerking, 
 distorted, violent, vapid, brown-gipsy piece of self-conceit and 
 green-roomism. Others there were ; and the great hero Bunsen, 
 with red face large as the shield of Fingal — not a bad fellow, nor 
 without talent ; full of speech. Protestantism — Prussian Toryism — 
 who zealously inquired my address. 
 
 More important by far than any of these to Carlyle was 
 tlie ' certain Baring ' with w^liom he was to .dine at Bath 
 Ilonse. It is the first notice of his introduction to the 
 brilliant circle in which he was afterward to be so inti- 
 mate. Mr. Baring, later known as Lord Ashburton, be- 
 came tlie closest friend that he had. Lady Harriet 
 became his Gloriana, or Queen of Fairy Land, and exer- 
 cised a strange influence over him for good and evil. But 
 this lay undreamed of in the future, when he w^rote his 
 account of the dinner. Bunsen was again one of the 
 guest;^. 
 
 It was one of the most elevated affairs I had ever seen ; lords, 
 ladies, and other like high personages, several of them auditors of 
 mine in the last lecturing season. The lady of the house, one 
 lady Han-iet Baring, I had to sit and talk with specially for a long, 
 long while — one of the cleverest creatures I have met with, full of 
 mirth and spirit ; not very beautiful to look upon. 
 
 And again, in another letter : — 
 
 Lord Mahon was there, a small, fashionable Tory, with a beau- 
 tiful wife. The dinner was after eight, and ruined me for a week. 
 Bunsen did not shine there. The lady hardly hid from him tha: 
 she feared he was a lore. She kept me talking an hour or more 
 upstairs ; a clever devil, as Taylor calls her, helle laide, full of wit, 
 and the most like a dame of quality of all that I have yet seen. 
 
 Even in Carlyle's own home dissipation pursued him, 
 Mrs. Welsh was staying there, and she and her daughter 
 took it into their heads to have an evening party of the 
 
 > Not Di. Pusey, but his elder brother. 
 
Lmxdon Vanities, 135 
 
 established sort, the first and last time, I believe, that such 
 a thing was attempted in that house. 
 
 -The other week (he says on the 8th of March) Jane andacionslj 
 got up a thing called a soiree one evening — that is to say, a party 
 of persons who have little to do except wander through a room or 
 rooms, and hustle and simmer about, all talking to one another as 
 they best can. It seemed to me a most questionable thing for the 
 Leddy this. However, she was drawn into it insensibly, and could 
 not get retreated ; so it took effect — between twenty and thirty en- 
 tirely brilliant bits of personages — and really, it all went off in a 
 most successful manner. At midnight I smoked a peaceable pipe, 
 praying it might be long before we saw the like again. 
 
 Serious work was somewhat disturbed by these splen- 
 dours ; but, in fact, he was taking life easy, and was not 
 disinclined to enjoy himself. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : March 11, 1839. 
 I am reading a great many books, in a languid way, about Crom- 
 well and his time, but any work on this matter seems yet at a great 
 distance from me. The ti-uth is, I have arrived at the turning of a 
 new leaf, and right thankful am I that Heaven enables me to pause 
 a little, and I willingly follow the monition or permission of 
 Heaven. From my boyhood upwards I have been like a creature 
 breathlessly * climbing a soaj^ed pole ; ' niin and the bottomless 
 abyss beneath me, and the pole quite slippery soaped. But now 
 I have got to a kind of notch on the same, and do purpose, by 
 Heaven's blessing, to take my breath a moment there before ad- 
 venturing furiher. If I live, I shall probably have farther to go ; 
 if not, not — we can do either way. In biliary days (I am apt to be 
 biliary), the devil reproaches me dreadfully, but I answer, ' True, 
 boy ; no sonier scoundrel in the world than lazy 1 1 But what 
 help ? I love no subject so as to give my life for it at present. I 
 will not write on any subject, seest thou ? but prefer to ripen or 
 rot for a while.' 
 
 The lectures had to be provided for, but the subject 
 chosen, the Revolutions of Modern Europe, was one on 
 which Carlyle could speak without special preparation. An 
 English edition of the ' Miscelknies ' was coming out at 
 
136 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 last, and money was to be paid for it. He was thus able 
 to lie upon his oars till Cromwell or some other topic took 
 active possession ; and, meanwhile, he had to receive the 
 homage of the world, which began to be offered from un- 
 expected quarters. An account of Count d'Orsay's visit to 
 Cheyne Row is amusingly told by Mrs. Carlyle in the 
 Letters and Memorials. Here is her husband's version 
 of the same sumptuous phenomenon. After speaking of 
 the favourable arrangements for the publication of the 
 ' Miscellanies,' he says : — 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : April 16, 1839. 
 My heart silently thanks Heaven that I was not tried beyond 
 what I could bear. It is quite a new sensation, and one of the 
 most blessed, that you will actually be allowed to live not a beg- 
 gar. As to the praise, &c., I think it will not hurt me much ; I 
 can see too well the meaning of what that is. I have too faithful 
 a dyspepsia working continually in monition of me, were there 
 nothing else. Nevertheless, I must tell you of the strangest com- 
 pliment of all, which occurred since I wrote last — the advent of 
 Count d'Orsay. About a fortnight ago, this Phoebus Apollo of 
 dandyism, escorted by poor little Chorley, came whirling hither in 
 a chariot that struck all Chelsea into mute amazement with splen- 
 dour. Chorley 's under jaw went like the hopper or under riddle 
 of a pair of fanners, such was his terror on bringing such a splen- 
 dour into actual contact with such a grimness. Nevertheless, we 
 did amazingly well, the Count and I. He is a tall fellow of six feet 
 three, built like a tower, with floods of dark-auburn hair, with a 
 beauty, with an adornment unsurpassable on this planet ; withal 
 a rather substantial fellow at bottom, by no means without insight, 
 without fun, and a sort of rough sarcasm rather striking out of 
 such a porcelain figure. He said, looking at Shelley's bust, in his 
 French accent, * Ah, it is one of those faces who weesh to swallow 
 their chin.' He admired the fine epic, &c., &c.; hoped I would 
 call soon, and see Lady Blessington withal. Finally he went his 
 way, and Chorley with reassumed jaw. Jane laughed for two days 
 at the contrast of my plaid dressing-gown, bilious, iron counte- 
 nance, and this Paphian apparition. I did not call till the other 
 day, and left my card merely. I do not see well what good I can 
 
Third Course of Lectu/res, 137 
 
 get hy meeting him much, or Lady B. and demirepdom, though I 
 should not object to see it once, and then oftener if agi-eeable. 
 
 May brought tlie lectures at the old rooms in Edward 
 Street. They did not please Carlyle, and, perhaps, were 
 not really among his fine utterances. In the * French 
 Revolution ' he had given his best thoughts on the subject 
 in his best manner. He could now only repeat himself, 
 more or less rhetorically, with a varying text. Mrs. Car- 
 lyle herself did not think that her husband "was doing 
 justice to himself. He was unwell for one thing. But 
 the success was distinct as ev^er; the audience bursting 
 into ejaculations of surprise and pleasure. The ' Splen- 
 dids ! ', ' Devilish fines ! ', ^ Most trues ! ', cfec, all indicat- 
 ing that on their side there was no disappointment. His 
 own account of the matter indicates far less satisfaction. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : May 36, 1839. 
 The lectures are over with tolerable eclat, with a clear gain of 
 very nearly 200/., which latter is the only altogether comfortable 
 part of the business. My audience was visibly more numerous 
 than ever, and of more distinguished people. My sorrow in de- 
 livery was less ; my remorse after delivery was much greater. I 
 gave one veiy bad lecture (as I thought) ; the last but one. It 
 was on the French Revolution. I was dispirited — in miserable 
 health. My audience, mainly Toiy, could not be expected to 
 sympathise with me. In short, I felt, after it was over, hke a 
 man that had been robbing henroosts. In which circumstances, 
 I, the day before my finale, hired a swift horse, galloj^ed out to 
 Han*ow like a Faust's flight through an ocean of green, went in a 
 kind of rage to the room the next day, and made on Sanscullottism 
 itself very considerably the nearest approach to a good lecture 
 they ever got out of me, carried the whole business glowing after 
 me, and ended half an hour beyond niy time with universal de- 
 cisive applause suflBcient for the situation. 
 
 The * remorse' was genuine, for Carlyle in his heart 
 disapproved of these displays and detested them. Yet 
 he, too, had become aware of the strange sensation of 
 
138 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 seeing a crowd of people hanging upon his words, and 
 Yielding themselves like an instrument for him to play 
 upon. There is an iri-esistible feeling of proud delight in 
 such situations. If not intoxicated, he was excited ; and 
 Emerson writing at the same moment to press him to 
 show himself in Boston, he did think for a second or 
 two of going over for the autumn ' to learn the art of 
 extempore speaking/ Had he gone it might have been 
 the ruin of him, for he had all the qualities which with 
 practice would have made him a splendid orator. But he 
 was wise in time, and set himself to a worthier enterprise 
 — not yet Cromwell, but something which stood in the 
 way of Cromwell — and insisted on being dealt with before 
 he could settle upon history. All his life he had been 
 meditating on the problem of the working-man's existence 
 in this country at the present epoch ; how wealth was 
 growing, but the human toilers grew none the better, 
 mentally or bodily — not better, only more numerous, and 
 liable, on any check to trade, to sink into squalor and 
 famine. He had seen the Glasgow riots in 1819. He 
 had heard his father talk of the poor masons, dining 
 silently upon w^ater and w^ater-cresses. His letters are 
 full of reflections on such things, sad or indignant, as the 
 humour might be. He was himself a working-man's son. 
 He had been bred in a peasant home, and all his sympa- 
 thies w^ere with his own class. He was not a revolutionist; 
 he knew well that violence would be no remedy; that 
 there lay only madness and deeper misery. But the fact 
 remained, portending frightful issues. The Reform Bill 
 was to have mended matters, but the Beform Bill had 
 gone by and the poor were none the happier. The power 
 of the State had been shifted from the aristocracy to the 
 millowners, and merchants, and shopkeepers. That was 
 all. The handicraftsman remained where he was, or was 
 sinking, rather, into an unowned Arab, to whom ' free- 
 
'ChaHlsm: 139 
 
 dom ' meant freedom to work if the employer had work 
 to ofFer him conveniently to himself, or else freedom to 
 starve. The fruit of such a state of society as tiiis was 
 the Sansculottism on which he had been lecturing, and he 
 felt that he must put his thoughts upon it in a permanent 
 form. He had no faith in political remedies, in extended 
 suffrages, recognition of * the rights of man,' &c. — abso- 
 lutely none. That was the road on which the French had 
 gone ; and, if tried in England, it would end as it ended 
 with them — in anarchy, and hunger, and fury. The root 
 of the mischief was the forgetf ulness on the part of the 
 upper classes, increasing now to flat denial, that they 
 owed any duty to those under them beyond the payment 
 of contract wages at the market price. The Liberal 
 theoiy, as formulated in Political Economy, was that 
 everyone should attend exclusively to his own interests, 
 and that the best of all possible worlds would be the 
 certain result. His own conviction was that the result 
 would be the worst of all possible worlds, a world in 
 which human life, such a life as human beings ought to 
 live, would become impossible. People talked of Prog- 
 ress. To him there was no progress except 'moral prog- 
 ress,' a clearer recognition of the duties which stood face 
 to face with every man at each moment of his life, and 
 the neglect of which would be his destruction. He was 
 appalled at the contrast between the principles on which 
 men practically acted and those which on Sundays they 
 professed to believe ; at the ever-increasing luxury in rich 
 men's palaces, and the wretchedness, without hope of 
 escape, of the millions without whom that luxury could 
 not have been. Such a state of things, he thought, might 
 continue for a time among a people naturally well dis- 
 posed and accustomed to submission ; but it could not last 
 for ever. The Maker of the world would not allow it. 
 The angry slaves of toil would rise and burn the 
 
140 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 as the French peasantry had burnt the chateaux. The 
 only remedy was the old one — to touch the conscience or 
 the fears of those whom he regarded as responsible. He 
 felt that he must write something about all that, though it 
 was not easy to see how or where. Such a message as he 
 had to give would be welcome neither to Liberals nor 
 Conservatives. The Political Economists believed that 
 since the Reform Bill all was going as it should do, and 
 required only to be let alone ; the more the rich enjoyed 
 themselves, the more employment there would be, and 
 high and low would be l)enefited alike. The I^oble Lords 
 and gentry were happy in their hounds and their game- 
 preserves, and had lost the sense that rank and wealth 
 meant anything save privilege for idle amusement. Not 
 to either of these, nor to their organs in the press, could 
 Carlyle be welcome. He was called a Radical, and Radi- 
 cal he was, if to require a change in the souls, and hearts, 
 and habits of life of men was to be a Radical. But per- 
 haps no one in England more entirely disbelieved every 
 single article of the orthodox Radical creed. He had more 
 in common with the Tories than with their rivals, and was 
 prepared, if such a strange ally pleased them, to let it so 
 appear. 'Guess what immediate project I am on,' he 
 wrote to his brother, when the lectures were over : ' that 
 of writing an article on the working-classes for the " Quar- 
 terly." It is verily so. I offered to do the thing for Mill 
 about a year ago. He durst not. I felt a kind of call 
 and monition of duty to do it, wrote to Lockhart accord- 
 ingly, was altogether invitingly answered, had a long in- 
 terview with the man yesterday, found him a person of 
 sense, good-breeding, even kindness, and great consen- 
 taneity of opinion with myself on the matter. Am to get 
 books from him to-morrow, and so shall forthwith set abont 
 telling the Conservatives a thing or two about the claims, 
 condition, rights, and mights of the working order of men. 
 
' Chai'tmn: 141 
 
 Jane is very glad, partly from a kind of spite at the Blod- 
 ainnigkelt of Mill and his wooden set. The liadicals, as 
 they stand now, are dead and gone, I apprehend, owing 
 to their lieathen stupidity on this very matter. It is not 
 to he out till autumn, that being the time for things re- 
 quiring thought, as Lockhart says. I shall have much to 
 read and inquire, but I shall have the thing off my hands, 
 and have my heart clear about it.' 
 
 What came of this project will be seen. One result of 
 it, however, was a singular relation which grew up between 
 Carlyle and Lockhart. They lived in different circles; 
 they did not meet often, or correspond often ; but Carlyle 
 ever after spoke of Lockhart as he seldom spoke of any 
 man ; and such letters of Lockhart's to Carlyle as survive 
 show a trusting confidence extremely remarkable in a man 
 who was so chary of his esteem. 
 
 In general society Carlyle was mixing more and more, 
 important persons seeking his acquaintance. He met 
 Webster, the famous American, at breakfast one morning, 
 and has left a portrait of this noticeable politician. ' I 
 will warrant him,' he says, ' one of the stiffest logic buffers 
 and parliamentary athletes anywhere to be met with in 
 our world at present — a grim, tall, broad -bottomed, yellow- 
 skinned man, with brows like precipitous cliffs, and huge, 
 black, dull, wearied, yet unweariable-looking eyes, under 
 them ; amoi-phous projecting nose, and the angriest shut 
 mouth I have anywhere seen. A droop on the sides of 
 the upper lip is quite mastiff-like — magnificent to look 
 upon ; it is so quiet withal. I guess I should like ill to 
 be that man's nigger. However, he is a I'ight clever man 
 in his way, and has a husky sort of fun in him too ; drawls 
 in a handfast didactic manner about "our republic insti- 
 tutions," &c., and so plays his part.' Another memorable 
 notability Carlyle came across at this time, who struck 
 him much, and the attraction was nmtual — Connop Thirl- 
 
142 Varlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 wall, afterwards Bishop of St. David's, then under a cloud 
 in the ecclesiastic world, as ' suspect ' of heresy. Of this 
 great man more will be heard hereafter. Their first meet- 
 ing was at James Spedding's rooms in Lincoln's Inn 
 Fields ; ' very pleasant, free and easy, with windows flung 
 up, and tobacco ad libitum,'^ He found the future bishop 
 ' a most sarcastic, sceptical, but strong-hearted, strong- 
 headed man, whom he had a real liking for.' The ortho- 
 dox side of the conversation was maintained, it seems, 
 by Milnes, 'who gave the party dilettante Catholicism, 
 and endured Thirlwall's tobacco.' 
 
 One more pleasant incident befell Carlyle before the 
 dog-days and the annual migration. He was known to 
 wish for a horse, and yet to hesitate whether such an in- 
 dulgence was permissible to a person financially situated 
 as he was. Mr. Marshall, of Leeds, whose name has been 
 already mentioned, heard of it ; and Mr. Marshall's son 
 appeared one day in Cheyne Kow, with a message that his 
 father had a mare for which he had no use, and would be 
 pleased if Carlyle would accept her. The offer was made 
 with the utmost delicacy. If he was leaving town, and 
 did not immediately need such an article, they would keep 
 her at grass till he returned. It was represented, in fact, 
 as a convenience to them, as well as a possible pleasure to 
 him. The gift was nothing in itself, for Mr. Marshall 
 was a man of vast wealth ; but it was a handsome sign of 
 consideration and good-feeling, and was gratefully recog- 
 nised as such. The mare became Carlyle's. She was 
 called ' Citoyenne,' after the ' French Eevolution.' The 
 expense would be something, but would be repaid by in- 
 crease of health. Mrs. Carlyle said, ' It is like buying a 
 laying hen, and giving it to some deserving person. Ac- 
 cept it, dear ! ' 
 
 A still nearer friend had also been taking thought for 
 his comfort. He was going to Scotland, and this year his 
 
Holiday m Scotlcmd. 143 
 
 wife was going with him. The faithful, though tfnl Jolm 
 had sent 30Z. privately to his brother Alick at Eccle- 
 fechan, to provide a horse and gig, that Carlyle and she 
 might drive about together as with the old cLatch at 
 Craigenputtock — a beautiful action on the part of John. 
 They went north in the middle of July, going fii-st to 
 Kithsdale to stay with Mrs. Welsh at Templand. Mrs. 
 Welsh, too, had been considering what she could do to 
 gratify her son-in-law, and had invited his mother over 
 from Scotsbrig to meet him. Mrs. Carlyle was not well 
 at Templand, and could not mnch enjoy herself ; but 
 Carlyle was like a boy out of school. He and his old 
 mother drove about in John's gig together, or wandered 
 through the shrubberies, smoking their pipes together, 
 like a pair of lovers — as indeed they were. Later on, 
 when he grew impatient again, he called the life which he 
 was leading ' sluggish ignoble solitude,' but it was as near 
 an approach as he ever knew to what is meant by happi- 
 ness. This summer nothing went wrong with him. 
 When the Templand visit was over, he removed to Scots- 
 brig and there stayed, turning over his intended article. 
 Of letters he wrote few of any interest — chiefly to his 
 brother John, who was thinking of leaving Lady Clare, 
 and of settling in London to be near Cheyne Row. 
 Carlyle's advice to him shows curious self-knowledge. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Scotsbrig : August 13, |839. 
 If your lot brought you near me, it would, of course, be a bless- 
 ing to me — to us both, I dare say ; for, though we chaffer and 
 argue a good deal — a good deal too much — yet surely there is 
 good brotherly agreement between us. A brother is a great 
 possession in this world — one of the greatest ; yet it would be un- 
 wise to make great sacrifices of essentials for the advantage of 
 being close together. Ah me ! I am no man whom it is desirable 
 to be too close to — an unhappy mortal — at least, with nen'es that 
 preappoint me to continual pain and loneliness, let me have what 
 
144 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 crowds of society I like. To work is the sole use of living. But 
 we will speculate no longer ; above all, we will not complain. 
 
 The holiday lasted two months only. ' W ilhel rn Meister ' 
 was now to be republished, and he was wanted at home. 
 The railway had just been opened from Preston to Lon- 
 don ; and on this return journey he made his first experi- 
 ence of the new mode of locomotion. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : September 13, 1839. • 
 The whirl through the confused darkness, on those steam wings, 
 was one of the strangest things I have experienced — hissing and 
 dashing on, one knew not whither. We saw the gleam of towns 
 in the distance — unknown towns. We went over the tops of 
 houses — one town or village I saw clearly, with its chimney heads 
 vainly stretching up towards us — under the stars ; not under the 
 clouds, but among them. Out of one vehicle into another, snort- 
 ing, roaring we flew : the likest thing to a Faust's flight on the 
 Devil's mantle ; or as if some huge steam night-bird had flung you 
 on its back, and was sweeping through unknown space with you, 
 most probably towards London. At Birmingham, an excellent 
 breakfast, with deliberation to eat it, set us up surprisingly ; and 
 so, with the usual series of phenomena, we were safe landed at 
 Euston Square, soon after one o'clock. We slept long and deep. 
 It was a great surprise the first moment to find one did not waken 
 af Scotsbrig. Wretched feelings of all sorts were holding carnival 
 within me. The best I could do was to keep the door carefully 
 shut on them. I sate dead silent all yesterday, working at 
 * Meister ; ' and now they are gone back to their caves again. 
 
CHAPTER VIL 
 
 A.D. 1839-40. MT. 44-45. 
 
 Review of Carlyle by Sterling — Article on CJliartism offered to 
 Lockhart — Expanded into a book — Dinner in Dover Street — 
 First sight of Dickens — Lectures on Heroes — Conception of 
 Cromwell — Visit from Thirlwall — London Library — Impres- 
 sions of Tennyson — Reviews — Puseyism— Book to be written 
 on Cromwell. 
 
 A PLEASANT surprise waited for Carlyle on his return to 
 London — an article upon him by Sterling in the ' West- 
 minster Review.' Sterling's admiration was steadily grow- 
 ing — admiration alike for his friend's intellect and char- 
 acter. It was the first public acknowledgment of Car- 
 lyle's ' magnitude ' which had been made. He perhaps 
 remembered that he had expressed some spleen at Sterling 
 in the summer, and a little penitence may have been mixed 
 with his gratitude. 
 
 To John Sterling. 
 
 Chelsea : September 29, 1839. 
 . . . Mill says it is the best thing you ever wrote ; and, truly, 
 so should I, if you had not shut my mouth. It is a thing all glar- 
 ing and boiling like a furnace of molten metal : ' a brave thing, 
 nay a vast and headlong, full of generosity, passionate insight, 
 lightning, extravagance, and Sterlingism — such an article as we 
 have not read for some time pa.st. It will be talked of ; it will be 
 admired, condemned, and create astonishment and give offence far 
 and near. My friend, what a notion you have got of me ! I dis- 
 cern certain natural features, the general outline of shape ; but it 
 is as one would in the Air Giant of the Hartz, huge as Opheueus, 
 » Sterling's article la reprinted by Hare, vol. L, p. ^SSL 
 Vol. III. -10 
 
146 Carlyle^s Life in London, 
 
 painted there as one finds by sunrise and early vapour— i.e. by 
 Sterling's heart impinging on you between himself and the ' West- 
 minster Eeview.' I do not thank you, for I know not whether 
 such things are good ; nay, whether they are not bad and poison 
 to one ; but I will still say, there has no man in these islands been 
 so reviewed in my time. It is the most magnanimous eulogy I 
 ever knew one man utter of another man, whom he knew face to 
 face, and saw go grumbling about in coat ' and breeches, a poor 
 concrete reality very offensive now and then. God help you, my 
 man, with such a huge Brocken Spectre Chimsera, and a lot of 
 cub chimseras sucking at her. I would not be in youi' shoes for 
 something ! 
 
 Sterling's appreciation, when read now, rather seems to 
 fall short of the truth than to exceed it. But now is now, 
 and then was then — and a man's heart beats when he 
 learns, for the first time, that a brother man admires and 
 loves him. If Carlyle was proud, he had no vanity, and 
 lie allowed no vanity to grow in him. He set himself to 
 his article for Lockliart. He sent for Citoyenne, which 
 had remained till now with Mr. Marshall. 
 
 I go out to ride daily (he reported on October 8), sometimes in 
 the Park, sometimes over the river, or somewhere else into the 
 country — sometimes I fall in with some other friend, also riding, 
 and then it is quite cheerful to go trotting together through green 
 lanes, from one open common, with its whin-bushes and high 
 trees, to another. My horse is in the best order, and does seem 
 to do me good. I will try it out, and see what good comes of it, 
 dear though it be. 
 
 JoiLvnaL 
 
 October 23, 1839. — My riding keeps me solitary. It is all exe- 
 cuted at calling hours ; the hours I used to spend in visiting or 
 wandering about the crowded thoroughfares, looking at the noisy 
 and, to me, irrational, inarticulate spectacle of the streets. Green 
 lanes, swift riding, and solitude — how much more delightful ! For 
 two hours every day I have almost an immunity from pain. My 
 poverty, contrasted with the expensiveness of riding, makes me 
 enjoy the thing more ; joy on a basis of apprehension ; thankful- 
 ness kept constantly alive by the insecurity of the thing one is 
 thankful for. My health is not greatly, yet it is perceptibly, im- 
 
' ChaHimi.: 147 
 
 proved. I have distinctly less pain in all hours. Had I work to 
 keep my heai-t at rest, I should be as well off as I have almost ever 
 been. Much solitude is good for me here. Society enough 
 comes to me of its own accord. Too much society is likely to 
 sweep me along with it, ever and anon, that I, too, become a vain 
 ! repeater of its heai-says, and have no thought or knowledge of my 
 ^wn. How did Goethe work? One should get into a way of 
 profitably occupying every day, even in the vague, uncommanded, 
 unlimited condition I now stand in. Articles, reviews, have lost 
 .their chann for me. It seems a mere threshing of dusty straw. 
 This last year, it is very strange, I have for the first time these 
 twelve years — I may say in some measure the fii-st time in my life 
 — been free, almost as free as other men perhaps are, from the be- 
 wildering terror of coming to actual want of money. Veiy strange ! 
 a very considerable alleviation. It now seems as if I actually 
 might calculate on contriving some way or other to make bread for 
 myself without begging it. 
 
 Under these conditions, and riding every day, Carlyle 
 contrived to finish without fret or fume the hypothetical 
 article for the ' Quarterly ' — for the ' Quarteily ' as had 
 been proposed, yet, as it grew under his hand, he felt but 
 too surely that in those pages it could find no place. 
 Could the Tory party five-and-forty years ago have ac- 
 cepted Carlyle for their prophet, they would not be where 
 they are now. Ileat and motion, the men of science tell 
 us, are modes of the same force, which may take one form 
 or the other, but not both at once. So it is with social 
 greatness. The Xoble Lord may live in idleness and lux- 
 ury, or he may have political power, but lie must choose 
 between them. If he prefer the first, ho will not keep 
 the second. Carlyle saw too plainly that for him in that 
 quarter there would be no willing audience. 
 
 I have finished (he wrote, November 8) a long review article, 
 thick pamphlet, or little volume, entitled * Chartism.' Lockhart 
 has it, for it was partly promised to him ; at least the refusal of it 
 was, and that, I conjecture, will be all he will enjoy of it. Such 
 an article, equally astonishing to Girondins, Radicals, do-nothing 
 Aristocrats, Conservatives, and unbelieving dilettante Whigs, can 
 
148 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 hope for no harbour in any Eeview. Lockhart refusing it, I mean 
 to print it at my own expense. The thing has been in my head 
 and heart these ten, some of it these twenty, years. One is right 
 glad to be delivered of such a thing on any terms. No sect in our 
 day has made a wretcheder figure than the Bentham Radical sect. 
 Nature abhors a vacuum — worthy old girl ! She will not make a 
 wretched, unsympathetic, scraggy Atheism and Egoism fruitful in 
 her world, but answers to it — 'Enough, thou scraggy Atheism ! 
 Go thy way, wilt thou ? " 
 
 It proved as he expected with the ' Quarterly.' Lock- 
 liart probably agreed with every word that Carlyle had 
 written, but to admit a lighted rocket of that kind into 
 the Conservative arsenal might have shattered the whole 
 concern. Lockhart ' sent it back after a week, seemingly 
 not without reluctance, saying he dared not.' It was then 
 shown to Mill, who was unexpectedly delighted with it. 
 The ' Westminster Review ' was coming to an end. Mill 
 was now willing to publish ' Chartism ' in his last number 
 as ' a kind of final shout, that he might sink like the 
 Yengeur with a broadside at the water's edge.' Carlyle 
 might have consented ; but his wife, and his brother John, 
 who was in England, insisted that the thing was too good 
 for a fate so ignoble. The ^ Westminster Review ' was 
 nothing to him, that he should sink along with it. This 
 was his own opinion too, which for Mill's sake he had 
 been ready to w:aive. 
 
 I (he said) offered them this very thing two years ago, the block- 
 heads, and they dared not let me write it then. If they had taken 
 more of my counsel, they need not perhaps have been in a sinking 
 state at present. But they went their own way, and now their 
 Eeview is to cease ; and their whole beggarly unbelieving Radical- 
 ism may cease too, if it likes, and let us see whether there be not 
 a believing Radicalism possible. In short, I think of publishing 
 this piece, which I have called 'Chartism,' about the poor, their 
 rights and their wrongs, as a little separate book. Eraser will 
 print it, halving the profits. It may be out probably the end of 
 this month (December 1). 
 
* Chartism: 149 
 
 The book was not long, tlie printers were expeditious, 
 and before the year was out ' Chartisui ' was added to the 
 list of Carl^le's published works. The sale was rapid, an 
 edition of a thousand copies being sold immediately — and 
 the large lump of leaven was thrown into the general 
 trough to ferment there and work as it could. *Meister,' 
 the most unlike it of all imaginable creations, was repub- 
 lislied at tlie same time. The collected 'Miscellanies' were 
 also passing through the press. 
 
 It is strange work with me (lie said) studying these essays over 
 again. Ten yeai's of my life lie strangely written there. It is I, 
 and it is not I, that wrote all that. They are as I could make 
 them among the peat bogs and other confusions. It rather seems 
 the people like them, in spite of all their crabbedness. 
 
 ' Chartism ' was loudly noticed ; * considerable revie\v- 
 ing, but very daft reviewing.' Men wondered ; how could 
 they choose but wonder, when a writer of evident power 
 stripped bare the social disease, told them that their reme- 
 dies were quack remedies, and their progress was progress 
 to dissolution ? The Liberal journals, finding their * for- 
 mulas' disbelieved in, clamoured tiiat Carlyle was unor- 
 thodox ; no Tladical, but a wolf in sheep's clothing. Yet 
 what he said was true, and could not be denied to be true. 
 ' They approve generally,' he said, ' but regret very much 
 that I am a Tory. Stranger Tory, in my opinion, has not 
 been fallen in with in these later generations.' Again a 
 few weeks later (February 11): 'The people are begin- 
 ning to discover that I am not a Tory. Ah, no I but one 
 of the deepest, though perhaps the quietest, of all the 
 Radicals now extant in the world — a thing productive of 
 small comfort to several persons. They have said, and 
 they will say, and let them say.' 
 
 He, too, had had his say. The burden on liis soul 
 which lay between him and other work had been thrown 
 off. Now was time to take up the Commonwealth iu 
 
150 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 earnest ; bat other subjects were again rising between 
 Carlyle and the Commonwealth. One more, and this the 
 final, course of lectures was to be delivered this spring ; 
 and it was to contain something of more consequence than 
 its predecessors, something which he could wish to pre- 
 serve. By the side of laissez-faire and ' democracy' in poli- 
 tics there was growing up a popular philosophy analogous 
 to it. The civilisation of mankind, it was maintained 
 (though Mr. Buckle had not yet risen to throw the theory 
 into shape), expanded naturally with the growth of knowl- 
 edge. Knowledge spread over the world like light, and 
 though great men, as they were called, might be a few 
 inches taller than their fellows, arid so catch the rays a few 
 days or years before the rest, yet the rays did not come 
 from them, but from the common source of increasing il- 
 lumination. Great men were not essentially superior to 
 common men. They were' the creatures of their age, not 
 the creators of it, scarcely even its guides ; and the course 
 of things would have been very much the same if this or 
 that person who had happened to become famous had 
 never existed. Such a view was flattering to the millions 
 w^ho were to be invited to self-government. It was the 
 natural corollary of the theory that all men were equal 
 and possessed an equal right to have their opinions repre- 
 sented. It was the exact opposite of the opinion of Car- 
 lyle, who held that the welfare of mankind depended 
 more on virtue than on scientific discoveries ; and that 
 scientific discoveries themselves which were worth the- 
 name were achievable only by truthfulness and manliness. 
 The immense mass of men he believed to be poor creat- 
 ures, poor in heart and poor in intellect, incapable of 
 making any progress at all if left to their own devices, 
 though with a natural loyalty, if not distracted into self- 
 conceit, to those who were wiser and better than them- 
 selves. Every advance which humanity had made was 
 
Lectures on Heroes. 161 
 
 due to special individuals supremely gifted in mind and 
 character, whom Providence sent among them at favoured 
 epochs. It was not true, then or ever, that men were 
 equal. They were infinitely unequal — unequal in intelli- 
 gence, and still more unequal in moral pui*])ose. So far 
 from being able to guide or govern themselves, their one 
 cliance of improvement lay in their submitting to their 
 natural superiors, either by their free will, or else by com- 
 pulsion. This was the principle which he proposed to il- 
 lustrate in a set of discourses upon 'Heroes and Hero- 
 Worship.' In the autumn he had been reading about the 
 Arabs, which perhaps suggested the idea to him. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 October, 1839. — Arabian Tales by Lane ; very pious. No people 
 so religious, except the English and Scotch Puritans for a season. 
 Good man Mahomet, on the whole ; sincere ; a fighter, not indeed 
 with perfect triumph, yet with honest battle. No mere sitter in 
 the chimney-nook with theories of battle, such as your ordinary 
 * perfect ' characters are. The * vein of anger ' between his brows, 
 beaming black eyes, brown complexion, stout middle figure ; fond 
 of cheerful social talk — wish I knew Arabic. Cromwell ! How on 
 earth could he be treated ? Begin to see him at times in some 
 measure, even to like him and pity him. Voyons ! Is the drama 
 altogether dead ? I fear so ; for me at any rate. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : February 27, 1840. 
 I am beginning seriously to meditate my course of lectures, and 
 have even, or seem to have, the primordium of a subject in me, 
 though not * nameable ' as yet ; and the dinners, routs, callei-s, 
 confusions inevitable to a certain length. Ay de mi ! I wish I was 
 far from it. No health lies for me in that for body or for soul. 
 Welfare, at least the absence of ill fare and semi-delirium, is pos- 
 sible for me in solitude only. Solitude indeed is sad as Oolgotha, 
 but it is not mad like Bedlam. Oh, the devil bum it ! there is no 
 pleasing of you, strike where one will. 
 
 'The devil burn it, there is no pleasing of you! 'was 
 the saying of an Irish corporal who was flogging some ill- 
 
152 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 deserver. Whether he hit him high or hit liim low, the 
 victim was equally dissatisfied. Carlyle complained when 
 alone, and complained when driven into the world ; din-, 
 ner parties cost him his sleep, damaged his digestion, 
 damaged his temper. Yet when he went into society no 
 one enjoyed it more or created more enjoyment. The 
 record of adventures of this kind alternates with groans 
 over the consequent sufferings. He was the keenest of 
 observers ; the game was not ^vorth the candle to him, but 
 he gathered out of it what he could. Here is an account 
 of a dinner at the Stanleys' in Dover Street. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : March 17, 1840. 
 There, at the dear cost of a shattered set of nerves and head set 
 whirling for the next eight-and-forty hours, I did see lords and 
 lions — Lord Holland and Lady, Lord Normanby, &c. — and then, 
 for soiree upstairs, Morpeth, Lansdowne, French Guizot, the 
 Queen of Beauty, &c. Nay, Pickwick, too, was of the same dinner 
 party, though they do not seem to heed him over-much. He is a 
 fine little fellow — Boz, I think. Clear blue, intelligent eves, eye- 
 brows that he arches amazingly, large protrusive rather loose 
 mouth, a face of most extreme mobility, which he shuttles about — 
 eyebrows, eyes, mouth and all — in a very singular manner while 
 speaking. Surmount this with a loose coil of. common-coloured 
 hair, and set it on a small compact figure, very small, and dressed 
 S la D'Orsay rather than well — this is Pickwick, For the rest a 
 quiet, shrewd- looking, little fellow, who seems to guess pretty 
 well what he is and what others are. Lady Holland is a brown- 
 skinned, silent, sad, concentrated, proud old dame. Her face, 
 when you see it in profile, has something of the falcon character, 
 if a falcon's bill were straight ; and you see much of the white of 
 her eye. Notable word she spake none — sate like one wont to be 
 obeyed and entertained. Old Holland, whose legs are said to be 
 almost turned to stove, pleased me much. A very large, bald 
 head, small, grey, invincible, composed-looking eyes, the immense 
 tuft of an eyebrow which all the Foxes have, stiff upper lip, roomy 
 mouth and chin , short, angry, yet modest nose. I saw there a fine 
 old Jarl — an honest, obstinate, candid, wholesomely limited, very 
 effectual and estimable old man. Of the rest I will not say a syl- 
 
Unrest. 153 
 
 lable, not even of the Queen of Beauty, who looked rather withered 
 and unwell. 
 
 Siicli scenes might amuse while they lasted ; but shat- 
 tered nerves for forty-eight hours were a heavy price to 
 pay for them, and they brought no real pleasure. To Mr. 
 Erskine he writes in the middle of it : — 
 
 Time does not reconcile me to this immeasurable, soul-confusing 
 uproar of a life in London. I meditate passionately many times 
 to fly from it for hfe and sanity. The sound of clear brooks, of 
 woody solitudes, of sea- waves under summer suns ; all this in one's 
 fancy here is too beautiful, like sad, forbidden fruit. Cor irre- 
 quietum est. We will wait and see. 
 
 More really interesting were letters which came to him 
 from strangers low and high, who were finding in his 
 writings guidance through their own intellectual perplexi- 
 ties. Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, wrote that 'since he had 
 read the " French Revolution " he had longed to become 
 acquainted with its author. He had found in that book 
 an understanding of the true nature of history, such as it 
 delighted his heart to meet wuth. The wisdom and elo- 
 quence of it was such a treasure to him as he had rarely 
 met with, and was not often likely to meet with again.' 
 A poor Paisley weaver thanked him, in a yet moi'e wel- 
 come if ill-spelt missive, for having tauglit him that * man 
 does not live by demonstration, but by faith. The world 
 had been to him for a long time a deserted temple. Car- 
 lyle's writings had restored the significance of things to 
 him, and his voice had been as the voice of a beneficent 
 spiritual father.' This was worthier homage than the 
 flattering worship of Loudon frivolity which injured health 
 and temper. 
 
 March 30, 1840.— I pass my days under the abominable press- 
 ure of physical misery— a man foiled. I mean to ride diligently 
 for three complete months, try faithfully whether in tliat way my 
 insupportable burden au<l imprisonment cannot be alleviated into 
 
154 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 at least the old degree of endurability. And failing that, I shall 
 pray God to aid me in the requisite decisive measures, for posi- 
 tively my life is black and hateful to me. Spent as I am forced to 
 spend it here, I once for all must not and will not continue so. I 
 have serious thoughts of writing my lectures down, then flaming 
 about over both hemispheres with them (too like a Oagliostroccio), 
 to earn so much as will buy the smallest peculium of annuity, 
 whereon to retire into some hut by the seashore, and there lie 
 quiet till my hour come. 
 
 ' Physical misery ' was not the worst, for it was an old 
 failing of Carlyle's that when he was uncomfortable he 
 could not keep it to himself, and made more of it than the 
 reality justified. Long before, when with the Bullers at 
 Kinnaird, he had teri-ified his family with accounts of his 
 tortures from dyspepsia, and had told them afterwards they 
 should have known that wdien he cried ' murder ' he was 
 not always being killed. His wife suffered perhaps more 
 than he from colds and pains and sleeplessness ; when her 
 husband was dilating upon his own sorrows, he often foi*- 
 got hers, or made them worse by worry. Charming, witty, 
 brilliant, affectionately playful as she naturally was, she 
 had ' a hot temper,' as Carlyle had said, and a tongue, 
 when she was angry, like a cat's, which would take the 
 skin off at a touch. Here is a brief entry in Carlyle's 
 Journal significant of much. 
 
 April 23, 1840. — Work ruined for this day. Imprudently ex- 
 pressed complaints in the morning filled all the sky with clouds — 
 portending grave issues ? or only inane ones ? I am sick and very 
 miserable. I have kept riding for the last two months. My health 
 seems hardly to improve. I have been throwing my lectures upon 
 paper — lectures on Heroes. I know not what will come of them. 
 In twelve days we shall see. ' Miscellanies ' out, and ' Chartism ' 
 second thousand. If I were a little healthier — ah me ! all were 
 well. 
 
 Among such elements as these grew the magnificent 
 addresses on great men and their import in this world. 
 Fine flowers will grow where the thorns are sharpest ; and 
 
Lectures on Heroes. 155 
 
 tlie cactus does not lose its prickles, though planted in the 
 kindliest soil. Ix)ndon did not suit Carlyle, but^would 
 any other place have suited him better? 
 
 Of the delivery of this course of lectures we have a more 
 particular account than of the rest, foi* he wrote regularly, 
 while they were proceeding, to his mother. The Urst was 
 on the Hero as God, Odin being the representative figure ; 
 Odin, and not Another, for obvious reasons ; but in this, 
 as in everything, Carlyle was Xorse to the heart. 
 
 To Margaret Carlyky Scotsbrig. 
 
 Chelsea: May 6, 1840. 
 
 First lecture over. I tliouglit I should get something like the 
 tenth part of my meaning unfolded to the good people, and I 
 could not feel that I had got much more. However they seemed 
 content ; sate silent, listening as if it had been gospel. I strive 
 not to heed my own notion of the thing, to keep down the conceit and 
 ambition of vie, for that is it. I was not in good tune. I had 
 awoke at 4^. My room was considerably fuller than even before — 
 the bonniest and brawest of jjeople. "What more could the human 
 mind require of such a business? I fancy, being once fairly into 
 the subject, I shall do a thought better, perhaps, on Friday, 
 though Mahomet is not a very intimate friend to any of us. I will 
 make a book of it perhaps, and be hanged to them ! What the 
 newsi)apers say for or against, or whether they say anything, ap- 
 pears to be of no consequence at all. 
 
 May 9. — I gave my second lecture yesterday' to a larger 
 audience than ever, and with all the success, or more, that was 
 necessary for me. It was on Mahomet. I had bishops and all 
 kinds of people among my hearei*s. I gave them to know that tho 
 poor Ai-ab had j^oints about him which it were good for all of them 
 to imitate ; that probably they were more of quacks than he ; that, 
 in short, it was altogether a new kind of thing they were hearing 
 to-day. The people seemed greatly astonished and greatly pleased. 
 I vomited forth on them like wild Annandale grapeshot. They 
 laughed, applauded, &c. In short, it was all right, and I suppose 
 it was by much the best lecture I shall have the luck to give this 
 time ; for really it all depends on what we call luck. I cannot say 
 
 * The Hero as Prophet ; Mahomet 
 
156 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 in tlie least whether my lecture will be good or bad when I begin 
 to deliver it. So far it is well enough. And now, alas ! as the 
 price of a good lecture my nerves are thrown into such a flurry 
 that I got little sleep last night, and am all out of sorts to-day. 
 Two weeks more and the sore business is done, and perhaj^s I 
 shall never try it another time. My audience is between two and 
 three hundred, and grew a great deal larger after the first lecture. 
 I expect to clear 200/. out of it. That is the result, and next year 
 I hope I may be able to dispense with that aid, since it must be 
 purchased with such a tirrivee, which I like so ill. 
 
 The third and fourth lectures were on the Hero as Poet, 
 Dante and Shakespeare being the representatives ; and 
 the Hero as Priest, with Luther and Knox. 
 
 May 20. — Fifth lecture * delivered yesterday. Jane says, and 
 indeed I rather think it is true, that these last two lectures are 
 among the best I ever gave. She says the very best, but I do not 
 think that ; and certainly they have not done me nearly so much 
 mischief as the others were wont. I feel great pain and anxiety 
 till I get them done on the day when they are to be done ; but no 
 excessive shattering of myself to pieces in consequence of that. 
 The thing seems a thing I could learn to stand by-and-by. Be- 
 sides I am telling the people matters that belong much more to 
 myself this year, which is far more interesting to me. I fancy 
 myself to be perhaps offending this man to-day, and that man 
 another day, but I say, ' No help for it, friends ; you must just 
 w^ait ; see how it will turn, and adjust yourselves ; if it do not 
 turn well for you, the story must be told,' and so it goes along 
 tolerably well. 
 
 May 23. — I got through the last lecture yesterday in very toler- 
 able style,^ seemingly much to the satisfaction of all parties ; and 
 the people all expressed in a great variety of ways much very 
 genuine-looking friendliness for me. I contrived to tell them 
 something about poor Cromwell, and I think to convince them 
 that he was a great and true man, the valiant soldier in England 
 of what John Knox had preached in Scotland. In a word, the 
 people seemed agreed that it was my best course of lectures, this. 
 And now you see I am handsomely through it, and ought to be 
 very thankful. I will not be in haste to throw myself into such a 
 
 » The Hero as Man of Letters. ^ The Hero as King. 
 
Third Course of Lectures, 157 
 
 tumble again. It stirs me all up into ferment, fret, and confusion, 
 such as I hate altogether ; and now that I have got some fraction 
 of cash one way and another I can wait. I will keep my horse a 
 while longer, dear as it is, and try a little further whether there is 
 not some good use in it — worth 25 shillings a week — ^yea or no. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : May 20, 1840. 
 The lecturing business went off with sufficient eclat. The course 
 was generally judged, and I rather join therein myself, to be the 
 bad best I have yet given. On the last day — Friday last — I went 
 to speak of Cromwell with a head full of air; you know that 
 wretched physical feeling ; I had been concerned with drugs, had 
 awakened at five, <fec. It is absolute martyrdom. My tongue 
 would hardly wag at all when I got done. Yet the good people 
 sate breathless, or broke out into all kinds of testimonies of good- 
 will ; seemed to like very much indeed the huge ragged image I 
 gave them of a believing Calvinistic soldier and reformer. * Suu- 
 clear, nucleus of intellect and force and faith, in its wild circum- 
 ambient element of darkness, hypochondriac miseiy and quasi- 
 madness, in direct communication once more with the innermost 
 deep of things.' In a word, we got right handsomely through. 
 My health is certainly, one would think, better than it was last 
 year ; at least, I have far more clearness, vigour of mind ; but all 
 secondary symptoms seem as bad as ever — want of sleej), &c. I 
 rush out into the solitary woods and gi'een places. The air is 
 odorous with blossoms ; the sight reposes itself on a world of 
 bursting greenness. Three times out in the Wimbledon region I 
 have heard the cuckoo almost with teai-s. Thank Grod I feel as if 
 there did lie a little more in me, as if my continued life and 
 misery was not for no purpose. 
 
 This was Carlyle's last appearance on the platform. 
 He never spoke in public again till twenty-six years after, 
 when lie addressed the students in Edinburgh. His better 
 nature disapproved of these exhibitions. Writing to 
 Erskine, who had w^ished to be present at this final 
 course, he said : — 
 
 Let all that love me keep far away on occasions of that kind. I 
 am in no case so sorry for myself as when standing up there be- 
 
158 CarlyhSs Life in London. 
 
 wildered, distracted, nine-tenths of my poor faculty lost in terror 
 and wretchedness, a spectacle to men. It is my most ardent hope 
 that this exhibition may be my last of such ; that Necessity, with 
 her bayonet at my back, may never again drive me up thither, a 
 creature more fit for uttering himself in a flood of inarticulate 
 tears than any other way. 
 
 He had tlioiight, as has been seen, of repeating the ex- 
 periment in America. He knew well enough that if he 
 resolutely tried he conld succeed. But to succeed he 
 knew also that he would have to part with his natural 
 modesty, the noblest part of him, as of every man. He 
 must part, too, with his love of truth. The orator, in the 
 rush and flow of words, cannot always speak truth, can- 
 not even try to speak truth ; for he speaks to an audience 
 which reacts upon him, and he learns as he goes on to 
 utter, not the facts as he knows them to be, but the facts 
 shaped and twisted to please his hearers. He shut his 
 ears therefore to the treacherous sii-en, and turned back to 
 his proper function. The lectures on Heroes were to be 
 written out and made into a book. This was the occupa- 
 tion which he had laid out for himself for the summer; 
 and there was to be no change to the Xortli till ' this bit 
 of work was accomplished.' 
 
 There was the usual relapse after the excitement, less 
 extreme than in other years, but sufficient to call up his 
 melancholy and morbid humor. On June 3 he writes : — 
 
 I rode with Fonblanque of the ' Examiner ' one evening ; rather 
 poor company. I feel on the whole better alone. No man nor 
 body of men can do much for me, not if they would take all the 
 trouble in the world. Could the whole of them unwrap the bale- 
 ful Nessus shirt of perpetual pain and isolation in which I am 
 lamed, embated, ,and swathed as in enchantment till I quit this 
 earth ? Not they. Let them go their road. Go thou also in 
 God's name ! 
 
 Occasionally there came a friend to him of a better 
 type. Under the same date he tells his mother that Thirl- 
 
ThhiwaU, Bishop of St. Dawid/s, 159 
 
 wall had been in Cbeyne Row to have a talk and smoko 
 with him — ' the massive Cantabi'igian Scholar and Sceptic,' 
 whom he had twice already fallen in with. Thirlwall, after 
 Ills difference with the anthorities at Cambridge, was now 
 on the eve of promotion to a bishopric. Carlyle was well 
 acquainted with the condition of the * massive scholar's' 
 thoughts on theological mysteries. Be told nie that Thirl- 
 wall lay three nights awake when the see of St. David's 
 was offered to him, considering whether he was fit for such 
 a place, or the place for him. He did not himself ap- 
 prove of men acting parts which were not natural to them. 
 How Thirlwall acted his part he liad an opportunity of 
 judging when he paid the bishop a visit at his palace. 
 The English Church will probably never again have a prel- 
 ate of ThirlwalTs power or character, and I may mention 
 liere another small incident connected with Jiis elevation 
 to the bench. Charles Buller, who had known Thirlwall 
 at Cambridge, told me that ho among others bad recom- 
 mended him to Lord Melbourne. ' Yes,' Melbourne said, 
 ' but hang it ' (the real word was stronger), * he is not or- 
 thodox in that preface to Schleiermacher.' Buller an- 
 swered that he thought his friend sufficiently orthodox 
 for the purpose. They adjourned to Melbourne's library, 
 and spent a morning over .' the Fathers,' searching for prec- 
 edents for Thirlwall's opinions. 
 
 Other intruders in Cheyne How were treated with less 
 respect ; for instance — 
 
 A wretched Dud called , member, I think, for , 
 
 called one day with his wife, a dirty Httle Atheistic Radical, living 
 
 seemingly in a mere element of pretentious twaddle with 
 
 and and the literaiy vapidities of his day. Jane says I 
 
 treated him tnliumanly, as a bulldog might some ill-favoured mes- 
 sin, for my nerves were shattered asunder by a gallop in the wind. 
 
 The table lay covered for dinner, and took to arguing 
 
 about the Ck>pyright BilL One day there stepped in a very curi- 
 
160 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 ous little fellow, Dr. Thomas Murray, ' whom you recollect with- 
 out the Doctor, as of Edinburgh and Literary Galloway. There is 
 hardly any change in the little man. Worldly, egoistic, small, 
 vain, a poor grub in whom j)erhaps was still some remnant of bet- 
 ter instincts, whom one could not look at without impressive rem- 
 iniscences. He did not come back to me, nor did I want it, 
 though I asked him. 
 
 Shortly after Carl jle went to a party at the Dud's whom 
 he had handled so roughly, perhaps to make up for his 
 rudeness. 
 
 O'Connell, Bowring, Hickson, South wood Smith — pinchbeck 
 people all, what I called a literary political swell-mob. O'Con- 
 nell is beginning to look very old. There was a celebrated Flor- 
 entine, Signora Vespucci, there, very dashing in turban and stage- 
 tragicalities, but she sjjoke only French, and I declined doing 
 more than look. The earth has bubbles. 
 
 He was sadly wearied with London and its ways, and 
 with himself most of all. 
 
 June 15, 1840. — My soul longs extremely to live altogether in 
 the country again, and yet there, too, I should not be well. I 
 shall never be other than ill, wearied, sickhearted, heavy-laden, 
 till once we get to the final rest, I think. God is good. I am a 
 poor poltroon to complain. Dinners I avoid as the very devil. 
 ' What's ta use on 'em ? ' What are lords coming to call on one 
 and fill one's head with whims? They ask you to go among 
 champagne, bright glitter, semi-poisonous excitements w^hich you 
 do not like even for the moment, and you are sick for a week 
 after. As old Tom White said of whisky, ' Keep it— Deevil a ever 
 I'se better than when there's no a drop on't i' my weam.' So say 
 I of dinner popularity, lords and lionism — Keep it ; give it to 
 those that like it. 
 
 The slightly happier side appears in a letter of the same 
 date to his sister : — 
 
 I stay here because I am here, and see not on the whole where 
 I could get forward with my work much better. The heat has 
 never yet afflicted me much. The horse is of considerable use, 
 
 1 Carlyle's early friend and correspondent. See Forty Years of Carlyle's 
 Life, &c., vol. i. p. 37. 
 
London Library. 161 
 
 carries me out into the clear afternoon air. The bright greenness 
 of the worhl shows nie how like Elysium it is. Alas ! I know 
 well if I were there daily and always, I should care little for it, 
 except on compulsion. I go little into the town, call on nobody 
 there. They can come here if they want me ; if not I shall like 
 it still better. Our old wooden Battei-sea bridge takes me over 
 the river ; in ten minutes' swift trotting I am fairly away from the 
 monster and its bricks. All lies behind me like an enormous 
 world-filling 2>^;//s<e7-, infinite potter's furnace, sea of smoke, with 
 steeples, domes, gilt crosses, high black architecture swimming in 
 it, really beautiful to look at from some knoll-top while the sun 
 shines on it. I fly away, away, some half-dozen miles out. The 
 monster is then quite buried, its smoke rising like a great dusky- 
 coloured mountain melting into the infinite clear sky. All is green, 
 musical, bright. One feels that it is God's world this ; and not an 
 infinite Cockneydom of stoor and din after all. 
 
 In the midst of his work he was still pushing forward 
 the London Library. On June 24, a meeting was held at 
 the Freemasons' Tavern. Lord Eliot was in the chair; 
 Lords Montague, Ilowick, and Lyttelton — Mihnan, Milnes, 
 Cornewall Lewis, John Forster, Helps, Bulwer, Gladstone, 
 James Spedding, George Yenables — all men who were 
 then in the first rank, or afterwards rose into it, were 
 gathered together by Carlyle's efforts. Thirlwall warmly 
 interested himself. Carlyle represented that, of the in- 
 numerable evils of England, * there was no remediable 
 worse one than its condition as to books,' * a condition 
 worthier of Dahomey than of England.' He could bear 
 his mournful testimony that he never, in his whole life, 
 had for one month complete access to books — such access 
 as he would have had in Germany, in France, or anywhere 
 else iu the civilized earth. Books were written, not for 
 rich men, but for all men. Every human being had by 
 the nature of the case a ri/jht to hear what other wise 
 human beings had spoken to him. It was one of the 
 rights of man, and a cruel injustice if denied. 
 
 The defect grew out of the conditiou of the English 
 Vol. m— 11 
 
162 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 mind. England liitlierto had supposed that the Bible had 
 contained everything which it was indispensable for man 
 to know ; and Bibles wxre within the reach of the Imm- 
 blest. But England was growing, growing it knew not 
 into what, but visibly needing further help. The meeting 
 agreed unanimously that a library should be established. 
 Subscription lists were opened and swiftly filled. Com- 
 petent persons were chosen to collect books ; a house was 
 purchased. The thing was done, and done most admi- 
 rably, 3'et Carlyle himself remained miserable as ever. 
 ' Alas ! ' he wrote on July 3, ' 1 get so dyspeptical, melan- 
 cholic, half mad in the London summer : all courage to do 
 anything but hold my peace fades away ; I dwindle into 
 the pusillanimity of the ninth part of a tailor, feel as if I 
 had nothing I could do but " die in my hole like a poi- 
 soned rat." ' It was true, indeed, that he had a special 
 reason for lamentation at that particular moment. He 
 had been summoned to serve as a special juryman at West- 
 minster. He appealed to Buller to deliver him. Buller 
 told him there %vas a way of escape if he liked to use it — 
 ' he could be registered as a Dissenting preacher.' He 
 had to go, and the worst of it was he had to go for noth- 
 ing, and the futility was a text for fresh indignation. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : July 1, 1840. 
 These three days I have been kept in quite special annoyance 
 by two summonses to go up to Westminster and serve as a jury- 
 man, in two different courts — both at once, too. Is not that a 
 peculiar beauty ? The whole aspect of the thing, the maddest- 
 looking stew of lies, and dust, and foul breath, fills me with de- 
 spair. I attended two days, neither of my cases coming on. I in- 
 quired of all persons what I had to do or look for — in vain. There 
 was no gleam of daylight in it for me, not so much as a seat to sit 
 down upon. At length I followed the hest of nature, and came 
 quietly away, out of the place which I could understand nothing 
 of, except that I was veiy sick and miserable in it, determined to 
 
Tennyson. 163 
 
 let nature and accident work out an isstie in it which I could un- 
 derstand. They have a power, it seems, of fining me to the extent 
 of 100/., but are not like to do it. The world I live in is too mad, 
 and I am not patient enough of its madness. My soul is sick of 
 it, impatient of it, contemptuous of it, desiring or expecting noth- 
 ing more in general than to be well out of it, with my work well 
 done. The latter is an important point ; thank God ! it grows to 
 seem to me even more important. 
 
 If destiny in tlie shape of officials afflicted with one 
 hand, it sometimes brought anodynes in the other. One 
 evening, when he came home from his walk, he found 
 Tennyson sitting with Mrs. Carlyle in the garden, smok- 
 ing comfortably, lie admired and almost loVed Tenny- 
 son. He say ft : — 
 
 A fine, large-featured, dim-eyed, bronze-coloured, shaggy- 
 headed man is Alfred ; dusty, smoky, free and easy, who swims 
 outwardly and inwardly with great composure in an inarticulate 
 element of tmnquil chaos and tobacco smoke. Great now and 
 then when he does emerge — a most restful, brotherly, solid- 
 hearted man. 
 
 Such a visit was the best of medicine. 
 
 July 15. — My health (he writes) continues very uncertain, my 
 spirits fluctuating between restless flutter of a make-believe satis- 
 faction, and the stillness of avowed misery, which latter I have 
 grown by long practice to think almost the more supportable state. 
 The meaning, I suppose, is that my nervous system is altogether 
 weak, excitable — the nervous system and whatsoever depends on 
 that. 
 
 Innocent affectionate letters came from Scotsbrig. 
 
 To Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 Scotsbrig: July 19, 1840. 
 My dear Son, — I received your letter and was very glad to see it, 
 and hear that you were in your usual way — we are going on in our 
 old way. We got little good of the sea ; the weather was so cold. 
 I saw Mary, however, and Jean was at Mary's also when I was 
 there — all well, James and the children. 
 Oh, have we not great reason of thankfulness to the Giver of all 
 
164 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 good ? It was our sacrament last Sabbath, and many good things 
 we heard, could we put them in practice ; but of ourselves we can 
 do nothing. May the Good Shepherd watch over us, and enable 
 us to perform our vows made to Him ! He will keep them in j)er- 
 fect peace whose mind is stayed on Him. For ever blessed is His 
 name, and let all the people say Amen and Amen ! 
 
 I hear you are very busy with your lectures. I wish you speedily 
 and well through with them, and healthy in soul and body. I still 
 hope to see you, if we are spared, this summer. 
 
 The weather here is at present very stormy and wet ; but it is no 
 wonder if we have unfruitful seasons, for we are a people laden with 
 iniquity, like Israel of old. When God's judgments are abroad, 
 we, the inhabitants of earth, should learn righteousness. May God 
 enable us so io do, and to His name be all the praise ! 
 
 Now, Tom, I am much gratified with your attention in writing 
 so to me. Believe me I would also, if I could write. Give my 
 kindest love to your dearest. Your own mother, 
 
 M. A. O. 
 
 He could not be wholly siifPocated with the London 
 miasma, when so fragrant a breath of pure air could blow 
 in upon him. The summer number of the ' Edinburgh 
 Eeview ' was announced. He had heard that he was to 
 be ' annihilated,' and that Macaulay was to be the execu- 
 tioner — the real writer was Herman Merivale — and it was 
 under this false impression that he remarked on the article 
 wdien he read it. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : July 24, 1840. 
 Macaulay's article is not so bad ; on the whole, rather interest- 
 ing to me, and flattering rather than otherwise. ' See,' I said to 
 Jane, ' we have produced an effect even on Whiggery, awakened an 
 appetite under the ribs of death.' * Awakened an indigestion,' she 
 answered. That really it is. One thing struck me much in this 
 Macaulay, his theory of Liberal government. He cousiders Ee- 
 form to mean a judicious combining of those that have any money 
 to keep down those that have none. * Hunger ' among the great 
 mass is irremediable, he says. That the jngs be taught to die without 
 squealing : there is the sole improvement possible according to 
 him. Did Whiggery ever express itself in a more damnable man- 
 
Reviei08. 1C5 
 
 ner? He and I get onr controversy rendered altogether precise in 
 this way. 
 
 His theory of Dumouriez's campaign is also altogether amazing 
 from a man of any judgment— Whiggish to the backbone. And, 
 lastly, Robespierre's £tre SuprGme being a religion of the same sort 
 as that of Cromwell — oh Babington, what a cant ! Didst thou ever 
 see a cant in this world ? No — a man in a jaundice never sees the 
 colour yellow. At bottom, this Macaulay is but a poor creatuie 
 with his dictionary literatui-e and erudition, his saloon arrogance. 
 He has no vision in him. He will neither see nor do any great 
 thing, but be a poor Holland House unbeliever, with spectacles 
 instead of eyes, to the end of him. 
 
 He was undeceived about the authorship of this article. 
 * I was heartily glad to liear this,' he said ; ' of Macaulay 
 I have still considerable liopes.' The * Quarterly ' liad 
 also an article, the writer being William Sewell, a High 
 Church leader on his own account, and then a rising star 
 in the Oxford world. Merivale had been ponderous and 
 politico-economic; Sewell was astonishing, as indeed the 
 whole Oxford movement was, to Carlyle. 
 
 Did you (he wrote to Sterling), in the course of your historical 
 inquiries, ever fall in with any phenomenon adequately compara- 
 ble to Puseyism ? The Church of England stood long upon her 
 tithes and her decencies ; but now she takes to shouting in the 
 market-place, * My tithes are nothing, my decencies are nothing ; 
 I am either miraculous celestial or else nothing.' It is to me the 
 fatallest symptom of speedy cliange she ever exhibited. What an 
 alternative ! Men will soon see whether you are mii-aculous celes- 
 tial or not. Were a pair of breaches ever known to beget a son ? 
 
 Reputation in America brought visitors to Cheyne Eow 
 from that country — a young, unnamed Boston lady, among 
 others, whom lie called a 'diseased rosebud.' Happily 
 Anicrica yielded something else than ' sweet sensibility.' 
 it yielded handsome sums of money; and, before the 
 Slimmer was over, he had received from that quarter as 
 much as 400^. There was an honourable sense across the 
 Atlantic that, although novelists, <fec., might be fair prey, 
 
166 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 Carljle ought to be treated honestly. About money there 
 was no more anxiety. 
 
 August 1, 1840. — I am not hkely (he could say) to be in want of 
 cash, for any time visible yet. Much cash, I feel often, would do 
 me no good. I begin to grow more and more quiescent. The 
 rule of heeding no hearsay of others, but minding more and more 
 exclusively what / do like or dislike, what is really important for 
 me or not for me, shows many things in a new light. I find in the 
 British Empire astonishingly little that it would do me essential 
 benefit to have. I sit in a sort of mournful inexpugnable acquies- 
 cence, and look at the green and paved world, really not very 
 covetous of anything connected with the one or the other. 
 
 It was now August. The Lectures on Heroes were by 
 this time nearly ^yritten out. He had taken no holiday ; 
 but, as the end w^as now in sight, he allowed himself a 
 week's riding tour in Sussex on ' Citoyenne.' Hnrstmon- 
 ceaux and Julius Hare's parsonage was the furthest point 
 •which he reached, returning without misadventure by 
 Tunbridge and Sevenoaks. He rode better than his loose 
 seat seemed to promise. Mrs. Carlyle described to us, 
 soine years after, in her husband's presence, his setting out 
 on this expedition ; she drew him in her finest style of 
 mockery — his cloak, his knapsack, his broad-brimmed hat, 
 his preparation of pipes, &c. — comparing him to Dr. Syn- 
 tax. He laughed as loud as any of us : it was impossible 
 not to laugh ; but it struck me, even then, that the wit, 
 however brilliant, was rather untender. On August 23, 
 late in the afternoon, he had substantially finished his 
 work, and he went out, as he always did on these occasions, 
 to compose himself by a walk. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : August 23, 1840. 
 The tea was up before I could stir from the spot. It was to- 
 wards sunset when I first got into the air, with the feeling of a 
 finished man — finished in more than one sense. Avoiding crowds 
 and highways, I went along Battersea Bridge, and thence by a 
 
llie Lectures on Heroes Finished, 107 
 
 wondrous path across cow fields, mud ditches, river embankments, 
 over a waste expanse of what attempted to pass for country, won- 
 di'ous enough in the darkening dusk, especially as I had never 
 been there before, and the very road was uncertain. I had left 
 my watch and my purse. I had a good stick in my hand. Boat 
 people sate diinking about the Red House ; steamers snorting about 
 the river, each with a lantern at its nose. Old women sate in 
 strange cottages trimming their evening fiire. Bewildered-looking 
 mysterious coke furnaces (with a very bad smell) glowed at one 
 place, I know not why. Windmills stood silent. Blackguai'ds, 
 improper females, and miscellanies sauntered, harmless all. Chel- 
 sea lights burnt many-hued, bright over the water in the distance 
 — under the great sky of silver, under the great still twilight. So 
 I wandered full of thoughts, or of things I could not think. 
 
 Ruskiii liiuiself, when working most deliberately, never 
 drew a more exquisite picture in words than this unstud- 
 ied reflection of a passing experience. In such mood the 
 lectures were completed, and, as usual, Carlyle was entirely 
 dissatisfied with them. 
 
 Nothing (he said) which I have ever written pleases me so ill. 
 They have notliing new, nothing that to me is not old. The style 
 of them requires to be low-pitched, as like talk as possible. The 
 whole business seems to me wearisome triviality, yet toilsome to 
 produce, which I would like to throw into the fire.; some ten days 
 more will get me to the end of it. Ah me ! I sometimes feel as if 
 I had lost the art of writing altogether ; as if I were a dumb man, 
 whose thought could not so much as utter itself on paper now, not 
 to speak of utterance by action. I do lead a most self-secluded, 
 entirely lonesome existence. ' How is Each so lonely in the wide 
 grave of the All ? ' says Richter. Jane comes here to take me out 
 to walk. Adieu. 
 
 The hope had clung to him of being still able to go to 
 Scotland in the early autumn. John Carlyle was there at 
 this time — an additional attraction. His ])lan had been 
 * to take shipping, to find again there was an everlasting 
 fresh sea water, I'ivers, mountains, simple peaceful men ; 
 that God's universe was not an accursed, dusty, deafening 
 
168 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 distraction of a cockneydom.' But the weatlier broke up 
 early tliis season, and lie found that he must stay where 
 he was. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : September 11, 1840. 
 
 On Monday last I was on the point of setting out, detained only 
 by some washings of apparel and the like for a day or two. At 
 that time my favourite speculation was through Liverpool towards 
 Ardrossan, from which point I might accomplish a variety of travel 
 — see my good mother beyond and before all. But the weatlier 
 grew rainy, cold ; I myself was bilious, heartless, and forlorn. I 
 summed up all the smashing and exasperation a poor sleepless 
 creature might count on^in short days, long frosty nights. After 
 sad silent meditation and computation, I have come to the result 
 that actually here is the place wherein prudence bids me continue. 
 The heat is quite out of the weather. I have books here : soli- 
 tude here. My one sole palliation or remedy is sitting still ; 
 which, why should I not do here first of all ? It gives me a right 
 sore heart, but so I decide. I can't get out. I have taken to the read- 
 ing of things needful, to solitary walks,' avoiding the pestiferous 
 wen where my life is gaoled for these years. I take mostly to the 
 lanes and fields, such as they are, * grieving by the shore of the 
 mother of dead dogs.' So stands it with me. I lament, above all, 
 about my dear mother ; but that also I must bear. When I go to 
 her, she is old and weak ; I am sick, sleepless, driven half mad. 
 It is better that I stay here and have beautiful sorrow rather than 
 Ugly. I had a letter from her own good hand this morning. I 
 could have wept over it ; but there was no good in that. 
 
 In return for all these disappointments, I calculate all the more 
 intensely that, if God spare me alive, I will spend the whole of 
 next summer in the country, I — though I should even go to live 
 at Puttock again for that purpose. I will stay in the peaceable 
 country till I really want to come back to this, at present, abhor- 
 red tumult. I calculate that I shall be writing another book then, 
 that it will be much easier to write anywhere than here. I am 
 bound to save all the money I can, to efi'ect this object. You 
 would laugh, not perhaps with much mirth, if you knew all the 
 schemes I turn over in my head for attaining this unattainable 
 blessing. All country in this neighbourhood is nigh unbearable 
 
 ^ Citoyenne had been given np after the Sussex ride as too great an expense. 
 
Town and Com dry, 169 
 
 to me, defaced \di\\ green paint, cockney ism, dust and din, an 
 abominable aping of countiy. I want to be far off, solitary, by 
 the shore of the sea. I must have a cheap country, too. I should 
 wish to be within a day's joui-uey of my mother. I have thought 
 of the Northumberland coast ; I have thought of the Isle of Man. 
 We shall think yet more about it ; but if in silence, all the better. 
 Meanwhile, thank God ! I have again some notions towards 
 writing a book — let us see what comes of that. It is the one use 
 of livinfj, for me. Enough to-day, dear Jack ; write to me what 
 you are about, and continue loving me. Yours ever, 
 
 T. Carltle. 
 
 The book that was to be written was ' Ci'omwell.' 
 
 I have got lately, not till veiy lately (he tells Mr. Erskine), to 
 fancy that I see in Cromwell one of the greatest tragic souls we 
 have ever had in this kindred of ours. The matter is Past ; but it 
 is among the great things of the Past, which, seen or unseen, 
 never fade away out of the Present. 
 
 Such an image he desired to draw, and to do it properly 
 he had begun to wisli passionately to have done with 
 London, and live somewhere by the sea. 
 
 My heai*t (he said) sometimes stmggles with a kind of convulsive 
 eagerness towards that great presence. All artmdate speech seems 
 but a mockery of what one means. The everlasting Ocean voice, 
 prophesying of Eteniity, coming hither from Eternity, one thinks 
 even better for one. 
 
 He would have gone, and London would have known 
 him no more, except for Mrs. Carlyle, who knew that he 
 would be restless anywhere. He himself partly felt that 
 she might be right. ^ Sick children,' he admitted, * who 
 long now for this, now for that, are not well off anywhere. 
 The thing they so want, I suppose, is to get to sleep well 
 on their mother's bosom.' 
 
 Money, at any rate, was to be saved for the next sum- 
 mer's migration ; yet the anxiety to save it did not prevent 
 Carlyle from calculating how much the abandoned visit to 
 Scotland would have cost, and sending part of it to his 
 mother to buy winter clothing. 
 
170 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 It would all have been spent (lie said) before I could have got 
 up to you by the cheapest way ; and now I fancy you all winter, 
 well wrapt up on the produce of that. I know you do not need it — 
 thank Heaven you do not !— but from me it will have a particular 
 gusto, nevertheless. Get yourself over above, dear mother, some- 
 thing you wished to get — a little keg of beer ; a little this, a little 
 that. Stir yourself about more at ease than you would have done. 
 It will be my greatest luxuiy. 
 
 Thus, when the winter set in, Carlyle was still at liome, 
 deep in Commonwealth tracts and history. It was stiff 
 work ; lie did not find lie could make great progress in 
 this new enterprise. ' His interest in it even threatened 
 sometimes to decline and die.' He found it ' not a tenth 
 part such a subject as the " French Revolution," nor could 
 the art of man ever make such a book out of it.' 
 
 We must hold on (he said). One dreadful circumstance is that 
 the books, without exception, the documents, &c., one has to read, 
 are of a dulness to threaten locked jaw. I never read such jum- 
 bling, drowsy, endless stupidities. Seventhly and lastly ! Yet I 
 say to myself, a great man does lie buried under this waste 
 continent of cinders, and a great action. Canst thou not unbury 
 them, present them visible, and so help, as it were, in the creation 
 of them? 
 
 Again ; — 
 
 November 16, 1840. — My reading goes on : my stupidity seems 
 to increase with it more and more. I get to see that no history in 
 the strict sense can be made of that unspeakable puddle of a time, 
 all covered up with things entirely obsolete to us — a Golgotha of 
 dead dogs. But some kind of a book can be made. That we are 
 still looking to. 
 
 And again : — 
 
 November 26. — My reading progresses with or without fixed 
 hope. I struggled through the ' Eikon Basilike ' yesterday ; one 
 of the paltriest pieces of vapid, shovel-hatted, clear-starched, im- 
 maculate falsity and cant I have ever read. It is to me an amaze- 
 ment how any mortal could ever have taken that for a genuine 
 book of King Charles's. Nothing but a surpliced Pharisee, sitting 
 
Lectures on Heroes, 171 
 
 at his eflse afar off, could have got up such a set of meditations. 
 It got Parson Gauden a bishopric. It remains as an offence to all 
 genuine men — a small minority still — for some time yet. The 
 writing of that book, if I ever write it, will be considerably the 
 hardest feat I have attempted hitherto. Last night, greatly against 
 wont, I went out to dine with Rogers, Milman, Babbage, Pick- 
 wick, Lyell the geologist, &c., with sundry indifferent-favoured 
 women. A dull evening, not worth awakening for at four in the 
 morning, with the dance of all the devils round you. Babbage 
 continues eminently unpleasant to me, with his frog mouth and 
 viper eyes, with his hide-bound, wooden irony, and the aciidest 
 egotism looking through it. Rogers is still brisk, courteous, 
 kindly affectionate — a good old man, pathetic to look uj)on. On 
 Sunday I walked three hours out Harrow-ward through the fields. 
 A great deal of solitude I find indispensable for my health of 
 mind. The genemlity of men have no sincerity in their speech, 
 no sense or profit in it. You are better listening to the inarticu- 
 late winds, regulating if possible the dog-kennel of your own 
 heart. 
 
 Finally, Carlyle thiis winds up the year 1840 : — 
 
 Jouiinal. 
 
 December 26. — World all lying bound in frost, sheeted in snow 
 and rain. Venomous cold. Jane better than usual this winter. 
 Yesterday a long walk with Mill, otherwise entirely lonely. The 
 stillest Christmas a man could spend. Evening passed in reading 
 Whitelocke. I did not go to Scotland or any whither in autumn. 
 My lectures, written out since the end of August, lie here still un- 
 published. Saunders & Ottley offer me 50/. for an edition of 750. 
 Munificent ! Fraser, consulted by my wife, did not definitely offer 
 any cash at all, I think. For a famous man, my bookseller's 
 economics seem singular enough. Yet what of economics? I 
 happily do not need cash at present. If cash were my object in 
 writing, I had made the lamentablest business of it. For these lec- 
 tures I wanted an inward monition to publish. Outward there 
 was none but a 50/. — rather weakish. And yet some inward moni- 
 tion, difficult to distinguish clearly from a mere prurient love of 
 feeling myself busy, of hearing myself talk {cavendum), does begin 
 to manifest itself at times. Perhaps we shall print after all before 
 long. Not of much importance either way. Reviews by Whig, 
 
172 CarlyWs Life in London, 
 
 Tory, by ' Deux Mondes ' — plenty of reviewing. What is far bet- 
 ter, I begin to get alive again ! So much vitality recovered that I 
 feel once more how miserable it is to be idle. After all I have 
 seen and undergone here, flatteries, prospects, etc., I feel that the 
 one felicity of my existence is that of working at my tirade, working 
 with or without reward. All life otherwise were a failure to me, 
 a horrid incoherence in which there was no meaning or result. To 
 work then ! I often long to be in the country again ; at Puttock 
 again, that I might work and nothing else but work. Had not my 
 wife opposed, I should probably have returned thither before now. 
 Unlucky or lucky? One never knows. In sick seasons this 
 practical question, hitherto insoluble for doubt, returns always on 
 me in a most agitating, uncomfortable manner. Know thy own 
 mind ! I am sure to be sick everywhere. I am a little sicker here, 
 and do thoroughly dislike the mud, smoke, dirt, and tumult of this 
 place. Wherein, however, is decidedly a kind of possible, an 
 actual association with my fellow-creatures, never granted else- 
 where. Solitude would increase, perhaps twofold or more, my 
 power of working. Shall I go, carrying and dragging all along 
 with me into solitude ? Alas ! it is a dreary, desolate matter, go or 
 stay. My one hope and thought for most part is that very shortly 
 it will all be over, my very sore existence ended in the bosom of 
 the Giver of it —at rest somehow. Things might be written here 
 which it is considerably better not to write. As I live, and have 
 long lived, death and Hades differ little to me from the earth and 
 life. The human figure I meet is wild, wondrous, ghastly to me, 
 almost as if it were a spectre and I a spectre — Taisions. 
 
 Oliver Cromwell will not prosper with me at all. I began read- 
 ing about that subject some four months ago. I learn almost 
 nothing by reading, yet cannot as yet heartily begin to write. 
 Nothing on paper yet. I know not where to begin. I have not 
 yet got through the veil, got into genuine sympathy with the 
 thing. It is ungainly in the highest degree ; yet I am loth to quit 
 it. In our whole English history there is surely nothing as great. 
 If one can delineate anything of England, then this thing. Heaven 
 guide me ! Verily one has need of Heaven's guidance. 
 
CHAPTER YIII. 
 
 A.D. 1840—1. iET. 45—46. 
 
 Preparation for 'Cromwell' — Nervous irritability — A jury trial — 
 Visit to Fryston — Summer on the Solway — Beturn to London 
 and work — Difficulties in the way — Offer of a professorship — 
 Declined. 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle, writing at the end of 1840, says of the 
 state of things in Cheyne Row : ' Carlyle is reading vora- 
 ciously preparatory to writing a new book: For the rest 
 he growls away much in the old style. But one gets to 
 feel a certain indifference to his growling ; if one did not, 
 it would be the worse for one.' 
 
 lie well knew his infirmities, and wished and meant to 
 mend them. ' Think not hardly of me, dear Jeannie,' he 
 himself wrote to her a few months later. 
 
 In the mutual misery we often are in, we do not know how dear 
 we are to one another. By the help of Heaven, I shall get a little 
 better, and somewhat of it shall abate. Last night, at dinner, 
 Richard Milnes made them all laugh with a saying of yours. 
 * When the wife has influenza, it is a slighi cold — when the man has 
 it, it is, &c. &c.* 
 
 No one can be surprised that she objected to being 
 taken back to the ' desert.' She, though she enjoyed Lon- 
 don, would have cheerfully gone with him, would herself 
 have urged his going, back to the moors, if he could have 
 found real peace there. But she knew, and he knew too, 
 that he could not fiy from his shadow ; that tlie cause of 
 his restlessness was not in London, but iii himself. 
 
174: Cai'lyle^s Life in London. 
 
 How often (he wrote to Sterling) do I, poor wretch, from amid 
 this inane whirlpool which seems to be grinding my life to pieces, 
 cry aloud for a hut in the wilderness, with fields round me and 
 sky over me, that on any terms, consistent with life at all, I might 
 be allowed to live there ! Nay, perhaps, / shall verily fly to Craig- 
 enputtock again before long. Yet I know what solitude is, and im- 
 prisonment among black cattle and peat bogs. The truth is, we 
 are never right as we are. ' Oh, the devil burn it ! ' said the Irish 
 drummer flogging his countryman ; ' there's no pleasing of you, 
 strike where one will.' 
 
 He was fond of this storj of the Irish corporal or drum- 
 mer, feeling perhaps how well it fitted him. One asks 
 with wonder why he found existence (such as it had be- 
 come to him) so intolerable ; why he seemed to suffer so 
 much more under the small ills of life than when he had 
 to face real troubles in his first years in London. He was 
 now successful far beyond his hopes. The fashionable 
 world admired and flattered him. The cleverest men had 
 recognised his genius, and accepted liim as their equal or 
 superior. He was listened to with respect by all ; and, 
 far more valuable to him, he was believed in by a fast-in- 
 creasing circle as a dear and honoured teacher. His money 
 anxieties were over. If his liver occasionally troubled 
 him, livers trouble most of us as we advance in life, and 
 liis actual constitution was a great deal stronger than that 
 of ordinary men. As to outward annoyances, the world 
 is so made that there will be such things, but they do not 
 destroy the peace of our lives. Foolish people intrude 
 upon us. Official people force us to do many things 
 which we do not want to do, from sitting on juries to 
 payment of rates and taxes. We express our opinion on 
 such nuisances perhaps with imprecatory emphasis, but we 
 bear them and forget them. Why could not Carlyle, with 
 fame and honour and troops of friends, and the gates of a 
 great career flung open before him, and a great intellect 
 and a conscience unharassed by a single act which he need 
 
Nervous Irritability, 176 
 
 regret, bear and forget too ? Why, indeed I The only 
 answer is that Carlyle was Carlyle ; and a man to whom 
 the figures he met in the streets looked suddenly like spec- 
 tres, who felt like a spectre himself, and in the green 
 flowery earth, with the sky bending over it, could see 
 * Tartarus and the gloomy realms of Dis,' was not to bo 
 expected to think and act like any other human being. 
 
 It was true that, if occasion required, he could think 
 and act like a very shrewd and practical human being. 
 He has already alluded wrathfully to the being summoned 
 to serve on juries, lie was called upon again at the be- 
 ginning of this year, and as the experience was a curious 
 one, and as he often spoke of it, I give the letter in which 
 he tells the story. 
 
 To Margaret Carli/le, Scotsbrig. 
 
 Chelsea : February 18, 1841. 
 I had been summoned again under unheard-of penalties to at- 
 tend a jury trial about Patent India-rubber Cotton-cards. Two 
 people from Manchester had a controversy whose was the inven- 
 tion of the said cards. It had cost them perhaps 10,000/., this 
 controversy on a card suit. There were 150 witnesses summoned 
 from all parts of England and Scotland. It had been left unfin- 
 ished last term. That was the reason of the unheard-of penalties 
 for us jurymen, that they might not be obliged to begin at the 
 beginning again. The same twelve men did all assemble. We 
 sat for two endless days till dark night each day. About eight 
 o'clock at night on the second day we imagined it was done, and 
 we had only to speak our verdict. But, lo and behold ! one of the 
 jury stood out. We were eleven for the plaintiff, and one tlio 
 other way who would not yield. The judge told us we must with- 
 draw, through passages and stairs up and down into a little stone 
 cell with twelve old chairs in it, one candle, and no meat, drink, 
 or fire. Conceive our humour. Not a particle of dinner, nerves 
 worn out, &c. The refractory man — a thickset, flat-headed sack — 
 erected himself in his chair and said, ' I am one of the firme.st- 
 minded men in England. I know this room pretty well. I have 
 starved out three juries here already.' Reasoning, demonstration, 
 was of no avail at all. They began to suspect he had been bribed. 
 
176 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 He looked really at one time as if he would keep us till half-past 
 nine in the morning, and then get us dismissed, the whole trial to 
 begin again. One really could not help laughing, though one 
 had a notion to kill the beast. ' Do not argue with him,' I said. 
 ' Flatter him. . Don't you see he has the obstinacy of a boar and 
 little more sense in that head of his than in a Swedish turnip ? ' 
 It was a head all cheeks, jaw, and no brow, of shape somewhat 
 like a great ball of putty dropped from a height. I set to work 
 upon him ; ' we all set to work, and in about an hour after our 
 ' withdrawal ' the Hash, I pulling him by the arm, was got stirred 
 from his chair — one of the gladdest moments I had seen for a 
 month — and in a few instants more we were all rejoicing on' our 
 road home. In my life I have seen nothing more absurd. I re- 
 flected, however, that really perhaps I had contributed to get jus- 
 tice done ; that, had I not been there, it was very possible they 
 would have quarrelled with their ' firmest-minded man in England,' 
 and cost somebody another 10,000/. 
 
 Evidently a great diplomatist was lost in Carlyle. But 
 it would have been liappy for the peace of Cheyne Row if 
 British justice could have done without him ; as indeed 
 for tlie future it contrived to do. He was disturbed no 
 more for such purposes. 
 
 Fraser came to terms about the same time for the lec- 
 tures on ' Hero Worship.' They w^ere set in type, and he 
 liked them a great deal better when he read them in proof. 
 *It is,' he said, 'a goustrous"^ determined speaking out of 
 the truth about several things. The people will be no 
 worse for it at present. The astonishment of many of 
 them is likely to be considerable.' 
 
 The ' Miscellanies,' ' Sartor,' and the other books were 
 
 * As Carlyle told the story to me, the man had settled himself down in a 
 dark corner of the room, there meaning to stay out the night. . . . Carlyle 
 sat down beside him, congratulated him on being a man of decision, able to 
 have an opinion of his own in these weak days, and stand by it, a quality both 
 rare and precious . . . but, &c. In fact, did he not see that by standing out 
 he would hurt his own friends ? . . . The jury were eleven to one. . . . 
 What chance was there that any future jury would agree to the verdict 
 which he wished ? There would only be more expense with no result, &c. 
 
 ^ Ooustrous — strong, boisterous. 
 
Miss Jewabunj, 177 
 
 selling well, and fresh editions were wanted. Young 
 people in eai'nest about their souls had begun to write to 
 him, thanking him for delivering them from Egypt, beg- 
 ging to be allowed to come to Cheyne Row and see the 
 face and hear the voice of one who had done such great 
 things for them. Amongst the rest came Miss Geraldine 
 Jewsbury, a Manchester lady, afterwards famous as a 
 novelist, and the closest friend of Carlyle's wife; then 
 fresh to life, eager to use it nobly, and looking passionately 
 for some one to guide her. Carlyle's first impressions 
 were unusually favourable. 
 
 Miss Jewsbury, our fair pilgrimess (he writes on March 3, 1841), 
 is coming again to-morrow, and then departs for the North. She 
 is one of the most interesting young women I have seen for years ; 
 clear delicate sense and courage looking out of her small, sylph- 
 like figui'e. 
 
 The next impression was less satisfactory, though the 
 young lady was still found interesting. 
 
 Que deviendra-telle ? (he' asks). A notable young woman, victim 
 of much thst she did not make ; seeking passionately for some 
 Paradise to be gained by battle ; fancying George Sand and the 
 * literatui-e of desperation ' can help her thithei-ward. In the world 
 there are few sadder, sicklier phenomena for me than George Sand 
 and the response she meets with. 
 
 For Madame Sand and all her works, for all sentimental, 
 indecent literature whatsoever, Carlyle's dislike amounted 
 to loathing. lie calls it somewhere * a new Phallus wor- 
 ship, with Sue, Balzac, and Co. for prophets, and Madame 
 Sand for a virgin.' Emerson, who admired this great 
 French celebrity, complained to me once of Carlyle's want 
 of charity about her. Emerson had been insisting to him 
 on her high qualities, and could get for answer nothing 
 except that she was a great — improper female. Geraldine 
 Jewsbury's inclination that way had not recommended her, 
 nor did her own early novels, ' Zoe,' the ' Half Sisters,' 
 Vol. III.— 12 
 
1T8; Carli/Ws Life in Lo7idon. 
 
 (fee, tend to restore her to favour. But she worked through 
 all this. In a long and trying intimacy she won and kept 
 the affectionate confidence of the Cheyne Row household, 
 and on his wife's death Geraldine was the first of her 
 friends to whom he turned for support. 
 
 Meanwhile Whitelocke and Rushworth did not grow 
 more digestible. The proofs of ' Hero Worship ' were 
 finished. The want of rest in the past summer had upset 
 Carlyle's internal system. Work he could not ; and at 
 Easter he was glad to accept an invitation from Milnes to 
 accompany him to his father's house at Fryston, in York- 
 shire. His letters give a graphic and attractive picture of 
 the Fryston circle. A few slight extracts will be suf- 
 ficient here. 
 
 Milnes, whom then and always he heartily liked, took 
 him down by railway on April 5. The present Sir 
 Robert Peel was in the carriage with them, and left them 
 at Tarn worth. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Royal Hotel, Derby : April 5, 1841. 
 The last look thy face wore to-day has haunted me all the way 
 hither. I will write half a word before going to bed, though.in a 
 travellers' room with two bagmen dining and conversing on one 
 side of the apartment, and Milnes diligently reading a tragedy of 
 Landor's at the other side of my table. Two blazing jets of gas 
 flaming away right overhead. . . . We got along without the 
 slightest accident comfortably enough. Our weather was of the 
 brightest. I sate looking out at the green spring fields, the beau- 
 tiful, honest-looking callages and hamlets. It is many a year since 
 I had seen a spring day. This was a kind of sample of spring, 
 rich in all kinds of sad and tender recollections for me. Milnes 
 and I got on beautifully. He read * Oxford Tracts,' &c., all the 
 way, argued and talked in the smartest manner. ... I 
 managed to smoke three cigars, two of them in the railway in 
 spite of regulations. . . . We set off at nine in the morning ; 
 shall arrive about one or two, I fancy. I will write from Fryston ; 
 write thou. There is a railway, and letters fly in less than a day. 
 
A Visit to Fryston. 179 
 
 Oh Jeannie, would thou wert happier ! Would I could make thee 
 happy ! God be with you, my dearest I Hope — let us still hope, 
 and not fear. Good sleep to you, and this along with breakfast 
 to-morrow. Yours ever from the heart, 
 
 T. Gablyle. 
 
 Fryston : April 7. 
 
 My fate at Derby was none of the brightest. Bed at half-past 
 one o'clock, to make sure of quiet, then awoke again by the stroke 
 of five ! However, one must put up with the accidents of the 
 road. I was not so misemble as might have been expected, at 
 least not till late last night when I had got worn out. Tliis coun- 
 try is altogether like a beautified kind of Scotland ; streams of 
 water, fields alternating of green and red, with hawthorn hedges, 
 honest-looking unclipt trees all in bud. The silent sight of it 
 yesterday did me real benefit. To finish the bulletin part of the 
 business, I awoke this morning again at six (woe's me, for it was 
 after one before I lay down); but gradually, in spite of* noisy 
 servants, in spite of all things, I fell first into a sluggish torpor, 
 then into treacle-sleep, and so lay sound as a stone till half-past 
 ten. My hope and expectation is that I shall improve in health 
 here. If I could get riding out among these silent fields and 
 rough country lanes, I should amend fast. 
 
 Richard ' made me dismount some two miles of our appointefl 
 goal, and walk homewards by a shorter way through woods, over 
 knolls, &c. Walking was not my forte ; however I jDersevered 
 and did well enough. Over rough-looking places, some of them, 
 we got at last to the Fryston mansion, a large irregular pile of 
 various ages, rising up among ragged old woods in a rough large 
 park, also all sprinkled with trees, grazed by sheep and horses, a 
 park chiefly beautiful because it did not set up for beauty. 
 Ancient-looking female figures were visible through the windows 
 as we drew nigh. Mrs. Milnes, a tall ancient woman, apparently 
 of weak health, of motherly kind heart, of old-fashioned, stately 
 politeness — a prejx)ssessing woman — welcomed us at the door of 
 the drawing-room * in the silence of the stately hall.' 
 
 I am lodged in a bed-room with four enormous windows, which 
 look out over woody garden spaces and other silent ruralities ; the 
 apartment furnished as for Prince Albert and Queen Victory, the 
 
 > Milnes. 
 
180 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 most absurd place I ever lived in (when I look at myself and my 
 equipment) in this world. I am charged to smoke in it too. . . . 
 I have a fire in it all day. I now write in it to thee. The bed seems 
 to be about 8 feet wide. A ladder conducts you to it if you like. 
 Of my paces the room measures 15 from end to end, 45 feet long, 
 height and width proportioned, with ancient dead-looking portraits 
 of Queens, Kings, Straffords, Principalities, &c., really the uncom- 
 fortablest acme of luxurious comfort that any Diogenes was set 
 into in these late years. 
 
 Fryston : Monday, April 12. 
 Your second letter came as before at breakfast. I gave Eichard 
 the paragraph relating to him to read for his own behoof. Your 
 Dispatch objurgation and Chronicle eulogy ^ were read, parts of the 
 former aloud, with suitable commentary of laughter, to the com- 
 pany at large. Lady , who seems to have some sense of 
 
 laughter as of other things, understood the Goody's procedure. 
 
 But to the dear 's I could perceive it was matter rather of 
 
 amazement. 'Does Mrs. Carlyle send you this?' 'Ah, yes, the 
 wicked gypsy ; she is glad to have anything like it to send.' Your 
 Chronicle puff is really worth something. Can you find out who 
 did it ? If it be not Fuz (John Forster), which I rather disincline 
 to believe, then I have another admirer who partly understands 
 what I would be at. Your mother's approbation is also very agree- 
 able to mc, and my own mother's greeting (crying) over Knox and 
 Luther. And now at last I do think we are very sufficiently ap% 
 plauded and approved, and ought, if possible, to go and do some- 
 thing deserving a little applause. 
 
 A ride to Wakefield with Milnes was an incident of this 
 visit, with Milnes's conversation in the course of it. 
 
 He did not plague me with the picturesque, the good Eichard. 
 On my declaring that simple knolls and fields with brooks and 
 hedges among them were the best of all for me, and the picturesque 
 a mere bore, he admitted that partly, at bottom, it was so to him 
 also, and probably to all men. I like Eichard better and better — 
 a most good-humoured, kind, cheery-hearted fellow, with plenty 
 of savoir-faire in him too. He answered me the other day, when I 
 asked him if he liked Spenser's ' Fairy Queen,' ' Is it as a public 
 question that you ask me or as a private confidential one ? ' No- 
 
 1 Two reviews of- ' Hero Worship.' 
 
Vidt to Fryston, 181 
 
 body could answer better. At Wakefield we saw a smoky spinning 
 
 town, and an ancient Socinian lady named . We galloped 
 
 and trotted, I smoking cigars, and looking out on the quiet of 
 Mother Earth, improved by agriculture ; Bichard talking about 
 Puseyism, aristocratic blackguards, aristocratic originals, Crypto- 
 Catholicism, and much else. We came across the park at full gal- 
 lop about six o'clock, to dine with the Dragon of Wantley as we 
 found. 
 
 'The Dragon of Wantley' was Lord WharnclifFe, who 
 was attending quarter sessions at Poiiifret ; a Tory peer 
 whom Carlyle found ' an innocent, wooden, limited, very 
 good old Dragon.' The James Marshalls dined also the 
 same evening at Fryston, Mrs. James Marshall being 
 the Miss Spring Rice who was mentioned above as an at- 
 tendant at the lectures. They lived at Headingly, near 
 Leeds, and pressed Cai-lyle to pay them a visit when he left 
 Fryston. He said he was ' a waiter on Providence,' and 
 could not say what he could do, but decided eventually to 
 go. The Fryston visit lasted a fortnight. 'Alas!' he 
 says, on closing his account of it, ' we were at churcli on 
 Sunday. Iloebuck (much tamer than before) was here 
 with lawyers. This way leads not to peace, yet I actually 
 slept last night for the first time without rising to smoke.' 
 
 Life in great English country houses may be as well 
 spent as life elsewhere by the owners of them who have 
 occupations to attend to. For visitors, when large num- 
 bers are brought together, some practice is required if 
 they are to enjoy the elaborate idleness. The habits of 
 such places as Fryston and Headingly, to which he went 
 afterwards, were as yet a new experience to Carlyle. 
 From the latter place he reported on April 17th. 
 
 To Jane Welsh (Jarlyle. 
 
 Headingly: April 17, 1841. 
 Richard and I rolled oflflfrom the doors of Fryston Hall in a 
 handsome enough manner yesterday about eleven o'clock. We left 
 a vacant house to a quietude which I should think must have been 
 
182 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 welcome to it. I never lived before in such an element of * much 
 ado about almost Nothing ; ' life occupied altogether in getting it- 
 self lived ; troops of flunkeys bustling and becking at all times, 
 the meat-jack creaking and playing all day, and I think all night, 
 for I used to hear it very early under my room ; and such cham- 
 pagning, claretting, and witty conversationing. Ach Gott ! I 
 would sooner be a ditcher than spend all my days so. However, 
 we got rather tolerably through it for these ten days, and I really 
 think I can report a favourable change in my inner man in spite of 
 every drawback. I have not yet made out one good sleep. This 
 morning I had a fair chance, had fallen asleep again, and was afar 
 in sweet oblivion, apparently for hours, when the visage of a 
 flunkey at the foot of my bed aroused me. * What o'clock ? ' * Af 
 pas seven, Sir.'' * When is breakfast ? ' ^ Af pas eight.'' Flunkey 
 of the Devil. I rose as slowly as I possibly could, read newspa- 
 pers, &c., you may judge with what felicity, till ten, when 
 breakfast did arrive. No wealth should in any case induce me to 
 be concerned with retinues of flunkeys. And yet, poor fellows ! 
 even this flunkey of the Devil is a very assiduous, helpful creat- 
 ure. I will tell him not to call me to-mon-ow at all, and so for- 
 give him. 
 
 Here at Headingly the house is quieter. The people have al- 
 most all sense — two altogether important elements. Besides we 
 dine at six. Nay, we have a smoking room. The youngest broth- 
 er Arthur has cigars and pipes. I could be better nowhere than 
 here. I have shirked the church. I pleaded * conscience.' I do 
 really begin to have scruples ; that is a truth. ' Nothing can ex- 
 ceed the kindness of these people,' ' and they are really good people. 
 
 I was much entertained with the new mill yesterday, with the 
 thousands of men, lasses and boys and girls, all busy there. It 
 is not nothing, but something, we here live amidst. At six o'clock 
 here a general muster of the Sj)ring Rices and Marshalls, Mrs. 
 Henry Taylor among them, awaited us to dinner, and we had a 
 reasonable enough evening, one of the best I have yet had. Beau- 
 tiful room where I now sit writing, with Leeds lying safe in the 
 hollow of the green knolls ; its steeple-chimneys all dead to-day 
 (Sunday), its very house-smoke cleared away by the brisk wind 
 which is rattling in all windows, growling mystically through all 
 the trees. Nothing that art, aided by wealth, good sense, and 
 honest kindness, can do for me is wanting. 
 
 1 Phrase of Edward Irving. 
 
Cottage on the Sohoay. 183 
 
 Two pleasant days were spent with the Marshalls, and 
 then Carlyle pursued his way. He had nothing definite 
 to do. He was taking holiday with set purpose, and being 
 so far north he went on by Liverpool, and by steamer 
 thence to Dumfriesshire. His mother had been slightly 
 ailing, and he was glad to be with her till she recovered. 
 But he was among his own people, no longer under re- 
 straint as among strangers, and he grew restless and ' atra- 
 bilious.' * The stillness of this region,' he wrote when 
 at Scotsbrig, ' would be a kind of heaven for me, could I 
 get it enjoyed ; but I have no home here. I am growing 
 weary of the perfect idleness. Like the Everlasting Jew, 
 I must wetter^ welter^ weiter^ Accordingly in May he 
 was in Cheyne Row again, but in no very improved con- 
 dition. ' I am sick,' he said, ' w4th a sickness more than of 
 body, a sickness of mind and my own shame. I ought to 
 know what I am going to work at — all lies there. Despi- 
 cable mortal ! know thy own mind. Go then and do it in 
 silence.' He could not do it ; he could not work, he could 
 not rest. There was no help for it ; he had to do what in 
 the past year he knew he must do, allow himself a season 
 of complete rest and sea air. The weather grew hot, and 
 London intolerable. He went back to Scotsbrig, and took 
 a cottage at Kewby close to Annan, on the Solway, for the 
 summer. Mrs. Carlyle came down with a maid who was 
 to act as cook for them. They were to take possession at 
 the end of July. Mrs. Carlyle stayed a day or two on the 
 way with her newly acquired friends, the Paulets, at Sea- 
 forth near Liverpool, where a letter reached her from her 
 husband. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle^ Liverpool. 
 
 Scotsbrig: July 1S41. 
 Much good may Liverpool do you, or rather have done you, for 
 it will be the last day when you get this. Had I known the 
 Paulet was 8o su[)erior a chai'acter, I ought certainly to have gone 
 
184 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 and looked at her. ... I should on the whole like best of all 
 to see poor Geraldine, an ardent spark of life struggling and striv- 
 ing one knows not whitherward, too well. May the bounteous 
 heavens be good to her, poor Geraldine ! I wish she could once 
 get it fairly into her head that neither woman nor man, nor any 
 kind of creature in this universe, was born for the exclusive, or 
 even for the chief, purpose of falling in love, or being fallen in 
 love with. Good heavens ! It is one of the purposes most living 
 creatures are produced for ; but, except the zoophytes and coral 
 insects of the Pacific Ocean, I am acquainted with no creature 
 with whom it is the one or grand object. That object altogether 
 missed, thwarted, and seized by the Devil, there remains for 
 man, for woman, and all creatures (except the zoophytes), a very 
 great number of other objects over which we will still show fight 
 against the Devil. Ah me ! These are sorry times, these of ours, 
 for a young woman of genius. My friend Herr (word illegi- 
 ble), whom I am reading here, greatly prefers the old deep Norse 
 Paganism, with its stalwart energy and self-help, with its stoicism, 
 rugged nobleness, and depth as of very death, to any Christianism 
 now going. Recommend me to Geraldine, at any rate, as one 
 who loves her, and will lament sore if she gain not the victory, 
 if she find not by-and-by some doctrine better than George- 
 Sandism, inclusive of George-Sandism and suppressive of that. 
 Enough now. Not a word in the shape of news can stand here. 
 I live in a silence unequalled for many years. I grow daily better, 
 and am really very considerably recovered now. My i^opularity is 
 suffering somewhat by the absolute refusal to see any body what- 
 ever. I let it suffer. 
 
 Adieu, dear little creature ! sail prosperously. Be not too sick. 
 Come jumping up when I step upon the deck at Annan Pool. Kiss 
 Geraldine. I command no more. 
 
 Yours ever and aye, 
 
 T. Caelyle. 
 
 Something was not altogether right with Carl jle -when 
 he wrote this letter. The tone of it is uncomfortable. 
 He was a wayward creature. He met his wife as he 
 promised, drove her over to her mother's at Templand, and 
 intended to stay there with her. On the first night of his 
 arrival he rose at three o'clock in the dawning of the July 
 
A Night at Temjpland, 185 
 
 morning, went to the stable, put liis horse into the gig 
 himself, and drove over to Dumfries to finish his night's 
 rest there. In the forenoon he sent back this account of 
 himself : — 
 
 Dumfries : July 22, 1*41. 
 I got away hither much better than you ixjrliaps anticipated. I 
 liavo managed to get some houi*s of sleep, and am taking the road 
 (to Annan) not at all in desperate circumstances. Would to Heaven 
 X^could hear that my poor Jeannie had got to sleep ! I have done 
 little but think tragically enough about my poor lassie all day : 
 about her, and aU the histoiy we have had together. Alas! but let 
 us not take the tragic side of it. All tragedy has a moral and a 
 blessing in it withal. It was the beautifullest sunrise when I left 
 Templand. Herons were fishing in the Nith ; few other creatures 
 yet abroad. I could not make the cock hold his tongue on the 
 roost. I am afraid he still kejit thee awake. Alas ! the poor Dame 
 has too probably lain all day with a headache. Write to me — 
 write to me. Explain all my suddenness to your mother, to our 
 kind friends. Express all my regret to them, all my, &c. Adieu, 
 my hapless, beloved Jeannie ! Sleep and be well, and let us meet 
 not tragically. Adieu, 
 
 T. CARLYIiE. 
 
 He had made so little secret of his dislike of London, 
 and his wish to leave it, that when he was so much absent 
 this season a report went abroad that he had finally gone, 
 and Sterling had written to him to inquire. He told his 
 friend, in answer, that for the present he had merely taken 
 a cottage for the summer ; for the rest ' he had no fixed 
 intentions, only rebellious impulses, blind longings and 
 velleities.' ' 1 do not think,' he said, ' that I shall leave 
 London for a while ; yet I might readily go farther and 
 fare worse. Indeed, in no other corner of the earth have 
 I ever been able to get any kind of reasonable solid exist- 
 ence at all. Everywhere else, I have been a kind of 
 exceptional, anomalous, anonymous product of nature, pro- 
 voked and provoking in a very foolish, unprofitable way.' 
 
 The Newby lodgings were arranged, and he and his wife 
 
186 Carlyle's Hfe in London. 
 
 were settled in them. Rest was the object, the most desir- 
 able and the least attainable. His correspondence describes 
 his life there. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Newby : July 28, 1841. 
 This same furnished cottage is a considerable curiosity of a 
 place, of the tiniest dimensions, as if space here on the beach had 
 been not less precious than in the heart of London; but it is 
 pajDered, dry, &c., &c.; by her contrivances Jane is making it all 
 very habitable. Ah-eady this morning at nine I had a bathe. The 
 tide is not ten yards off. Alick, Mary, &c., are overwhelming with 
 attentions ; one sends wine, the other cream and butter, &c. It is the 
 loneliest place surely I could have found anywhere in the world, 
 this, at present. Sky and sea, with little change either of sound 
 or color, such is our whole environment. Very strange, very sad, 
 yet very soothing is this multitudinous everlasting moan of the 
 Frith of the Selgovse, vexed by its winds, swinging in here and 
 again out like a huge pendulum hung upon the moon — ever — ever 
 — as in the days of Pliny, and far earlier. Eternity is long, is 
 great ; and life with all its grievances and other ' trash-trash ' is 
 very short and small. 
 
 To John Sterling. 
 
 Newby : August 4. 
 
 Here now for a matter of ten days. Our house is a small dandi- 
 fied fantasticality of a cottage, almost close upon the gravel of the 
 beach. A footpath, on coarse dunes, with gorse, broom, hairy 
 imitation of grass, passes east and west before our windows. Be- 
 hind us is an oatfield, now in ear, and fishers' huts and cabins. 
 Eight in front from this garret-window lies all Cumberland ; lies 
 Skiddaw, Helvellyn, and a thousand wondrous peaks known to me 
 from infancy, at the present moment all blue and shining in the 
 August sun, oftenest sunk in grey tempest, always worth a look 
 from me. 
 
 The place is very strange, most lonely. For three days after our 
 arrival we had no phenomenon at all but the everlasting roar of 
 the loud winds, and the going and coming of the great Atlantic 
 brine, which makes up and down once every twelve hours since 
 the creation of the world, never forgetting its work ; a most huge 
 unfortunate-looking thing, doomed to a course of transcendent 
 monotony, the very image as of a grey objectless eternity. 
 
Cottage on the Solway, 187 
 
 I bathe daily, ride often, drive my wife or my mother, who is 
 with us in these days, to and fro in frail vehicles of the gig species. 
 It is a savage existence for most part, not unlike that of gipsies. 
 For example, our groom is a great thick-sided, laughing-faced, 
 red-haired — waimin. She comes to me from time to time with news 
 of inextricable imbroglios in the harness, the head-stalls, and hay- 
 rack. If I could not myself perform, the whole equine establish- 
 ment would come to a standstill. But none knows me, none ven- 
 tures to know me. I roam far and wide in the character of ghost 
 (a true revenant). Such gipsy dom I often liken to the mud bath 
 your sick rhinoceros seeks out for himself, therein to lie soaking 
 for a season, with infinite profit to the beast's health, they say. 
 
 I love Emerson's book,' not for its detached opinions, not even 
 for the scheme of the general world he has framed for himself, or 
 any eminence of talent he has expressed that with, but simply be- 
 cause it is his own book ; because there is a tone of veracity, an 
 unmistakable air of its being hUi (wheresoever he may have found, 
 discovered, borrowed, or begged it), and a real utterance of a hu- 
 man soul, not a mere echo of such. I consider it, in that sense, 
 highly remarkable, rare, very rare, in these days of ours. Ach Gott! 
 It is frightful to live among echoes. The few that read the book, 
 I imagine, will get benefit of it. To America, I sometimes say 
 that Emei*son, such as he is, seems to me like a kind of New Era. 
 Really, in any counti-y, all sunk crown deep in cant, twaddle, and 
 hollow traditionality, is not the first man that will begin to speak 
 the truth — any truth — a new and newest era ? 
 
 There is no likeness of the face of Emerson that I know of. Poor 
 fellow ! It lies among his liabilities to be engraved yet, to become 
 a Sect founder, and go partially to the devil in scvei-al ways ; all 
 which may the kind heavens forbid ! Wliat you ask about viy like- 
 ness is unanswerable. I likened it, four months ago, when I 
 struck work in sitting, to a comjiound of the head of a demon and 
 of a flayed horse. Infaiulum^ infandum ! 
 
 Carlyle had sat to several persons. I cannot say to 
 which of several performances tins singular description 
 refers. For some reason, no artist ever succeeded with a 
 portrait of him. 
 
 > The first series of Buwuo n^s Essays just pabUshed in England, with a 
 preface by Cadyle. 
 
188 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 To John Garlyle. 
 
 Newby : August 15, 1841. 
 It is all like a kind of vision of Hades, this country to me, 
 especially when it sinks all grey like a formless blot, future and 
 past alike nothing or an unintelligible something. The truth is, 
 I myself in these weeks make no debate whatever against the great 
 exterior Not I. There is nothing but passivity, idleness, and Bal- 
 zac literature in me. Perhaps it is good so. I shall get to work- 
 ing, to asserting myself by-and-by. Never have I been idler since 
 I can remember. If my health do not improve a little, it is very 
 hard. I see nobody, will let nobody see me. ' It is not to be a 
 Lion,' Jane says, ' but to be a Tiger.' 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 August 20. 
 Our time, which is about done here, has gone along as well as 
 was needful in a kind of vagabond style, the fruits of which I ex- 
 pect afterwards. I have lived, as it were, entirely alone, in com- 
 pany with the Titantic elements, spirits of the waters, earth, wind, 
 and mud — by no means the worst company. Last night after dusk 
 I walked as far as Gallowbank Pool, in a grey wild wind, in per- 
 fect solitude except for sleeping cows, except three fishers too, 
 whose rude Annan voices I heard busy in their sicows in the Gral- 
 lowbank Pool when I arrived. No walk in the world could be more 
 impressive to me. I looked into the Lady Well in i)assing home 
 again. Annan street had groups of 'prentice lads on it, and maid- 
 servants in white aprons. Tom Willison's shop light was shining 
 far up the street, but Tom himself, I suppose, is laid long since in 
 the everlasting night, or the everlasting day. Near ten o'clock I 
 was here again. 
 
 Readers of ' Redgauntlet ' will know the scenery of that 
 evening walk. Whether as a rhinoceros in his mud bath, 
 or as an unquiet revenant, in either case he was determined 
 to have notliing to say to his fellow-creatures. There he 
 was, in the very centre of his oldest acquaintances. Kot 
 a place or a name or a person but was familiar to him from 
 his boyhood. At Annan he had been at school. At the 
 same school lie had been an usher. Annan was Irving's 
 home, and Irving's relations were all round him. Yet he 
 
Miss Martinecm, 189 
 
 visited no one, he recognised no one, he allowed no one to 
 speak to him, and he wandered in the dusk like a restless 
 spirit amidst the scenes of his early dreams and his early 
 suflFerings. The month at Kewby over, he stayed another 
 week at Scotsbrig with his mother, went for a few days to 
 the Speddings in Cumberland, thence with his wife, be- 
 fore going back to London, to see Miss Martineau at Tyne- 
 nionth. At last, in the end of September, he was at home 
 again, the long holiday over, to which he had looked for- 
 ward so eagerly, and he threw down into his note-book 
 the impression which it had left. 
 
 Jouimal. 
 
 October 3, 1841. — Returned nearly three weeks ago after a long 
 sojourn in Annandale, «fec., a life of transcendent Do-Nothingism, 
 not Fee/-Notliingism, an entirely eclipsed, almost as if enchanted, 
 life. Jane was with us. Helen, the servant, too, had been with 
 us at Newby. The adventure was full of confused pain, partly 
 degrading, disgraceful ; cost me in all, seemingly, some 70/. We 
 shall not all go back to Annandale for rustication in a hurry. My 
 poor old mother ! What unutterable thoughts are there for me ! 
 How the light of her little upper room used to shine for me in 
 dark nights when I was coming home ! The thought of her ! Ah 
 me ! There is yet no thought of all I feel in regard to that. . , . 
 Harriet Martineau lies this long while confined to a sofa, writing, 
 wilting, full of spirits, vivacity, didacticism ; could still give illus- 
 tration and direction to the whole world, tell every mortal that 
 would listen to her what would make his life all right— a praise- 
 worthy, notable character. Nevertheless, I was pained by much 
 that I saw. The proper Unitarian species of this our England at 
 present is very curious. 
 
 I lazily, and alas ! also sullenly, at times refused to see simply 
 any person in Annandale except my own kindred. I do fear I gave 
 offence to right and left, but really could not well help it. Much 
 French rubbish of novels read, a German book on Norse and Cel- 
 tic Paganism, little otlier than trash either. Nothing read, Noth- 
 ing thought. Nothing done. Shame ! 
 
 Ought I to write now of Oliver Cromwell ? Gott ireiss .• I can- 
 not yet see clearly. I have been scrawling somewhat dnring the 
 
190 Carlyle^s Life in London, 
 
 past week, but entirely without effect. Go on, go on. Do I not 
 see so much clearly ? Why complain of wanting light ? It is cour- 
 age, energy, perseverance, that I want. How many things of mine 
 have already passed into public action? I can see them with 
 small exultation ; really almost witl* a kind of sorrow. So little 
 light ! How enormous is the darkness that renders it noticeable ! 
 Last week a manufacturer at Leeds compared our Corn-law nobles 
 to the French in 1789 ; curious to tne. It is a strange incoherency 
 this position of mine, of the like of me— among the meanest of 
 men and yet withal among the high and highest. But what is 
 life, except the knitting up of incoherences into coherence ? Cour- 
 age ! What a need of some speaker to the practical world at 
 present ! They would hear me if, alas ! I had anything to say. 
 Again and again of late I ask myself in whispers. Is it the duty of 
 a citizen to be silent, to paint mere Heroisms, Cromwells, &c. ? 
 There is a mass as of chaotic rubbish continents lying on me, 
 crushing me into silence. Forward ! Struggle ! ' Live to make 
 others happy ! ' Yes, surely at all times, so far as you can. But 
 at bottom that is not the aim of any life. At bottom it is- mere 
 hypocrisy to call it such, as is continually done now-a-days. Every 
 life strives towards a goal, and ever should and must so strive. 
 What you have to do with others is not to tread on their toes as 
 you run — this ever and always — and to help such of them out of 
 the gutter — this of course, too — as your means will suffice you. 
 But avoid Cant. Do not think that your life means a mere search- 
 ing in gutters for fallen figures to wipe and set up. Ten thousand 
 and odd to one it does not mean and should not mean that. In 
 our life there is really no meaning at all that one can lay hold of, 
 no result at all to sum up, except the woi^k we have done. Is 
 there any other ? 1 see it not at present. 
 
 Ye voices of the I3ast ! Oh, ye cut my heart asunder with your 
 mournful music out of discord ; your prophetic prose grown poetry. 
 Ay de mi ! But what can I do with you ? This day I actually 
 ought to try if I could get to work. Let us try. 
 
 October 4. — Alas ! I did try, and without results. Da JiaV ich 
 keinen Tag. My thoughts lie around me all inarticulate, sour, 
 fermenting, bottomless, like a hideous, enormous bog of Allan — a 
 thing ugly, painful, of use to no one. We must force and tear and 
 dig some kind of m^ain ditch through it. All would be well then : 
 growth, fertility, greenness, and running water — a business that 
 will not do itself, that must be done. Oh, what a lazy lump I am ! 
 
7%<3 Present Time, 191 
 
 This extract explains the difficulty Carlyle had in be- 
 ginning * Cromwell.' lie felt that he had something to 
 say, something which he ought to say about the present 
 time to the present age ; something of infinite Importance 
 to it. England as he saw it was saturated with cant, 
 dosed to sui-feit with doctrines half true only or not true 
 at all, doctrines religious, doctrines moral, doctrines politi- 
 cal, till the once noble and at heart still noble English 
 character was losing its truth, its simplicity, its energy, its 
 integrity. Between England as it was and England as it 
 might yet rouse itself to be, and as it once had been, there 
 was to Carlyle visible an infinite difference. Jeffrey had 
 told him that, though things were not as they sliould be, 
 they were better than they had ever been before. This, 
 in Carlyle's opinion, was one of those commonly received 
 falsehoods which were working like poison in the blood. 
 England could never have grown to be what it was if there 
 had been no more sincerity in Englishmen, no more hold 
 on fact and truth, than he perceived in his own contem- 
 poraries. The ' progi'ess ' so loudly talked of was progress 
 downwards, and rapid and easy because it was downwards. 
 There was not a statesman who could do honestly what he 
 thought to be right and keep his office ; not a member of 
 Parliament who could vote by his conscience and keep his 
 seat ; not a clergyman who could hope for promotion if 
 he spoke what he really believed ; hardly anyone of any 
 kind in any occupation who could earn a living if he only 
 tried to do his woi-k as well as it could be done ; and the 
 result of it all was that the very souls of men were being 
 poisoned with universal mendacity. ' Chartism ' had been 
 a partial relief, but the very attention which it had met 
 with was an invitation to say more, and he had an inward 
 impulse which was forcing him on to say it. How ? was the 
 ((uestion. The ' Westminster Review ' had collapsed, lie 
 thought for a time that he might have some Review of 
 
192 'Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 liis own where he could teacli what he called ' believinor 
 Radicalism,' in opposition to Political Economy and Par- 
 liamentary Radicalism. Of this he could make nothing. 
 He could not find men enough with sufficient stuff in them 
 to work with him. Thus all this autumn he was hanging 
 restless, unable to settle his mind on ' Cromwell ; ' un- , 
 able to decide in what other direction to turn ; and there 
 is nothing of his left written during these months of much 
 interest save one letter about Goethe. Sterling, who had 
 been a persistent heretic on that subject, refusing to recog- 
 nise Goethe's sovereign excellence, had been studying 
 ' Meister ' at Carlyle's instance, was still dissatisfied, and 
 had frankly said so. Carlyle answers. 
 
 To John Sterling. 
 
 Chekea: October 31, 1841. 
 I agree in nearly evei-v word yon say about ' Meister,' and call 
 your delineation just and vivid, both of that book and its author, 
 as they impress one there. Truly, as you say, moreover, one might 
 ask the question whether anybody ever did love this man as friend 
 does friend ; especially whether this man did ever frankly love 
 anybody. I think in one sense it is very likely the answers were 
 No to both questions, and yet in another sense how emphatically 
 Yes. Few had a right to love this man, except in the very way 
 you mention ; Schiller, perhaps, to something like that extent. 
 One does not love the heavens' lightning in the way of caresses al- 
 together. This man's love, I take it, lay deep hidden in him as 
 fire in the earth's centre. At the surface, since he could not be 
 a Napoleon, and did not like to be a broken, self- consumed Bums, 
 what could it do for him ? The earliest instincts of self-culture, I 
 suppose, and all the wider insights he got in the course of that, 
 would alike prescribe for him : ' Hide all this ; renounce all this ; 
 all this leads to madness, indignity, Kousseauism, and will for ever 
 remain bemocked, ignominiously crucified one way or another in 
 this lower earth. Let thy love far hidden spring up as a soul of 
 beauty and be itself victoriously beautiful.' Let summer heat 
 make a whole world verdant, and if Sterling ask next century, 
 ' But where is your thunderbolt then ? ' Sterling will take another 
 view of it. 
 
Offer of a Professorship. 193 
 
 An interesting incident, though it led to nothing, 
 lightened the close of this year. In tlie old days at 
 Comely Bank and Craigenputtock, Carlyle had desired 
 nothing so much as professorship at one or other of the 
 Scotch universities. The door had been shut in his face, 
 sometimes contemptuously. He was now famous, and the 
 young Edinburgh students, having looked into his lectures 
 on Heroes, began to think that, whatever might be the 
 opinions of the authorities and patrons, they for their 
 part would consider lectures such as those a good exchange 
 for what was provided for them. A ' History chair ' was 
 about to be established. A party of them, represented by 
 a Mr. Duniface, presented a requisition to the Faculty of 
 Advocates to appoint Carlyle. The 'Scotsman' backed 
 them up, and Mr. Duniface wrote to him to ask if he 
 would consent to be nominated. Seven years before, such 
 an offer would have had a warm welcome from him. 
 Now he was gratified to find himself so respected by the 
 students. But then was then, and'now was now. 
 
 The cliair (he said of it) has no endowment at all. To go among 
 Scotch Presbyteiians, Scotch pedantries, Klein-Stadteries, without 
 any advantage but a lecture-room, and their countenance and co- 
 partnery, would never for a moment do. Cannot I make for my- 
 self a university at any time in any quarter of the Saxon world by 
 simply hiring a lecture-room and beginning to speak ? Yet the 
 movement of these young lads is beautiful, is pathetic to me : a 
 young generation calling me affectionately home, and I already 
 across the irremeabilis unda. * The wished for comes too late.' 
 Tant mieuLx, now and then. 
 
 This or something like this will I send — I must take care the 
 dogs do not print it in their newspapers : — 
 
 To Mr. Dura/ace and his fellow-requisUionists. 
 
 Mj dear Sir, — Accept my kind thanks, you and all your asso- 
 ciates, for your zeal to serve me. This invitation of yours, coming 
 on me unexpectedly from scenes once so familiar, now so remote 
 and stmnge, like the voice of a new generation now risen up there, 
 is almost an affecting thing. I can in some true sense take it as 
 Vol. III.— 13 
 
194 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 a voice from the young ingenuous minds of Scotland at large, call- 
 ing to me in these confused deep struggling times, * Come thou, 
 and teach us what is good.' If I did not hope still in other ways 
 to do what is in me towards teaching you and others, I should be 
 doubly sorry that my answer must be negative. Ten years ago 
 such an invitation might perhaps have been decisive of much for 
 me, but it is too late now ; too late for many reasons, which I need 
 not trouble you with at present. 
 
 I will solicit a continuance of your regards ; I will bid you all 
 be scholars and fellow-labourers of mine in things true and manly ; 
 that so we may still work in real concert at a distance and scat- 
 tered asunder, since together it is not possible for us. "With sin- 
 cerest wishes, yours, T. Caklyle. 
 
 Such a letter, brief, pregnant, and graceful, must have 
 increased the regret among the students that they could 
 not have the writer of it among them. Could not — for 
 that was the word. At the universities of England and 
 Scotland, as thej were then constituted, a man of genius 
 bent on speaking truth and nothing else could have no 
 place. Is it otherwise now ? The emoluments of the 
 chair would have been ample, for the students would have 
 crowded into the class, and the professors' incomes depend 
 almost wholly on the lecture fees. Happily finance was 
 no longer an anxiety to Carlyle. 
 
 Money (he notes) does not weigh excessively much with me now 
 that I have wherewithal to go on unbated by the hellhound idea 
 of beggary. I begin to see now that it is not on the money side 
 that we shall be wrecked, but on some other. Jbeo gratias I for 
 it was an ugly discipline that. 
 
I 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A.D. 1842. MT. 47. 
 
 Sterling at Falmouth — My own acquaintance with him — * Strafford * 
 — Carlyle's opinion — Death of Mrs. Welsh — Carlyle for two 
 months at Templand — Plans for the future — Thoughts of re- 
 turning to Craigenputtock — Sale of Mrs. Welsh's property — 
 Letters from Lockhart — Life in Annandale — Visit to Dr. Ar- 
 nold at Rugby — Naseby field. 
 
 Sterling was spending the winter of 1841-2 at Falmouth. 
 Ilis chest was weak. He had tried the West Indies, he 
 had tried Madeira, he had tried the south of France, with 
 no permanent benefit. He was now trying whether the 
 mild air of tlie south of Cornwall might not .answer at 
 least as well, and spare him another banishment abroad. 
 It was here and at this time that I became myself ac- 
 quainted with Sterling. I did not see him often, but in 
 the occasional interviews which I had with him he said 
 some things which I could never forget, and which affected 
 all my subsequent life. Among the rest, he taught me to 
 know what Carlyle was. I had read the ' French Kevolu- 
 tion,' had wondered at it like my contemporaries, but had 
 not known what to make of it. Sterling made me under- 
 stand that it was written by the greatest of living thinkers, 
 if by the side of Carlyle any other person deserved to be 
 called a thinker at all. He showed me, I remember, some 
 of Carlyle's letters to him, which have curiously come back 
 into my hands after more than forty years. Looking over 
 these letters now, I find at the beginning of this year 
 
196 Carlyl^s Life in London. 
 
 some interesting remarks about Emerson, with whom also 
 Sterling had fallen into some kind of correspondence. 
 Besides his own Essays, Emerson had sent over copies of 
 the 'Dial,' the organ then of intellectual Liberal Xew Eng- 
 land. Carlyle had not liked the 'Dial,' which he thought 
 high-flown, often even absurd. Yet it had something 
 about it, too, which struck him as uncommon. 
 
 It is to me (he said) the most wearisome of readable reading ; 
 shrill, incoi*poreal, spiritlike ; I do not say ghastly, for that is the 
 character of your Puseyism, Shelleyism, &c., real ghosts of extinct 
 Laudisms, Eobespierreisms, to me extremely hideous at all times. 
 This New England business I rather liken to an w?iborn soul that 
 has yet got no body. Not a pleasant neighbour either. 
 
 But the chief substance of these letters is about Ster- 
 ling's own work. He had just written ' Straffoi-d,' and 
 had sent the manuscript to be read at Cheyne Bow. 
 Carlyle, when asked for his opinion, gave it faithfully. 
 He never flattered. He said honestly and completely 
 what he really thought. His verdict on Sterling's tragedy 
 was not and could not be favourable. He could find no 
 true image of Strafford there, or of Strafford's surround- 
 ings. He had been himself studying for two years the 
 antecedents of the Civil War. He had first thought Mon- 
 trose to have been the greatest man on Charles's side. 
 He had found that it was not Montrose, it was Went- 
 worth ; but Wentworth, as he conceived him, was not in 
 Sterling's play. Even the form did not please him, though 
 on this he confessed himself an inadequate judge. His 
 remarks on art are characteristic : — 
 
 Of Dramatic Art, though I have eagerly listened to a Goethe 
 speaking of it, and to several hundreds of others mumbling and 
 trying to speak of it, I find that I, practically speaking, know yet 
 almost as good as nothing. Indeed, of Art generally {Kunst, so 
 called) I can almost know nothing. My first and last secret of 
 Kunst is to get a thorough intelligence of the/«c^ to be painted, 
 represented, or, in whatever way, set forth — the /ac^ deep as Hades, 
 
Sterling's ' Straff m^d: 197 
 
 high as heaven, and written so, as to the visnal face of it on onr 
 l)oor earth. This once blazing within me, if it will ever get to 
 blaze, luul bursting to be out, one has to take the whole dexterity 
 of adaptation one is master of, and with tremendous straggling, 
 really frightful struggling, contrive to exhibit it, one way or the 
 other. 
 
 Tliis is not Art, I know well. It is Robinson Crusoe, and not 
 the Master of Woolwich, building a ship. Yet at bottom is there 
 any Woolwich builder for such kinds of craft ? What Kunst had 
 Homer ? What Kunst had Shakespeare ? Patient, docile, valiant 
 intelligence, conscious and imconscious, gathered from all winds, 
 of these two things — their otnti faculty of utterance, and the audi- 
 ence they had to utter to, rude theatre, Ithacan Farm Hall, or 
 whatever it was— add only to which as the soul of the whole, the 
 above-said blazing, radiant insight into the fact, blazing, burning 
 interest about it, and we have the whole Art of Shakespeare and 
 Homer. 
 
 To speak of Goethe, how the like of him is related to these two, 
 would lead me a long way. But of Goethe, too, and of all speak- 
 ing men, I will say the soul of all worth in them, without which 
 none else is possible, and x^dth which much is certain, is still that 
 same radiant, all-irradiating insight, that same burning interest, 
 and the glorious, melodious, ijerenuial veracity that results from 
 these two. 
 
 This extract is interesting less for its bearing upon 
 Sterling's play, which brilliant separate passages could not 
 save from failure, than for the full light which it throws 
 on Carlyle's own method of working. But from his own 
 work and from Sterling's and all concerns of his own lie 
 was called away at this moment by a blow which fell upon 
 his wife, a blow so severe that it had but one alleviation. 
 It showed her the intensity of the affection with which 
 she was regarded by her husband, ller mother, Mrs. 
 Welsh, had now resided alone for several years at her old 
 home at Templand in Nithsdale, where the Carlyles had 
 been married. Her father, Walter Welsh, and the two 
 aunts had gone one after the other. Except for tlie occa- 
 sional visits to Cheyue Kow, Mrs. Welsh had lived on 
 
198 CaidyWs Life in London. 
 
 there by herself in easy circumstances, for she had the 
 rent of Craigenputtock as- well as her own jointure, and, 
 to all natural expectation, w^ith many years of life still be- 
 fore her. The mother and daughter were passionately 
 attached, yet on the daughter's part perhaps the passion 
 lay in an intense sense of duty ; for their habits did not 
 suit, and their characters were strongly contrasted. Mrs. 
 Welsh was enthusiastic, sentimental, Byronic. Mrs. Car- 
 lyle was fiery and generous, but with a keen sarcastic im- 
 derstanding; Mrs. Welsh was accustomed to rule; Mrs. 
 Carlyle declined to be ruled wdien her judgment was un- 
 convinced ; and thus, as will have been seen, in spite of 
 their mutual affection, they were seldom much together 
 without a collision. Carlyle's caution — ' Hadere nicht niit 
 deiner Ilutter, Liehste. Trage^ trage!'^ — tells its own 
 story. Mrs. Carlyle, as well as her husband, was not an 
 easy person to live wdth. She had a terrible habit of 
 speaking out the exact truth, cut as clear as with a graving 
 tool, on occasions, too, when without harm it might have 
 been left unspoken. 
 
 Mrs. Welsh had been as well as usual. There had been 
 nothing in her condition to suggest alarm since the sum- 
 mer w^ien the Carlyles had been in Annandale. On Feb- 
 ruary 23 Mrs. Carlyle had wTitten her a letter, little 
 dreaming that it was to be the last which she was ever to 
 write to her, describing in her usual keen style the state 
 of things in Cheyne Row. 
 
 To Mrs. Welsh, Templand. 
 
 5 Cheyne Row : Feb. 23, 1842. 
 I am continiiiug to mend. If I could only get a good sleep, I 
 should be quite recovered ; but, alas ! we are gone to the devil 
 again in the sleeping department. That dreadful woman next 
 door, instead of putting away the cock which we so pathetically 
 appealed against, has produced another. The servant has ceased 
 to take charge of them. They are stuffed with ever so many hens 
 
Death of Mrs. WdsL 199 
 
 into a small hencoop every night, and left out of doors the night 
 long. Of course they are not comfortable, and of course they 
 crow and screech not only from daylight, but from midnight, and 
 so near that it goes through one's head every time like a sword. 
 The night before last they woke me every quarter of an hour, but 
 I slept some in the intervals ; for they had not succeeded in rous- 
 ing Iiim above. But last night they had him up at three. He 
 went to bed again, and got some sleep after, the * horrors ' not re- 
 commencing their efforts till five ; but I, listening every minute 
 for a new screech that would send him do^vn a second time and 
 prepare such wretchedness for the day, could sleep no more. 
 
 Wliat is to be done God knows ! If this goes on, he will soon be 
 in Bedlam ; and I too, for anything I see to the contrary : and 
 how to hinder it from going on ? The last note we sent the cruel 
 woman would not open. I send for the maid, and she will not 
 come. I would give them guineas for quiet, but they prefer tor- 
 menting us. In the law there is no resource in such cases. They 
 may keep wild beasts in their back yard if they choose to do so. 
 Carlyle swears he will shoot them, and orders me to borrow Maz- 
 zini's gun. Shoot them with all my heart if the consequences 
 were merely ha\dng to go to a police office and pay the damage. 
 But the woman would only be irritated thereby into getting fifty 
 instead of two. If there is to be any shooting, however, I will do 
 it myself. It will sound better my shooting them on princii^le than 
 his doing it in a passion. 
 
 This despicable nuisance is not at all unlikely to drive us out 
 of the house after all, just when he had reconciled himself to stay 
 in it. How one is vexed with little things in this life ! The 
 great evils one triumphs over bravely, but the little eat away one's 
 heart. 
 
 An ' evil ' greater tlian she had yet kiio\vn since her 
 fatlier was taken away hung over Mrs. Carlyle while she 
 was writing this letter. Five days later there came news 
 from Templand, like a bolt out of the blue sky, that Mrs. 
 Welsh had been struck by apoplexy and was dangerously 
 ill. Mrs. Carlyle, utterly unfit for travelling, ' almost out 
 of herself,' flew to Euston Square and caught the first train 
 to Liverpool. At Liverpool, at her uncle's house, she 
 learnt that all was over, and that she would never see her 
 
200 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 mother more. She was carried to bed unconscious. When 
 she recovered her senses she would have risen and gone 
 on ; but her uncle would not let her risk her own life, and 
 to have proceeded in her existing condition would as likely 
 as not have been fatal to her. Extreme, intense in 
 everything, she could only think of her own shortcomings, 
 of how her mother was gone now, and could never for- 
 give her. The strongest natures suffer worst from re- 
 morse. Only a strong nature, perhaps, can know what 
 remorse means. Mrs. Carlyle had surrendered her fortune 
 to her mother, but the recollection of this could be no 
 comfort ; she would have hated herself if such a thought 
 had occurred to her. Carlyle knew what she would be 
 suffering. The fatal news had been sent on to him in 
 London. He who could be driven into frenzy if a cock 
 crew near him at midnight, had no sorrow to spare for 
 himself in the presence of real calamity. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle^ Maryland Street, Liverpool. 
 
 Chelsea: March-], 1842. 
 My darling ! my poor little woman ! Alas ! what can I say to 
 thee ? It was a stern welcome from thy journey this news that 
 met thee at Maryland Street. Oh, my poor little broken-hearted 
 wife ! Our good mother, then, is away for ever. She has gone to 
 the unknown Great God, the Maker of her and of us. We shall 
 never see her more with these eyes. Weep, my darling, for it is 
 altogether sad and stern, the consummation of sorrows, the great- 
 est, as I hope, that awaits thee in this world. I join my tears 
 with thine ; I cry from the bottom of my dumb heart that God 
 would be good to thee, and soften our tears into blessed tears. 
 The question now, however, is what is to be done. I almost per- 
 suade myself your cousins would get you advised to take a little 
 repose with them — Eepose ! — and that you are still at Liverpool 
 and will expect this letter there, Tell me : would you wish me to 
 come ? to attend you forward ? to bring you back home ? to do or 
 to attempt anything that even promises to aid you ? Speak, my 
 poor darling ! I am in a whirl of unutterable thoughts. I can 
 advise nothing, but in everything I will be ordered by your 
 wishes. Speak them out. 
 
Death of Mrs, Welsh. 201 
 
 I wrote to Dr. Russell ' last night. Alas ! his tidings were all 
 too sudden. The swiftest mail train could not have carried us 
 thither. Even at Craigenputtock it might have befallen so. Per- 
 haps this night there will be some letter come from you. No, no ! 
 I remember now there is none possible till to-morrow morning. 
 Oh, that you had but stayed with me ! It would have been 
 something to weep on my shoulder. God help thee to bear this 
 sore stroke, my poor little Jeannie ! Adieu, I will write no more 
 at present. I have, of course, many lettera to write. God be with 
 thee, and solace thy poor heart, my own dearest I 
 
 T. Carltle. 
 
 3 o'clock. 
 I have kept this open to the last minute in hopes some clearness 
 of purpose might rise on me from amid that black chaos of 
 thoughts. It seems cruel to ask thee for advice, and yet thy 
 wishes, dearest, shall be the chief element of guidance for me. 
 As yet, in the mood I am in, all whirls and tumbles; but this 
 question does arise. Ought I not, by all laws of custom and 
 natuial propriety, to be there, with or without thee, on the last 
 sad, solemn occasion, to testify my reverence for one who will be 
 for ever sad, dear, and venerable to me ? Think thou and answer. 
 I will have all in readiness at any rate, so that I may be able to 
 start to-morrow night, or say on Thursday morning, if needful. 
 Shall I ? Adieu, my own darling ! 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle lay ill in Liverpol, unable to stir, and un- 
 permitted to write, lie himself felt that he must go, and 
 he went without waiting to hear more. As it was, he 
 was too late for the funeral, which had for some reason 
 been hurried ; but his brother James, witli the instinct of 
 good feeling, had gone of liis own accord from Ecclefechan 
 to represent him. Carlyle was sole executor, and there 
 were business affairs requii-ing attention which might de- 
 tain him several weeks. He was a few hours with his 
 wife at Liverpool on his way, and then went on, taking 
 his wife's cousin Helen with him to assist in the many 
 arrangements which would require a woman's hand. 
 
 ' The physician who had attended Mrs. Welsh, and husband of the Mrs. 
 RuMell who waa afterwards Mrs. Carlyle's oorrespondent. 
 
202 Carlyleh Life in London. 
 
 Everything was, of course, left to Mrs. Carlyle, and her 
 own property was returned to her. It was not large, 
 from 200Z. to 300Z. a year ; but, with such habits as hers 
 and her husband's, it w^as independence, and even wealth. 
 But this was the last recollection which occurred to 
 Carlyle. He travelled down on the box of the mail in 
 a half -dreamy state, seeing familiar faces at Annan and 
 Dumfries, and along the road, but taking no heed of them. 
 Terapland, when he reached it, was a haunted place. 
 There he had been married ; there he had often spent his 
 holidays when he could come down from Craigenputtock ; 
 there he had conceived ' Sartor ; ' there two years before 
 his own mother and he had smoked their pipes together 
 in the shrubbery. It was from Templand that he had 
 rushed away desperate in the twilight of a summer morn- 
 ing and seen the herons fishing in the river pools. A 
 thousand memories hung about the place, which was now 
 standing desolate. Durins; the six weeks while he re- 
 mained there he wrote daily to his wife, and every one of 
 these letters contained something tenderly beautiful. A 
 few extracts, however, are all that I can allow myself. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Templand : March 7, 1842. 
 
 All this house is like a ghost to me, but still clear and pure like 
 a kind of blessed spirit. The old feathers and grass stick in the 
 bottle on the mantelpiece. There are two pennies with bits of wax 
 on them. Helen thinks they are memorials of John Grey or Mr. 
 Bradfute. 
 
 March 9. 
 
 Our cousin's accounts of thee are better and always better, but we 
 hear of sleepless nights, doctors, and sleep provoked by medicine. I 
 entreat thee, my poor little woman ! compose thy sad heart. Alas, 
 alas ! I bid thee cease to be miserable, and thou canst not cease. 
 The stroke that has fallen is indeed irreparable, tmd tears, hot, 
 sorrowful tears, are due to the departed who Avill meet us here no 
 more. We shall go to her ; she shall not return to us. So it was 
 
Carlyle cd Templand, 203 
 
 in the Psalmist David's time ; so it is in ours, and will be to the 
 end of the world — a world long ago defined as a vale of tears, in 
 which, if we did not know of veiy truth that God presided over it, 
 and did incessantly guide it towards good and not towards evil, we 
 were incontrollably wretched. 
 
 March 11. 
 I am dreadfully sad in the mornings before I get up, and some 
 kind of work or endeavour after work fallen to. One has to look 
 at the black enemy steatiily and contemplate him in solitude for 
 oneself. All sorrow is an enemy, but it carries a friends message 
 within it too. Oh, my poor Jeannie ! all life is as death, and the 
 true Igdrasil which reaches up to heaven goes do^vn to the king- 
 dom of hell ; and God, the Everlasting Good and Just, is in it all. 
 We have no words for these things ; we are to be silent about 
 them ; yet they are true, for ever true. My dear partner, endea- 
 vour to still all feelings that can end in no action. Compose thy 
 poor little heart and say, though with tears, ' God's will be done.* 
 
 Among other questions requiring answer was, first and 
 foremost, what was to be done with Templand itself ? 
 Tlie house and farm were held under the Duke of Buc- 
 cloucli. The lease had yet several years to run. 
 
 Templand : March VX 
 I understand it takes some three weeks to give proper notifica- 
 tion. In three weeks I might have it settled and bo making for 
 Loudon again. I do not dislike a kind of fellowship with the dead 
 for that length of time. It is very mournful, almost awful, but it 
 is wholesome and useful for me. It is towards Eternity that we 
 are all bound. It is in Eternity that we already all live ; and aw- 
 ful death itself is but another phasis of life which also is awful, 
 fearful, and wonderful, reaching to heaven and hell. Ah me ! one 
 feels in these moments, first of all, how beggarly, almost insulting 
 to one, are all woi-ds whatsoever, when such a thing lies there ar- 
 rived and visible. 
 
 The first intention had been to part witli the place and 
 sell the furniture ; but it was endeared to Carlyle by many 
 recollections, and the thought occurred to him whether it 
 might not be better to keep it as it stood, and with all that 
 it contained, as a summer retreat, or perhaps as a final 
 
204 Carlyle^s Life i7i London. 
 
 home for himself. His mother, who had come across to 
 stay with him, perhaps encouraged the feeling. He did 
 not propose it ; he was careful to propose nothing which 
 his wife might dislike and have the pain of rejecting. He 
 hinted at it merely as a passing thought, and it was as well 
 that he did no more ; for he saw at once that the very idea 
 of such a thing was intolerably distressing to her, and of 
 this project he said no more. 
 
 His mother went home after a week. ' She sent you 
 her sympathy and blessing,' Carlyle wrote. ' " Thou must 
 tell her too," she added, " whatever ye may think of it, 
 that I hope she will get this great trouble sanctified to her 
 yet," which I said I doubted not my poor Jane in her own 
 way was ever struggling to obtain.' 
 
 It is the first day of my entire solitude here (he continued [for 
 Helen was also gone] on March 22), a bright, pale March day, de- 
 faced with occasional angry gusts of storm. I feel the whole, 
 however, myself, and her that is away, to be full of mystery, of 
 sorrow and greatness ; God-like, the work wholly of a God. La- 
 ment not, my poor Jane ! As sure as we live we shall yet go to 
 her ; we shall before long join her, and be united, we and all our 
 loved ones, even in such a way as God Most High has seen good ; 
 which way, of all conceivable ways, is it not verily the best ? 
 Speak as we will, there is nothing more to be spoken but even 
 this : God is great ; God is good ; God's will be done. Flesh and 
 blood do rebel, but the spirit within us all answers : Yes, even so. 
 My poor woman ! 
 
 In the quiet at Templand, and among such solemn sur- 
 roundings, London and its noisy vanities, its dinners and 
 its hencoops, did not seem more beautiful to Carlyle. More 
 than ever he prayed to be away from it. At that house it 
 was evident that Mrs. Carlyle could not bear the thought 
 of living. But there was Craigenputtock not far off, to- 
 wards which he had often been wistfully looking. Of 
 this, too, liitlierto she had refused to hear so much as a 
 mention j but it was now her own, and her objection might 
 
Deodh of Mrs. Welsh. 205 
 
 be less. They could afford to spend something to improve 
 its comforts. An auction sale of the Templand furniture, 
 every part of which had a remembrance attaching to it, 
 was in itself a kind of sacrilege. Again he would merely 
 hint. 
 
 Once or twice to-day (he said at the close of the same letter) it 
 strikes me, if you did not so dislike Craigenputtock, might we not 
 cany all over thither, build them together again, and avoid a sale ? 
 But this, I am afraid, is rather wild. I myself have no love for 
 Craigenputtock ; but the place might still be saved, made even 
 neater than ever, and while it continues ours there is a kind of 
 necessity for our going thither sometimes. 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle was leaving Liverpool and returning to 
 London. Her answer to this suggestion did not immedi- 
 ately arrive. Perhaps he knew that she would not like it, 
 and may have himself thought no further about the mat- 
 ter. His daily missives still continued. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Templand : March 23. 
 The day has been pale, bright, serene, a sort of Sabbath to me. 
 The Closebum trees were all loud with rooks. The cattle seemed 
 happy ; the unfathomable azui*e resting beautifully above us alL 
 One asks. Is man alone born to sorrow that has neither healing 
 nor blessedness in it ? All nature from all comers .of it answei-s No 
 —for all the wise No. Only Yea for the unwise, who have man's 
 susceptibilities, appetites, capabilities, and not the insights and 
 rugged virtues of men. The sun— twilight itself coming through 
 tliis poor north window which you know so well — begins to fail me. 
 
 March 25. 
 My dear good Wife, — Your kind and sad little note arrived this 
 morning. Never mind me and my health. The country, with its 
 sacred stillness and freshness, is sure to amend me of everything. 
 Its very tempests and blistering spring showers do me good to 
 witness. God's earth ! It is good for me, also, to be left quite 
 alone here, alone with my griefs and my sins, even as in the pres- 
 ence of one sainted and gone into the eternal clearness. God 
 Most High is over us both. . . . This morning I hear from 
 
206 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 Adamson ^ about some legacy tax and the inventory of effects. I 
 have taken order about it and answered him. To you this only 
 will be interesting, that she had, if I recollect, 189/. lying in the 
 bank, so needed not to fear money straits at least. Heaven be 
 praised for it ! Oh Jeannie, what a blessing for us now that w^e 
 fronted poverty instead of her doing it ! Could the Queen's Treas- 
 ury compensate us had we basely left her to such a struggle ? 
 
 He had to regret that he had so much as alluded to 
 Craigeiipnttock. The very name of it had, in Mrs. Car- 
 lyle's weak, agitated state, awakened a kind of horror. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle, Cheyne Row. 
 
 Templand: March 26. 
 Dear Jeannie, — You are evidently very ill. I entreat you take 
 care of yourself. Do not tear yourself in pieces. As to Craigen- 
 puttock, that was a passing thought, and has come no more back. 
 If I make you miserable, it shall be for a greater blessedness to 
 myself than a residence there among the savages. Do not fret 
 yourself at all about that note. ... I saw very well what you 
 now tell me ; how it had been. The worst effect of all on me was 
 that it indicates such a sick, excitable condition. I pray you 
 study to avoid tohatevei- can lead thitherward, and know well 
 always that I cannot deliberately mean anything that is harmful 
 to you, unjust, or painful to you. Indeliberately I do enough of 
 such things without meaning them. I w^alked three hours in the 
 grey March mildness down to the Ford or Ferry of Barjarg, and 
 back again by the river-side and shaws. It was a road I more than 
 once went a good part of on horseback that autumn we last tried 
 to stay here. Alas ! how all the faults and little infirmities of the 
 departed seem now what they really were, mere virtues imprisoned, 
 obstructed in the strange, sensitive, tremulous element they were 
 sent to live in ! Of that once more I could not but think to-day. 
 There is something in these remembrances that would drive one 
 to weeping. Templand in the distance looked to me like a kind 
 of pure Hades and shrine of the dead, poor little Auntie's figure 
 lying in death in it,'^ and then in succession the second, and now 
 
 1 1 suppose a Dumfries official, 
 
 2 Aunt Jeannie. I have found a letter lying out of its place among Carlyle's 
 papers, written from Craigenputtock to Mrs. Carlyle on the occasion of Aunt 
 Jeannie's death. I had not seen it when I wrote the account of that part of 
 
Letters from Teinpland. 207 
 
 the third. The rooks are cawing all round, the river rushing ever 
 on, a sacred silence of all human sounds resting far and wide. It 
 is very mournful to me, but preferable to anything that could be 
 offered me of the sort they call joy. 
 
 Poor Steiiing ! setting off to-morrow again on his old hapless 
 en-and ; ' and yet who knows whether at bottom it is n*ot a kind of 
 good to him ? Were it not for tliis sickness that always opens an 
 issue, I see not but he must either write a tmgedy, or failing that, 
 break his heart, and so act one. Probably he himself is not with- 
 out some unconscious feeling of that sort, which in the background 
 may lie as a kind of consolation to him. Poor fellow ! Enough 
 now, and good night to cousin Jeannie and you, from the loneliest 
 man in all the world — or at least as lonely as any. Good night, 
 and a blessing be with you 1 
 
 AprU 3. 
 
 Yesterday I set out in the rough wind, while the weather was 
 diy, for a long walk. I went by Penpont, up Scaur Water, round 
 the foot of Tynron Doon. I had all along been remembering a 
 poor little joiner's cottage which I saw once when ix)or Auntie and 
 you and I went up on ponies. This ride, this cottage, which was 
 
 his life, and so give it in a note here, as it is too beautiful to be passed over. 
 TluTc is no date, but it belongs to the year 1832. Mrs. Carlyle was then at 
 Tenipland, and had sent up word to her husband that her aunt had gone. 
 
 Craigenputtock : 1832. 
 
 Your sad messenger is jnst arrived. I had again been cherishing hopes 
 when the day of hope was clean gone. Compose yourself, my beloved wife, 
 and try to feel that the Great Father is good, and can do nothing wrong, in- 
 scrutable and stern as His ways often seem to us. Surely, surely, there is a 
 life beyond death, and that gloomy portal leads to a purer and an abiding 
 mansion ? Suffering angel ! But she is now free from suffering, and they 
 whom she can no longer watch over are alone to be deplored. ... It 
 seems uncertain to me whether I can be aught but an encumbrance at Temp- 
 land. Yet I feel called to hasten towards j/ou at this so trying moment. I 
 mean to set out for Dumfries and order mournings, and be with you tome 
 time to-night. I am almost lamed for riding, so that it may be rather late 
 before I can arrive. 
 
 My moUier is here, and bids me with tears in her eyes send you her truest 
 love and prayers that God may sanctify to you this heavy stroke. ' The 
 world,' she says, 'is a lie, but God is a truth, and His goodness abideth for 
 ever.' 
 
 May He keep and watch over my beloved one ! 
 
 I am always her afTectionate 
 
 T. Casltle. 
 
 * Sent abroad, Falmouth not answering. 
 
208 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 the centre of it in my memory, I would again recall, by looking at 
 the places — the places which still abide while all else vanishes so 
 soon. It was a day of tempestuous wind ; but the sun occasionally 
 shone ; the countiy was green, bright ; the hills of an almost 
 spiritual clearness, and broad swift storms of hail came dashing 
 down from them on this hand and that. It was a kind of preter- 
 natural walk, full of sadness, full of purity. 
 
 The Scaur Water, the clearest I ever saw except one, came 
 brawling down, the voice of it like a lamentation among the winds, 
 answering me as the voice of a brother wanderer and lamenter, 
 wanderer like me through a certain portion of eternity and infinite 
 space. Poor brook ! yet it was nothing but drops of water. My 
 thought alone gave it an individuality. It was / that was the wan- 
 derer, far older and stronger and greater than the Scaur, or any 
 river or mountain, or earth, planet, or thing. The poor joiner's 
 cottage I could not recognise ; no joiner, at least, was now there. 
 
 My stay here has now a fixed term set to it. After Thursday, 
 come a week, there will be no habitation for me here. I went to 
 the Factor, as I proposed, on Friday — a harmless, intelligent 
 enough, rather wersh-lodkmg man. ' He had no power,' he told 
 me. 'The Duke's answer' could not be here till the end of 7iext 
 week. There was little doubt but it would be as I wished. I de- 
 cided straightway on proceeding with the sale and the other as- 
 sortments, waiting no longer for 'Dukes' and dependents of 
 Dukes. Their part of the business will gradually be settling itself 
 in the interim. The babbling inconclusive palaver of the rustic 
 population here, if you have anything to with them, is altogether 
 beyond a jest to me. I positively feel it immoral and disgusting. 
 
 April 5. 
 
 Margaret, ' set a talking by some questions of mine, has had me 
 at the edge of crying, or altogether crying. On the last fatal Fri- 
 day morning the poor sick one said to her, ' Margaret, I have had 
 a bonny dream. I dreamt that my son was writing a book with his 
 heart's blood,' meaning, I suppose, that it was to be a right excel- 
 lent book. Good God ! I shall never forget that. It will stick in 
 my memory for ever more. But why do we mourn ? As far as I 
 can gather, she died without pain. Margaret says she had never 
 slept so well, and bragged of her health and was in a cheerful jok- 
 ing humour not many minutes before. The great God is merciful ; 
 
 ^ Margaret Hiddlestone, who had been Mrs. Welsh's servant, and was after- 
 wardg Mrs. Carlyle's pensioner till her death. 
 
Death of Mrs. Welsh. 209 
 
 the stroke could not have been delivered more softly. But that 
 * bonny dream ' ! Oh Jeannie ! that is a thing inexpressibly sorrow- 
 ful and sweet to me. I have set you crying again, I doubt. I did 
 not mean that. 
 
 Among these letters to Mrs. Carlylc I intercalate one 
 written on this same 5th of April to Mr. Erskine, who had 
 offered warm and wise sympathy in his friend's sorrov*'. 
 
 To Thomas Erskine^ Linlathen. 
 
 Templand : April 5. 
 
 Dear Mr. Ei-skine, — I know not whether my poor wife has yet 
 answered the letter you sent to her, but I know that, if not, yet she 
 means with her earliest strength to do so ; for she described it as 
 ha\4ng been a tme solace to her, as having * told her the very 
 things she was thinking ' — a most naKve and complete definition of 
 a letter that desei-ved to be written. Thanks to you in her name 
 and my own. The poor heart seems gathering composure gradu- 
 ally, though still very weak; and in weak bodily health too, 
 imprisoned by the rough spring weather. A young cousin is with 
 her at Chelsea: a cheery, sensible, affectionate girl, whom she 
 describes as a great support to her. Mrs. Rich and all her friends, 
 summoned by a great calamity, had shown themselves full of sym- 
 pathy and help. It is what mortals owe to one another in such 
 a season. The little birds shrink lovingly together when a great 
 gyr-falcon has smitten one of them. Death I account always as a 
 great deliverance, a dark door into Peace, into everlasting Hope. 
 But it is also well named from of old the King of TeiTora — a huge 
 demon-falcon rising miraculously we know not whence, to snatch 
 us away from one another's sight we know not whither ! Had not 
 a God made this world, and made Death too, it were an insupport- 
 able place. ' Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.' Even 
 so. In whom else, or in what else ? 
 
 My days pass along here, where a multiplicity of small things 
 still detains but does not occupy me, in a most silent, almovst 
 sabbath-like manner. I avoid all company whatever — except the 
 few poor greedy-minded very stupid rustics who have some affairs 
 with me, wliich I struggle always to despatch and cut short. I see 
 nobody ; I do not even read much. The old hills and rivers, the 
 old earth with her star firmaments and burial-vaults, carry on a 
 mysterious unfathomable dialogue with me. It is eight years since 
 I have seen a spring, and in such a mood I never saw one. It seems 
 Vol. IIL— 14 
 
210 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 all new and original to me — beautiful, almost solemn. Whose great 
 laboratory is that? The hills stand snow-powdered, pale, bright. 
 The black hailstorm awakens in them, rushes down like a black 
 swift ocean tide, valley answering valley ; and again the sun blinks 
 out, and the poor sower is casting his grain into the furrow, hope- 
 ful he that the Zodiacs and far Heavenly Horologes have not fal- 
 tered ; that there will be yet another summer added for us and 
 another harvest. Our whole heart asks with Napoleon : ' Mes- 
 sieurs, who made all that ? Be silent, foolish Messieurs ! ' 
 
 Mrs. Carljle's letters from Cheyne Eow showed no re- 
 covery of spirits. Wise comfort, wise reflection upon life 
 and duty, was the best cordial Carlyle could administer. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Templand : April 9. 
 No wonder, my dear wife, you feel disheartened and sick about 
 all work and weary of the world generally. Benevolence, I agree 
 with you, is no trade ; altogether, or nearly altogether, a futility 
 when followed as a trade. Yet work does still remain to be done, 
 and the highest law does order us all to work. My prayer is, and 
 always has been, that you would rouse up the fine faculties that 
 are yours into some course of real work which you felt to be worthy 
 of them and you. Your life would not then be happy, but it would 
 cease to be miserable. It would become noble and clear with a 
 kind of sacredness shining through it. I know well, none better, 
 how difficult it all is, how peculiar and original your lot looks to 
 you, and in many ways is. Nobody can find work easily if much 
 work do lie in him ; all of us are in horrible difficulties that look 
 invincible, but that are not so. The deepest difficulty which also 
 presses on us all is the sick sentimentalism we suck in with our 
 whole nourishment, and get ingi-ained into the very blood of us in 
 these miserable ages ! I actually do think it the deepest. It is 
 this that makes me so impatient of George Sand, Mazzini, and all 
 that set of prophets ; impatient so far as often to be unjust to what 
 of truth and genuine propriety of aim is in them. Alas ! how often 
 have I provokingly argued with you about all that ! I actually will 
 endeavor not to do so any more. It is not by arguing that I can 
 ever hope to do you any service on that side ; but I will never give 
 up the hope to see you adequately busy with your whole mind dis- 
 covering, as all human beings may do, that in the grimmest rocky 
 
Letters from Templand. 211 
 
 wildernesses of existence, there are blessed well-springs, there is an 
 everlasting guiding star. 
 
 Courage, my poor little Jeannie ! Ah me ! Had I been other, 
 for you too it might have been all easier. But I was not other : 
 I was even this. In such solemn seasons, let us both cry for help 
 to be better for each other, and for all duties in time coming. 
 Articulate pi-ayer is for me not possible, but the equivalent of it 
 remains for ever in the- heart and life of man. I say let us pray. 
 . . . God look down upon us ; guide us, not happily but 
 well, through life. Unite us well with our buried ones according 
 to His will. Amen. . . . My mother, with a kind, speechless 
 heart, does speak so far as to ask if I will send you her blessing. 
 She was telling me yesterday all about the last pai-ting with her 
 mother, how she came out to the middle of the road to take leave 
 of them, &c. Old scenes, images sunk forty years in the past 
 which can still bring tears into old eyes. Ah me! Ah me! 
 Well, I will not add another word to-day, for I have still much 
 to do, and have written more than enough. Adieu, dearest ! God 
 be with you ! — He that can wipe away all tears from our eyes. All 
 tears ! Ever your affectionate 
 
 T. Cablyle. 
 
 Heirlooms, and some few other relics at Templand, 
 were packed and sent to London. The remainder of the 
 stock was sold by auction on April 12, and Carljle, un- 
 able to witness so hateful a scene, spent the morning at 
 Crawford Churchyard, where Mrs. Welsh was buried. 
 The first part of the next letter was written there, the 
 conclusion when he returned in the evening to the desolate 
 house. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlt/le. 
 
 Crawford : April 14. 
 
 I have spent two hours at the place. ... All is composed 
 there into decent regularity, and lies overlooked by the old wilder- 
 ness as in everlasting rest. I have copied the inscription lineatim. 
 I thought you would like to see it that way too. I also copied your 
 grandfather's memorial, evidently composed by her. The man has 
 cut the letters deep, correct, and very well ; excellently well as 
 far as lettering goes — one or two mistakes of |X)ints (one especially 
 aflfecting the sense to a gi*animmian) which I could not bear to 
 
212 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 leave. I went to the nearest farmhouse (close by), borrowed a 
 chisel and hammer, and succeeded in making it all correct. The 
 stone stands level, firm, raised by six pillarets upon another, which 
 is flat, horizontal, and level with the ground. Grandfather and 
 grandmother, and then a great-grandmother, I think, of date 1737, 
 lie farther to the south. One ewe and her little black-faced lamb 
 were the only things visible about the spot. The Clyde rolled by 
 its everlasting course. The north wind was moaning through 
 some score of trees that stand on the opposite side of the Gottes- 
 Acker. What a name ! — a right name. The old hills rested 
 mournful, desolate, pure and strong all round. I could see Cas- 
 tlemaine from the spot. 
 
 Templand : Evening. 
 It was on the whole very well you did not come hither. All 
 things would have fallen with such a deadly weight of grief upon 
 you. Vacant ! Vacant ! The transitory still here ; so much that 
 was transitory proved more lasting than what we wished to con- 
 tinue for ever. The mark of her neat, orderly hand, full of hum- 
 ble, thrifty elegance, very touching in itself anywhere and eveiy- 
 where, is in all corners of this house ; and she — has gone a long 
 journey. Patience, my darling ! She has gone whither we are 
 swiftly following her. Perhaps essentially she is still near us. 
 Near and far do not belong to that eternal world which is not of 
 space and time. God rules that too; we know nothing more. 
 The sight of these poor flowers which I have gathered for you has 
 led me into thoughts which perhaps I had better have spared. 
 The poor little flowers have all ventured out this bright day, and 
 there is nobody to bid them right welcome now. 
 
 The next morning Carlyle took his last leave of Temp- 
 land, and went to pass a few qniet days with his mother. 
 As a close of this episode I add a few lines sent to him by 
 a friend whom he rarely saw, who is seldom mentioned in 
 connection with his history, yet who then and always was 
 exceptionally dear to him. The lines themselves were 
 often on his lips to the end of his own life, and will not 
 be easily forgotten by anyone who reads them. He says 
 in his notes to the ' Letters and Memorials of Mrs. Car- 
 lyle,' that while at Templand he received three or four 
 
Lines from Lockhart. 213 
 
 friendly serious notes from Lockhart. In one of these, 
 dated April 1, was written : — 
 
 It is an old belief 
 
 That on some solemn shore, 
 Beyond the sphere of grief, 
 
 Dear friends shall meet once more: 
 
 Beyond the sphere of time, 
 
 And sin, and fate's control. 
 Serene in changeless prime 
 
 Of body and of soul. 
 
 That creed I fain wonld keep. 
 
 This hope I'll not forego ; 
 Eternal be the sleep, 
 
 If not to waken so. 
 
 At Scotsbrig ordinary subjects resumed their interest, 
 and Carlyle began to think again, though not \evy heartily, 
 of his own work. Tedious business still detained him in 
 Dumfriesshire. He could not leave till he had disposed 
 of the lease of Templand. The agents of the noble Duke 
 could not, consistently with their master's dignity, be rapid 
 in their resolutions. Carlyle became impatient, and re- 
 lieved his feelings in characteristic fashion. 
 
 To Jaiie Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Scotsbrig : April 19, 1843. 
 
 Cromwell sometimes rises upon me here, but as a thing lost in 
 abysses, sunk beyond the horizon, and only throwing up a sad 
 twilight of remembrance. I sometimes think I will pack up all 
 Fuz's books together at my return and send them away. I never 
 yet was in the right track to do that book. Yet Cromwell is with 
 me the fit subject of a book, could I only say of what book. I 
 must yet hang by him. But, indeed, if I live, a new epoch will 
 have to unfold itself with me. There are new things, and as yet 
 no new dialect for tliem. The time of my youth is past ; that of 
 my age is not yet fully come. 
 
 No Duke's answer can arrive, I suppose, till the end of this week. 
 It is a wonderful relief to me, that I have here got fairly out of the 
 choking, sycophant Duke element, which tempted me at every 
 
214 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 turn to exclaim, ' May the devil and his grandmother fly away with 
 your shabble of a Duke ! ' What in God's name have I to do with 
 him ? All the Dukes in creation melted into one Duke were not 
 worth sixpence to me. I declare I could not live there at all in 
 such an accursed, soul-oppressing puddle of a Dukery. 
 
 April 25. 
 I believe the thing is in a fair way of being what is to be ac- 
 counted here as * finished. ' I have seen the Factor and, as it were, 
 come in ' the Lord their God his Grace's will.' 
 
 April 31. 
 
 Let us be thankful that the sorrowful business, taliter qualiter, 
 is over, and no more agitations on that score are to be apprehended 
 for you. As for the home at Chelsea, if you like it, do not regard 
 much my dislike of it. I cannot be healthy anywhere under the 
 sun. I am a perceptible degree unhealthier in London than else- 
 where ; but London, I do feel withal, is the only spot in the earth 
 where I can enjoy something like the blessedness of freedom ; and 
 this I ought to be willing to purchase at the expense of dirt, smoke, 
 tumult, and annoyance of varioiis kinds. I must run into the 
 country when the town gets insupportable to me. But I ought 
 not to quit hold of town. To live in cloth worship of his Grace 
 the Duke of Buccleuch for example — I confess I should hesitate 
 between Monmouth Street and that. Not that, I should say ; 
 anything rather than that. 
 
 To-day I have lain on a sofa and read the whole history of the 
 family of Carlyle. Positively not so bad reading. I discover there 
 what illustrious genealogies we have ; a whole regiment of Thomas 
 Carlyles, wide possessions, all over Annandale, Cumberland, Dur- 
 ham, gone all now into the uttermost wreck, absorbed into Doug- 
 lasdom, Drumlanrigdom, and the devil knows what. Two of us 
 have written plays, one could carve organs, sculpture horses ; Mrs. 
 Jameson's old Carlyle was cousin of Bridekirk. I suppose I, too, 
 must have been meant for a Duke, but the means were dropped in 
 the i)assage. 
 
 He liad small respect for dukes and such-like, and per- 
 haps Tempi and would not have answered with him if he 
 had kept it; but he had a curious pride also in his own 
 family. There was reason to believe that his own father 
 was tlie acfual representative of the Lords Carlyle of 
 
Annandale Incidents. 215 
 
 Torthorwakl ; and, tliongli he laughed when he spoke of 
 it, he M'as dearly not displeased to know that he had noble 
 blood in him. Rustic as he was in habits, dress, and com- 
 plexion, he had a knightly, chivalrous temperament, and 
 line natural courtesy ; another sure sign of good breeding 
 was his hand, which was small, perfectly shaped, with long 
 fine fingers and aristocratic finger-nails. lie knew well 
 enough, however, that with him, as he w^as, pedigrees and 
 such-like had nothing to do. The descent which he prized 
 w^as the descent from pious and worthy parents, and the 
 fortunes and misfortunes of the neighbouring peasant fam- 
 ilies were of more real interest to him tlian aristocratic 
 genealogies. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carhjle. 
 
 Scotsbrig : May 3, 1843. 
 
 My clear "Wife, — This is to be the last note I write to you from 
 Scotsbrig on the present occasion. Nothing new is to be com- 
 municated. The day has passed over to this hour, four o'clock, 
 without recordable incident. I have been twice upon the moor 
 since six, when I awoke. I have seen poor cattle straying over 
 these barren bogs ; poor ploughmen toiling in the red furrow, 
 their ploughshares gleaming in the sun — a most innocuous flash ; 
 they and their huts, and their whole existence looking sad, almost 
 l^athetic to mo. They are veiy poor in person, poor in purpose, 
 l^rinciple, for the most part in all that makes the wealth of a man. 
 
 Poor devils ! The farmer of Stennybeck, the next place to this, 
 has a mother stone-blind, whom I remember out of infancy as a 
 brisk, buxom lass that sate in the kirk with me. Utter poverty — 
 financiering equal to a Chancellor's of the Exchequer — has at- 
 tended them these many years, even in the near background a 
 gaol ; and now yesterday the jDOor blind woman, searching down 
 some heavy chum from the garret — for she works and bustles all 
 over the house — tumbled through a trapdoor and nearly killed 
 herself. Unfortunate souls ! The man asked Jamie one day, 
 ' What d'ye think will come of me ? ' Peel's tariff has taken some 
 twenty pounds from him, and — his Laird is rioting throngh the 
 world like a broken blackguard. I am wao to look on poor old 
 Annandale, poor old England— the devil is busy with us all. 
 
216 Carlyle's Life in Lo^idon, 
 
 What a pity a man cannot sleep, and so live something like 
 other men ! For the rest, it is no secret to me that he ought still 
 to keep a bridle on himself, and not let insomnolence nor any 
 other j)erversity drive him beyond limits. 
 
 Yesterday I got my hair cropped, partly by my own endeavours 
 in the front, chiefly by sister Jenny's in the rear. I fear you will 
 think it rather an original cut. 
 
 It was on Carlyle's return from Scotland, a day or two 
 after the date of this last letter, that he paid the visit to 
 Rugby of which Dean Stanley speaks in his life of Dr. 
 Arnold. Arnold, it will be remembered, had written to 
 Carljde after reading the Trench Ke volution.' He had 
 sympathised warmly also with his tract on ' Chartism,' 
 and his views as to the mights or rights of English work- 
 ing men. Cromwell, w^ho was to be the next subject, was 
 equally interesting to Arnold ; and hearing that Carlyle 
 w^ould be passing Rugby, he begged him to pause on tlie 
 way, when they could examine I^aseby field together. 
 
 Carlyle, on his side, had much personal respect for the 
 great Arnold — for Arnold himself as a man, though very 
 little for his opinions. He saw men of ability all round 
 him professing orthodoxy and holding office in the 
 Church, while they regarded it merely as an institution of 
 general expediency, with which their private convictions 
 had nothing to do. Such men aimed only at success in 
 the world, and if they chose to sell their souls for it, the 
 article which they parted with was of no particular value. 
 But Arnold was of a higher stamp. While a Liberal in 
 politics and philosophy, and an historical student, he 
 imagined himself a real believer in the Christian religion, 
 and Carlyle was well assured that to men of Arnold's 
 principles it had no ground to stand on, and that the clear- 
 sighted among them would, before long, have to choose 
 between an honest abandonment of an untenable position 
 and a trifling with their own understandings, which must 
 
Vtsit to Rughy. ^Yl 
 
 soon degenerate into conscious insincerity. Arnold, Car- 
 lyle once said to me, was happy in being taken away 
 before the alternative was forced upon him. lie died, in 
 fact, six weeks after the visit of which the following 
 letter contains the account. 
 
 To Mrs. Aitketif Dumfries. 
 
 Chelsea : May 10, 1843. 
 I had from Scotsbrig appointed to pause about seventy miles 
 from London, and pay a visit to a certain Oxford dignitary of dis- 
 tinction, one Dr. Arnold, Master of Rugby School. I would 
 willingly have paid five pounds all the day to be honourably off ; 
 but it clearly revealed itself to me 'thou should'st veritably go,' 
 so at Birmingliam I booked myself and went. Right well that I 
 did so, for the contrary would have looked like the work a fool ; 
 and the people all at Rugby were of especial kindness to me, and 
 I was really glad to have made their acquaintance. Next day they 
 drove me over some fifteen miles off to see the field of Naseby 
 fight — OUver Cromwell's chief battle, or one of his chief. It was 
 a grand scene for me — Naseby. A venerable hamlet, larger than 
 Middlebie, all built of mud, but trim with high peaked roofs, and 
 two feet thick of smooth thatch on them, and plenty of trees 
 scattered round and among. It is built as on the brow of the 
 Hagheads at Ecclefechan ; Cromwell lay ^i-ith his back to that, 
 and King Charles was drawn up as at Wull Welsh's — only the 
 Sinclair burn must be mostly dried, and the hollow much wider 
 and deeper. They flew at one another, and Cromwell ultimately 
 * brashed him all to roons.' I plucked two go wans and a cowslip 
 fromr the burial heaps of the slain, which still stand as heaps, but 
 sunk away in the middle. At seven o'clock they liad me homo 
 again, dinnered, and off in the last railway train. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 A.D. 1842. ^T. 47. 
 
 Beturn to London — Sees the House of Commons — Yachting trip to 
 Ostend — Bathing adventure — Church at Bruges — Hotel at 
 Ghent — Beflections on modern music — Walk through the 
 town — A lace girl — An old soldier — Artisans at dinner — The 
 * Vigilant ' and her crew — Visit from Owen — Bide in the 
 Eastern counties — Ely Cathedral — St. Ives — Past and Present. 
 
 The season was not over when Carljle was again at home 
 after his long absence, but tlie sad occupations of the 
 spring, and the sad thoughts which they had brought with 
 them, disinclined him for society. The summer opened 
 with heat. He had a room arranged for him at the top 
 of his house at the back, looking over gardens and red 
 roofs and trees, with the river and its barges on his right 
 hand, and the Abbey in the distance. There he sate and 
 smoked, and read books on Cromwell, the sight of Xaseby 
 having brought the subject back out of ' the abysses.' 
 Forster's volumes were not sent back to him. Visitors 
 were not admitted, or were left to be entertained in the 
 drawing-room. 
 
 * June 17. 
 I sit here (he wi'ote to his mother), and think of you many a time 
 and of all imaginable things. I say to myself, ' Why shoulds't thou 
 not be thankful ? God is good ; all this life is a heavenly miracle, 
 great, though stern and sad. ' Poor Jane and her cousin sit in the 
 low room which extends through the whole breadth of the house, 
 and has windows on both sides. There they sew, read, see com- 
 pany, and keep it out of my way. Poor Jane is still very sad, 
 takes fits of crying, and is perhaps still more sorrowful when she 
 
Tlis B idler Family, 219 
 
 does not cry. I try to get her advised out as much as possible. 
 John Stirling is come to London for tliese two weeks, home from 
 Italy. He will be a new resource to her ; she seems to get no 
 good of anything but the sympathy of her friends. 
 
 Of these friends the most actively anxious to be kind 
 were Mr. and Mrs. Charles BuUer, with whom Carlyle had 
 been at Kinnaird. Their eldest son, Charles, who had 
 been his pupil, was now in the front rank in the House of 
 Commons, lieginald, the youngest, bad a living at Tros- 
 ton, in Suffolk, with a roomy parsonage. His father and 
 mother had arranged to spend July and August there, and 
 they pressed Mrs. Carlyle to go with them for change of 
 scene. Mrs. Carlyle gratefully consented. She liked 
 Mrs. Buller, and the Bullers' ways suited her. It was 
 settled that they were to go first, and she was to follow. 
 Carlyle's own movements were left doubtful, lie, after 
 so long an interruption of his work, did not wish to move 
 again immediately ; but he was very grateful to Mrs. Bul- 
 ler for her kindness to his wife, and when she asked him 
 in return to go to the House of Commons to hear her son 
 speak, he could not refuse. He had never been there be- 
 fore ; I believe he never went again ; but it was a thing 
 to see once, and though the sight did not inspire him with 
 reverence, he was amused, and wrote an account of it to 
 his mother. 
 
 Mrs. Buller made me go the other night to the House of Com- 
 mons to hear Charles speak on the Scotch Church question. The 
 Scotch Church question was found to be in a wrong condition as 
 io form, and could not come on till the 5th of July. It struck mo 
 as the strangest place I had ever sat in, that same house. There 
 was a humming and bustling, so that you could hear nothing for 
 the most part ; the members all sitting with their hats on talking 
 to one another, coming and going. You only saw the Speaker, a 
 man in an immense powdered wig, in an old-fashioned elevated 
 chair ; and half heard him mumbling ' Say Aye, Say No. The 
 Ayes have it ; ' passing Bills which nobody except one or two 
 
220 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 specially concerned cared a fig about, or was at pains to listen to. 
 When a good speaker rose, or an important man, they grew a little 
 more silent, and you could hear. Peel was there and on his feet. 
 Poor Peel ! he is really a clever-looking man — large substantial 
 head, Eoman nose, massive cheeks with a wrinkle, half smile, half 
 sorrow on them, considerable trunk and stomach, sufficient stub- 
 born-looking short legs ; altogether an honest figure of a man. 
 He had a dark-colored surtout on, and cotton trousers of blue 
 striped jean. A curious man to behold under the summer twilight. 
 
 This single glance into the legislative sanctuary satisfied 
 Carlyle's curiosity. Once, in after years, on some invita- 
 tion from a northern borough, he did for a few moments 
 contemplate the possibility of himself belonging to it ; but 
 it was for a moment only, and then with no more than a 
 purpose of telling Parliament his opinion of its merits. 
 For it was his fixed conviction that in that place lay not 
 tlie strength of England, but the weakness of England, 
 and that in time it would become a question which of the 
 two would strangle the life out of the other. Of the de- 
 bating department in the management of the affairs of this 
 country he never spoke without contempt. In the adminis- 
 tration of them there was still vigour inherited through 
 the traditions of a great past, and kept alive in the spirit 
 of the public service. The navy especially continued a 
 reality. Having seen the House of Commons and tlie 
 Anarchies, he was next to have a sight of a Queen's ship 
 on a small scale, and of naval discipline. 
 
 The thing came about in this way. He could not work 
 in the hot weather, and doubtless lamented as loud as 
 usual about it. Stephen Spring Bice, Commissioner of 
 Customs, was going in an Admiralty yacht to Ostend on 
 public business. The days of steam were not yet. The 
 yacht, a cutter of the largest size, was lying in Margate 
 roads. Spring Rice and his younger brother were to join 
 her by a Thames steamer on. August 5, and the night be- 
 fore they^ invited Carlyle to go with them. Had there 
 
Short Tour in Belgium, 221 
 
 been time to consider, lie would have answered, * impossi- 
 ble.' But the proposal came suddenly. Mrs. Carlyle, 
 who was herself going to Troston, strongly urged its ac- 
 ceptance. The expedition was not to occupy more than 
 four or five days. Carlyle was always well at sea. In 
 short, he agreed, and the result was summed up in a nar- 
 rative, written in his very best style, which lie termed 
 * The Shortest Tour on Record.' He was well, he was in 
 good humour ; he was flung suddenly among scenes and 
 people entirely new. Of all men whom I have ever 
 known, he had the greatest power of taking in and remem- 
 bering the minute particulars of what he saw and heard, 
 and of then reproducing them in language. The tour, if 
 one of the shortest, is also therefore one of the most vivid. 
 It opens with an account of the run down the river, the 
 steamer, the passengers, llerrie Bay, Margate, &c. The 
 yacht was waiting at anchor with her long pennon flying. 
 As the steamer stopped the yacht's galley came alongside. 
 Tlie Spring Hices and Carlyle stepped into it and were 
 rowed on board, and he made his first experience of an 
 English cruiser, of a type which is now extinct. 
 
 The cutter 'Vigilant,' which rocked here upon the waters, is a 
 smart little trim ship of some 250 tons, rigged, fitted, kept and 
 navigated in the highest style of English seacraft ; made every 
 way for sailing fast, that she may catch smugglers. Outside and 
 inside, in furniture, equipment, action, and look, she seemed a 
 model — clean all as a lady's workbox. 
 
 The party dined on board. They were not to sail till 
 the morning tide. The lights of Margate looked inviting 
 in the height of its season, and they went on shore to 
 stroll about and look at the sights. Nor look at them 
 only, for they were tempted into the ball-room, when the 
 Master of Ceremonies came instantly with offers of fair 
 partners. Cai-lyle looked on grimly ; but Stephen Spring 
 Eice wliirled away into waltzes, quadrilles, couutry-dauces 
 
222 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 — not to be moved from the place till the rooms were to 
 be closed. ' Auld Robin Gray ' was sung as a finale by ' a 
 very ill-looking woman.' It was by this time midnight. 
 They went back to the yacht and turned in. The anchor 
 was up shortly after, and before dawn they were far on 
 their way.' ' My sleep,' Carljde says, ' was a sleep as of 
 hospitals, of men in a state of asphyxia, a confused tumult, 
 a shifting from headache to headache.' After three hours 
 he gave it up and w^ent on deck, when he found the cutter 
 flying thi'ough the water. By breakfast they had run 
 down the land — by ten o'clock in the evening they w^ere 
 off Ostend. Even now such vessels as the 'Yigilant,' 
 with a stiff breeze, can hold their own with a swift screw 
 steamer, while they have the advantage infinitely in com- 
 fort and cleanliness. 
 
 Ostend itself, with its harbour, its Douane, streets, ram- 
 parts, hotels, shop-boys and shop-girls, is described at 
 length and very humorously. I select a single incident 
 only. They landed in the morning, and wandered about 
 the town. They w^ere to go on by train to Bruges after a 
 midday dinner. The w^eather w^as hot. The Spring 
 Bices were busy sight-seeing. Carlyle thought he would 
 prefer a bathe, and forgot, or did not know, the regula- 
 tions. He must liimself tell what befell him. 
 
 I passed over an impaved part of the height, and soon sloped 
 down to the sand beach where the machines stood ; where some 
 score of ragged women sat sorting and freshening the salt towels, 
 some cheering themselves with a loud song the while ; when di- 
 rectly a freckled figure, with tow hair, barefoot and in blue blouse, 
 volunteered in some kind of patois to do the bathing, and straight- 
 way showed me into his machine and shut the door. 
 
 I was stripped and ready by the time the blue-blouse's quad- 
 ruped, one of the wretchedest garrons now alive, came to drag me 
 in. I was dragged in nevertheless. I opened my door and 
 plunged forward to one of the most delicious tepid sea baths, 
 though as yet somewhat shallow. Alas ! I made only some three 
 
Bnigea, 223 
 
 plnnges and a stroke or two of swimming, when the bine blonse, 
 in a state not far from distraction, came riding into the waves after 
 m'e, vociferating with uplifted hand I knew not what. Wow I 
 Gow ! Wow ! Nay at leqgth something like Police ! Wow ! Gow ! 
 and evidently expressing the intensest desire that I should como 
 out of the water again. Clearly I had no alternative, with a man 
 in blue blouse mounted in that manner. On entering I could not 
 but burst into laughing, I found that, men and women, we wero 
 all bathing here in a heap, and that among my apparatus were not 
 only two huckaback towels, but a jacket and breeches of blue 
 gingham, which I decidedly ought to have put on first. My 
 three plunges, however, were enough, highly beneficial — and no 
 Police Gow-wow, as it chanced, had meddled with me. 
 
 Dinner followed, and then the railway in the August 
 afternoon to Bruges ; Carljle sketching the landscape on 
 his memory as he went. 
 
 Sand downs and stagnating mai-shes, producing nothing but 
 heath, but sedges, docks, mai-sh-mallows, and miasmata — so it layby 
 nature ; but the industry of man, the assiduous, unwearied motion 
 of how many sj^des, pickaxes, hammers, wheel-barrows, mason's 
 trowels, and the thousandfold industrial tools have made it — this ! 
 A thing that will gi'ow gi-ass, potherbs, warehouses, Rubens's pic- 
 tures, churches and cathedrals. Long before Caesar's time of 
 Bwords the era of spades had ushered itself in, and was busy. 
 Tools and the Man ! * Arms and the Man ' is but a small song in 
 comparison. Honour to you, ye long forgotten generations, from 
 whom at this moment we have our bread and clothing ! Not a 
 delver among you that dug out one shovelful of a marsh drain but 
 was doing us a good turn. 
 
 Bruges in the thirteenth century had become the * Venice of the 
 North,' had its ships on every sea. The most important city in 
 these latitudes was founded in a soil which, as Coleridge, with a 
 poor sneer, declares was not of God's making, but of man's. All 
 the more credit to man, Mr. Samuel Taylor. 
 
 The eye, Carlyle often says, sees only what it brings 
 with it the means of seeing. The ordinary London trav- 
 eller on the road between Ostend and Bruges perceives a 
 country finely cultivated. He is pleased to approve ; ob- 
 serves that these foreigners are not so backward as might 
 
224 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 have been expected, and that is all ; Carlyle saw all that, 
 and saw all that lay behind it — a miracle of hnman indus- 
 try, two millenniums of human history. 
 
 As they walked from the station through the streets of 
 that strange old city, they were themselves objects of ad- 
 miration to the inhabitants. He goes on : — 
 
 The Captain ^ and I had a rational English costume, different, 
 vet not greatly different, from theirs ; but the costume of our two 
 brethren did seem to myself astonishing ; the Home Commissioner 
 in a pair of coarsest blue shag trousers, with a horrible blue shag 
 spencer without waistcoat, and a scanty blue cap on his head, had 
 a ti'vdjjiibustie)' air. The good Charles had a low-crowned, broad- 
 brimmed glazed hat, ugliest of hats, and one of those amazing sack 
 coats which the English dandies have taken to wear, the make of 
 which is the simplest. One straight sack to hold your body, two 
 smaller sacks on top for the arms, and by way of a collar a hem. 
 The earliest tailor on the earth would make his coat even so ; and 
 the Bond Street snip has returned to that as elegance. Oh, in- 
 effable snip of Bond Street, what a thing art thou ! 
 
 In tlie Market-place they passed an authentic ^ Tree of 
 Liberty,' which had been planted in 1794, and was still 
 growing. Carlyle patted it with his hand as they went by. 
 He admired greatly the quaint old buildings, the pretty 
 women neatly dressed. Among the children he emptied 
 his pockets of his loose money. The door of a magnificent 
 church stood open. They entered in the evening light. 
 
 Few things (he says) which I have seen were more impressive. 
 Enormous high arched roofs — I suppose, not higher than West- 
 minster Abbey, but far more striking to me, for they were actually 
 in use here — soaring to a height that dwarfed all else ; great high 
 altar-pieces with sculpture, wooden carvings hanging in mid-air, 
 pillars, balustrades of white marble edged with black marble, pic- 
 tures, inscriptions, bronze gates of chapels, shrines and votive 
 tablets ; above all, actual human creatures bent in devotion there, 
 counting their beads with open eyes, or as in still deeper prayer, 
 covered by their black scarfs — for they were mostly women — and 
 
 * The captian of the yacht, who had accompanied them. 
 
Church at Bruges. 225 
 
 only their little iwinted shoe soles distinct to you ; all this with 
 the yellow evening sunlight falling down over and beneath the new 
 and ancient tombs of the dead ; it struck me dumb, and I cared 
 nothing for Rubens or Vandyck canvases wliile this living painted 
 canvas hung hero before me on the bosom of eternity. The Mass 
 was over, but these worshipi^ers, it seemed, still loitered. You 
 could not say from their air that they were without devotion — yet 
 they were jiainful to mo. The fat priests, in whose real sincerity, 
 not in whose sincere cant, I had more difficulty in believing, were 
 worse than painful. I had a kind of hatred of them, a desire to 
 kick them into the canals unless they ceased their fooling. 
 
 Things are long-lived, and God above appoints their term. Yet 
 when the brains of a thing have been out for three centuiies and 
 odd, one does wish that it would be kind enough to die. The 
 tonsures of these priests, I observed, were very small, not bigger 
 than a good crown-piece of English coin. They wore on the 
 streets a horrid three-cornered shovel for hat, a black serge or 
 cloth pelisse, exactly like a woman's, some sasheries about their 
 nasty thick waists, and a narrow scarf of black silk — about a tiiple 
 ribbon of silk — hanging down right behind from their haunches, 
 sometimes from the very neck — oftenest veiy ugly men, and far 
 'too fat. At bottom one cannot wish these men kicked into the 
 canals, for what would follow were they gone ? Atheistic Bent- 
 hamism, French Editorial 'rights of man,' and * Grande Nation.' 
 That is a far worse thing, a far untruer thing. God pity the gen- 
 eration in which you have to see deluded and deluding simulacra, 
 Tartuffes and semi-Tartuflfes, and to stay the uplifted foot, and not 
 kick them into the canal, but go away near weeping in silence — 
 alone — alone ! 
 
 He often ferociously insisted that he knew nothinjsj 
 about the fine arts, and wished to know nothing. His 
 abhorrence of cant was particularly active in this depart- 
 ment; aware as he was that nine-tenths of those who 
 talked most fluently about it were talking mere words. 
 But he had as good an eye as any man, and could admire 
 wisely what deserved to be admired. 
 
 In the second church we entered there was, among much else 
 of the sort, a marble Mother and Child, by Michael Angelo ; 
 probably the most impressive piece of sculpture I ever saw. 
 Vol. III.— 16 
 
226 Carlyles Life in London. 
 
 Michael Angelo had made it for some Italian church. On its 
 Ijassage, in the Mediterranean, it was captured by some Flemish 
 sea-king and given to this church, where it stands in perfect 
 preservation, and may long stand. The treatment of the eyes is 
 singular, the lids as if half shut — Angelo's way of meeting the 
 difficulty of stone eyes. The sculptural finish, I suppose, is jper- 
 fect, or the nearest perfection man has yet reached. The skin 
 glistens sleek, waves with a softness as of very skin. The air of 
 the mother's face has something of Eachael the actress : narrow, 
 Jewish, though not quite so narrow and Jewish ; bending, with an 
 air of soiTow, of infinite earnestness, over her little boy, who stands 
 before her supported by her. The boy's face stmck me not less ; 
 a soft, child's face, yet with a pride in it, with a noble courage in 
 it, as of a young lion. There is a child hand, and a mother's 
 hand, which I suppose it might be difficult to match. 
 
 The travellers' time was short, and tliere was much to 
 do in it. The afternoon and evening were allowed to 
 Bruges. At dusk they proceeded bj railw^aj to Ghent, 
 where they proposed to sleep at the Hotel de Flandre. 
 But, for one of them, to propose was easier than to exe- 
 cute. The night was sultrj^ The open window of Car- 
 lyle's bed-room looked into a courtyard with its miscel- 
 laneous noises ; and at four o'clock, with day breaking 
 and the churcli bells bursting out, he grew desperate and 
 got up. He exclaims : — 
 
 How the ear of man is tortured in this terrestrial planet ! Go 
 where you will, the cock's shrill clarion, the dog's harsh watch 
 note, not to speak of the melody of jackasses, and on streets, of 
 wheel-barrows, wooden clogs, loud-voiced men, perhaps watch- 
 men, break upon the hapless brain ; and, as if all was not enough, 
 ' the Piety of the Middle Ages ' has founded tremendous bells ; 
 and the hollow triviality of the present age — far worse — has every- 
 where instituted the piano ! Why are not at least all those cocks 
 and cockerils boiled into soup, into everlasting silence ? Or, if 
 the Devil some good night should take his hammer and smite in 
 shivers all and every piano of our European world, so that in 
 broad Europe there were not one piano left soundable, would the 
 harm be great ? Would not, on the contrary, the relief be con- 
 siderable ? For once that you hear any real music from a piano, 
 
Ilotel at Ghent. 227 
 
 do you not five hundred times hear mere artistic somersets, dis- 
 tracted jangling, and the hapless pretence of music? Let him 
 that has lodged wall neighbour to an operatic artist of stringed 
 music say. 
 
 This miserable young woman that now in tlie next house to me 
 spends all her young, bright days, not in learnimg to dam stock- 
 ings, sew shirts, bake pastry, or any art, mystery, or business that 
 will profit herself or othoi-s ; not even in amusing herself or skip- 
 ping on the gi-assplots with laughter of her mates ; but simply 
 and solely in mging from dawn to dusk, to night and midnight, 
 on a hapless piano, which it is evident she will never in this world 
 learn to render more musical than a pair of barn-fanners ! The 
 miserable young female ! The sound of her through the wall is 
 to me an emblem of the whole distracted misery of this age ; and 
 her barn-fanners' rhythm becomes all too significant. 
 
 So meditated Carljle, as he sat smoking at tlie windoNv 
 of liis room in the Hotel de Flandre at Ghent, and watcli- 
 ing the dawn spread over the chimney-pots. An omnibns 
 rolled slowly out of the gate of the yard ; an old ostler 
 sat mending a saddle on a bench. The bedroom windows 
 all round the court were wide open, through which might 
 be seen the usual litter, and in one instance for a moment 
 a prett}' young lady in a dressing-gown. He tried to sleep 
 again when his pipe and his reflections were done, and 
 had half succeeded when the great bell of St. Michael's 
 boomed out close by, and threw him broad awake again, 
 thinking how perhaps Philip Van Artevelde had listened 
 to that very same bell ; and how the pealing of it was, 
 perhaps, the first sound that had struck the ear of the in- 
 fant who was afterwards Charles Y. 
 
 After breakfast the party separated on their vaiious er- 
 rands, having fixed on a spot where they were to meet in 
 the course of the forenoon. The rendezvous was unsuc- 
 cessful ; and Carlyle, not sorry to escape from picture gal- 
 leries, passed his morning alone, wandering-about the city, 
 looking at the people, and straying into an occasional 
 church. At the Cathedral he says : — 
 
228 Carlyleh Life in London, 
 
 I found a large squadron of priests and singers busy chanting 
 Mass — a Mass for the dead, I understood. The sound of them 
 was as a loud, not unmelodious bray in various notes of the gamut, 
 from clamorous, eager sound of petitioning, down to the depths 
 of bass resignation, awe, or acquiescence, which, reverberating 
 from the vast roof and walls, was, or might at one time have been, 
 a very appropriate thing. I grudge terribly to listen to any ' office 
 for the dead 'as to a piece of an opera. The priests while I was 
 there took their departure, * filthy hallions,' by a side passage, 
 each with a small bow towards the altar, and left the rest of the 
 affair to an efifective enough squadron of singers and trumpet or 
 bassoon men, who were seated gravely at work in their wooden 
 pews in the choir. Aloft and around, as I perambulated the aisles, 
 where some few poor people seemed faintly joining in the busi- 
 ness, the view was magnificent. The noisy, hoarse growling of 
 the Mass, roaring through these time-honoured spaces, and still 
 calling itself worship ! Acli Gott! Turner says, the Lama Liturgy 
 in Thibet, which often goes on all night, is likewise distinguished 
 for its neise ; harsh, but deep, mournfully oppressive, and reminds 
 you of the Mass. 
 
 In an outer corner of this Cathedral, opening from a solitary 
 street in the rear, I found a little chapel with an old Gothic-arch 
 door, which stood open. Approaching, I found it a little closet of 
 a place, perhaps some ten feet square and fifteen high. In the 
 wall right opposite the entrance was a little niche, dizened round 
 with curtains, laces, votive tablet of teeth, &c. ; at the side of it, 
 within this niche, sate a dizened paltry doll, some three feet long, 
 done with paint, ribbons, and ruffles. This was the Mother of 
 God. On the left of it lay a much smaller doll (literally, they 
 were dolls such as children have). This was itself God. Good 
 heavens ! Oh, ancient earth and sky ! Before this pair of dolls 
 sate, in very deed, some half-dozen women, not of the lowest class, 
 some of them with young children, busy counting their beads, ap- 
 plying themselves to prayer. I gazed speechless — not in anger. 
 An aged woman in decent black hood, perhaps a man, sate in a 
 little sentry-box in the corner, looking on through a small window, 
 silently superintending the place. They bowed to her before going 
 out when their devotions were done. While I stood here for a 
 moment there entered a stunted crooked-looking man, of the most 
 toilworn down-pressed aspect, though still below middle age. He 
 had the coarse sabots, leathern straps on him, like a chairman or 
 
Maiming Walk in Ghent. * 229 
 
 porter ; his bands hard, crooked, black, the nails nearly all gone, 
 hardly the eighth of an inch of nail belonging to each finger — 
 fruit of sore labour all his days and all his father's days, the most 
 perfect image of a poor drudge. He, poor dnidge ! put two of his 
 horny fingers into the holy water, dabbed it on his brow, and, 
 folding the black horn hands, sank on both his knees to pray. 
 The low black head and small brow, nailless fingers, face and as- 
 pect like the poorest Irishman, praying to the two dolls there ! 
 You had to stand speechless. Uhomme est absurde. At the door 
 sate squatted a poor beggar woman, to whom I gave my sou and 
 walked off. 
 
 Strolling aimlessly on, lie next found himself in a street 
 on the north side of the city, which reminded him of Eng- 
 land, It was inhabited by a population' ' equal in wretch- 
 edness to the worst of a British large town,' squalid, 
 hungr}', hopeless, miserable. Yet, even there, human 
 grace was not wholly absent. The next passage is like a 
 page from the ' Sentimental Journey : ' — 
 
 One clean house, and perhaps only one, I noticed in the street. 
 An elderly, or rather oldiah young, woman sat working lace here 
 with her green pillow and pattern marked on it with many pins, 
 which she shifted according to need, and some fifty or sixty slim 
 little thread bobbins, which she kept dancing hither and thither 
 round and among the said pins on her pattern figure with aston- 
 ishing celerity. ' Kan nit verstahn,^ answered she, when I said 
 • Dentelle.' Her messin dog barked, but was rebuked by her, and 
 she seemed to hke that I should watch her a little. Poor * oldish- 
 young girl ! ' I could see how it was with her. She had missed 
 L-etting married : perhaps iby ' misfortune ; ' and now retreated to 
 this small shelter, which, and all in it, she kept clean as a new 
 penny. She was to plait lace for the rest of her time in this world. 
 I laid a half-franc on her pillow, and went pensively my way. 
 
 Carlyle's grimly tender face and figure with this poor 
 Ghent lace-girl would make a pretty picture, if any artist 
 cared to draw it. Perhaps the next scene would be even 
 better : — 
 
 Aloft, at the north-west extremity, stands the Abbaye de St. 
 PierrSf part of it still a church, the rest of it still a barracks and 
 
230 * Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 au elevated esplanade. An accurate-looking steel-grey man, whom 
 I spoke to here, in answer to my inquiries, informed me that he 
 was an ancien militaire (poor Belgian half-pay lieutenant, I sup- 
 pose), and had fought against us English and the Duke of York 
 in 1793. ' Vous I'avez bien battu,' I answered ; 'et enfin c'est ce 
 qu'il a merite. II n'avait que rester chez lui alors, je pense.' 
 The steel-grey man squeezed my hand at parting. Poor ancien 
 momie militaire ! Precisely where the town ended, in the rear of a 
 brown cottage, stood a young woman, dabble dabbling with linens 
 in a wash-tub. Conquering heroes perambulate the world where 
 so much is going on, and this is thy share in its history. Good- 
 bye to thee, my girl, and see thou do thy washing honestly. It 
 will then be well with thee, and better than with most qupck ego- 
 ists, never so conquering. 
 
 He made his way back, looking for his friends, to the 
 centre of the city. 
 
 Soon after noon, the working people, generally in cleanish 
 blouses, came along the street I was in, for dinner. Cotton peo- 
 ple, I supposed. About a half were women, also very clean and 
 decent-looking. I sate down amidst the trees in the chief square, 
 called Place c?'u4?'wes, where now, also, labourers were sitting at 
 dinner. Their wives or some little boy had brought it out to 
 them. In all cases it appeared to consist of two parts — a coarse 
 brown jug containing liquor, soup, oftenest beer, or skimmed 
 milk, flanked by a slice or two of black rye bread. This formed 
 the outflank of the repast. The main battle was a coarse brown 
 stewpan of glazed crockery, narrower at the top, like a kind of 
 small rude hemisphere of a dish, which uniformly contained po- 
 tatoes stewed with bits of broken coarse meal, all in a moist state, 
 eaten ravenously with a pewter fork. The dishes, I judged, had 
 all been cooked in some common oven for a sou or so each. 
 The good wife had sate by in a composed sorrowfully satisfied way 
 seeing her good man eat. What he left, before taking to the li- 
 quor jug, he carelessly handed her, and she ate it with much more 
 neatness, though also willingly enough. Good motherkin ! But 
 the appetite of the male sex was something great. A man not far 
 from me, a weak-built figure, almost icithotit chin, shovelled and 
 forked with astonishing alacrity out of his stewpan, his protrusive 
 eyes flashing all the while, and his loose eyebrows shuttling and 
 jerking at every stroke, the whole face of him a devouring Chi- 
 
Ghent Artiscma. 281 
 
 msera. He gave the remnant — a small one, I doubt — to his boy, 
 snatched up the black bread, and made a cut in it at the first bite 
 equal to a moderate horse-shoe. Poor fellows ! They all mped 
 their mouths, I could see, with some kind of dim cotton hander- 
 chief, dmwn from their blouses for that end. They tumbled 
 themselves down for half an hour of deepest ambrosial sleej). 
 
 The cafes, the chibs, the fine houses, the west end of 
 Ghent with its fashionable occupants, are described not 
 unkindly, but as of inferior interest to the working people. 
 All that may be passed over, and indeed the rest of the 
 adventures, for little remains to tell. 
 
 He and his friends, who had spent their day in the 
 picture galleries, met duly at the tabU-d^hote dinner. At 
 five in the evening they were in the train, and at midnight 
 in their berths on board their yacht, running out into the 
 North Sea. The wind fell in the morning, and they wei*e 
 becalmed. They sighted the North Foreland before night, 
 but the air was still light ; and it was not till the next 
 day that they were fairly in the river. Then a rattling 
 breeze sprang up, and the ' Yigilant,' with her vast main- 
 sail, her vast balloon jib, with all the canvas set which 
 she could carry, flew through the water, passing sailing 
 vessels, passing steamers, passing everything. They car- 
 Tied on as if they were entered for a racing cup. The 
 jib, of too light material for such hard driving, split with 
 a report like a cannon. Carlyle saw ' the Captain's eyes 
 twinkle ; no other change.' In ten minutes the flying 
 wreck was gathered in, another jib was set and standing 
 in place of it, and the yacht sped on as before. * To see 
 men so perfect in their craft, fit for their work, and fitly 
 ordered to it,' was a real consolation to him. There was 
 something still left in the public service of England which 
 had survived Parliamentary eloquence. They anchored 
 at Deptford, and the gig was lowered to take the party up 
 to London. 
 
232 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 Five rowers with a boatswain ; men unsurpassable, I do not 
 doubt, in boat navigation, strong tall men, all clean shaved, 
 clean washed, in clean blue trousers, in massive clean check shirts, 
 their black neckcloths tied round their waists, their large clean 
 brown hands, cunning in the craft of the sea — it was a kind of joy 
 to look at it all. In few minutes they shot us into the Custom 
 House stairs, and here, waving our mild farewells, our travel's his- 
 tory concluded. Thus had kind destiny projected us rocket-wise 
 for a little space into the clear blue of heaven and freedom. Thus 
 again were we swiftly reabsorbed into the great smoky, simmering 
 crater, and London's soot volcano had again recovered us. 
 
 His wife was still at Cheyne Row when he came back. 
 The day after— August 10 — she went off on the promised 
 visit to the Bullers at Troston, of which she gives an ac- 
 count so humorous in the ' Letters and Memoi-ials.' Her 
 husband stayed behind with a half purpose of following 
 her at the end of the month, and occupied himself in 
 writing down the story of his flight into the other world, 
 the lightest and brightest of all tourist diaries. He gave 
 Ave days to it, seeing few visitors in his wife's absence. 
 One new acquaintance, however, he did make in those 
 days, or, rather, one was offered for acceptance, which he 
 always afterwards counted among his good possessions. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle, at Troston. 
 
 Chelsea : Friday, August 20, 1842. 
 The day before yesterday, in the evening, I had fallen asleep on 
 the sofa : a loud door-knock woke me ; in the twilight, the tea 
 standing on the table, a man entered in white trousers, whom 
 Helen (not the servant) named — CEdipus knows what ! some mere 
 mumble. In my dim condition I took him for Mackintosh : ' he 
 was empowered to call on me by Miss Fox, of Falmouth.' He got 
 seated ; disclosed himself as a man of huge, coarse head, with pro- 
 jecting brow and chin, like a cheese in the last quarter, with a pair 
 of large protrusive glittering eyes, which he did not direct to me 
 or to anybody, but sate staring into the blue vague. There he sate 
 and talked in a copious but altogether vague way, like a man lect- 
 
A New Acquaintance. 233 
 
 uring, like a man homed, embarrassed, and not knowing well what 
 to do. I thought with myself, * Good heavens ! can this be some 
 vagmnt Yankee, lion-hunting insipidity, biped perhaps escaped 
 from Bedlam, coming in upon me by stealth ? ' He talked a minute 
 longer. He proved to be Owen, the geological anatomist, a man 
 of real faculty, whom I had wished to see. My recognition of him 
 issued in peals of laughter, and I got two hours of excellent talk 
 out of him — a man of real ability, who could tell me innumerable 
 things. After his departure I asked Helen what she tad called 
 him. *She did not know; but was quite sure it was his right 
 name, at any rate.' Wliat an assistant this little damsel would 
 have been to Adam when names were just beginning ! 
 
 The more Carl^'le tlioiight of Owen the better he liked 
 liiiri, and the more grateful he felt to Miss Fox for the ac- 
 quisition. Sterling had known Owen at Falmouth, where 
 lie had been on a visit to the Foxes. Carlyle wrote to him 
 about it. 
 
 To John Sterling, 
 
 Chelsea : August 29. 
 Your friend Owen, the naturalist, came down to me on^ evening, 
 and stayed two hours. I returned his call yesterday with my 
 brother, and went over his museum. He is a man of real talent 
 and worth, an extremely rare kind of man. Hardly twice in Lon- 
 don have I met with any articulate-speaking biped who told me a 
 thirtieth part so many things I knew not and wanted to know. It 
 was almost like to m^ke me cry to hear articulate human speech 
 once more conveying real information to me, not dancing on airy 
 tip-toes, no whence and no whither, as the manner of the Cockney 
 dialect is. God's forgiveness to all Cockney ' men of wit ; ' they 
 know not what death and Gehenna does lurk in that laborious in- 
 anity of theirs — inane speech, the pretence of saying something 
 when you are really saying No xmNO, but only counterfeits of 
 things, is the beginning and basis of all other inanities whatso- 
 ever, wherewith the earth and England is now sick almost unto 
 death. 
 
 lie is reproached for liaving spoken contemptuously of 
 contemporary * men of letters.' His contempt was only 
 for empty men of letters, the beginning and end of whose 
 
234 Carlyle's Life m London. 
 
 occupation was blowing bubbles either in verse or prose. 
 He had no contempt for any man who had genuine knowl- 
 edge, nor indeed for anybody at all who was contented to 
 be simple and without pretence. An acquaintance like 
 Owen made life itself more rich to him. Two days later 
 he followed his wife into Suffolk. Charles Buller, who was 
 to have met him at Troston, had not arrived, and, to use 
 the time profitably, he obtained a horse of the completest 
 Rosinante species, and set off for a ride through Oliver 
 Cromwell's country. His first halt was at Ely. lie arrived 
 in the evening, and walked into the cathedral, which, though 
 fresh from Bruges and Ghent, he called ' one of the most 
 impressive buildings he had ever in his life seen.' It was 
 empty apparently. Xo living thing was to be seen in the 
 whole vast building but a solitary sparrow, when suddenly 
 some invisible hand touched the organ, and the rolling 
 sounds, soft, sweet, and solemn, went pealing, through the 
 solitary aisles. He was greatly affected. He had come to 
 look at tiie spot where Oliver had called down out of his 
 reading-desk a refractory High Church clergyman, and he 
 had encountered a scene which seemed a rebuke to his 
 fierceness. ' I believe,' he said, ' this Ely Cathedral is one 
 of the finest, as they call it, in all England ; and from me, 
 also, few masses of architecture could win more admira- 
 tion. But I recoil everywhere from treating these things 
 as a dilettantism at all. The impressions they give me are 
 too deep and sad to have anything to do with the shape of 
 stones. To-night, as the heaving bellows blew, and the 
 yellow sunshine streamed in through those high windows, 
 and my footfalls w^ere the only sounds below, I looked 
 aloft, and my eyes filled with tears at all this, and I re- 
 membered beside it — wedded to it now and reconciled to 
 it for ever — Oliver Cromwell's " Cease your fooling, and 
 come out, sir ! " In these two antagonisms lie what 
 volumes of meaning ! ' 
 
Hide in CroniweWs Country. 286 
 
 "Where Carlyle went on this expedition, and what he 
 saw, lie described in a letter to his brother John when it 
 was over. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Troston : September 9, 1842. 
 My grand adventure has been a ride of three days into Cromwell- 
 dom, which I actually accomplished on my heavy-footed beast, 
 with endless labour, dispiritment, and annoyance, but also with 
 adequate interest, profit, and satisfaction to many feelings. I went 
 firet to Ely, a ride of thirty miles, most of it lanes and cross-roads. 
 At length the high Cathedral of Ely rises towering on a hill-top 
 over an immensity of cultivated bog, a very venerable-looking 
 place. I then by some industry found Oliver's house. The huge 
 hoi-seblock at his door is still lying there ; I brought away • a 
 crumb of it in my pocket. The bells of Ely and some treacherous 
 green tea &c. kept me awake near all night. Next day, my horse 
 and self both in very bad case, I got on to St. Ives, Oliver's first 
 farm, sate and smoked one of your cigars in a field which had been 
 his — very curious to me. The traditions about him in that region 
 are the vaguest conceivable — such is immortality so called. I 
 wonder what a Pitt or a Peel will amount to in two centuries in 
 comparison. * Immortality ! ' as my father would have said, with 
 one of his sharpest intonations. After two hours at St. Ives, a 
 little place of some three thousand people, I moved off to Hunt- 
 ingdon, Oliver's birthplace ; saw Hiuchinbrook, which was his 
 uncle's house, and contains some excellent portraits of Civil War 
 people ; dined hastily, and rode with terrible determination to 
 Cambridge the same evening. I never in my life was thii-stier or 
 wearier. The lightning flashed and blazed on the right hand of 
 me all over the south from nightfall ; and about an hour after my 
 arrival (about ten o'clock, that is) the thunder began in right earn- 
 est. Next morning I looked diligently at all colleges within 
 reach ; saw Oliver's picture in his Sidney-Sussex College ; got 
 under way again in a high wind which became tliick driving rain, 
 and about five I arrived here sound and safe. To-day, of course, 
 I am in a very baked, hot, feverish condition. 
 
 Cromwell liad been Carlyle's first thought in this riding 
 expedition, but other subjects, as 1 have said, were rising 
 
236 CmiyUs Life in London. 
 
 between him and the Commonwealth. At St. Ives he 
 had seen and noted more than Cromwell's farm. He had 
 seen St. Ives poorhouse, and the paupers sitting enchanted 
 in the sun, willing to work, but with no work provided for 
 them. In his Journal for the 25th of October he men- 
 tions that he has been reading Eadmer, and Joceljn de 
 Brakelonde's Chronicle, and been meditating on the old 
 monks' life in St. Edmund's monastery. Round these, 
 as an incipient motive, another book was shaping itself in 
 his mind, and making ' Cromwell ' impossible till this 
 should be done. 
 
 To Tliomas Er shine, Esq. 
 
 Chelsea : October 22, 1842. 
 
 I wish all men knew and saw in veiy truth, as Emerson does, 
 the everlasting worth, dignity, and blessedness of work. We 
 should then terminate our Fox-hunting, Almacking, Corn-lawing, 
 and a variety of other things ! For myself, I feel daily more and 
 more what a truth there is in that old saying of the monks, Labo- 
 rare est orare. I find really that a man cannot make a pair of shoes 
 rightly unless he do it in a devout manner ; that no man is ever 
 paid for his real work, or should ever expect or demand angrily to 
 be paid ; that all work properly so called is an appeal from the 
 Seen to the Unseen — a devout calling upon Higher Powers ; and 
 unless they stand by us, it will not be a work, but a quackeiy. 
 
 Perhaps I should tell you, withal, that a set of headlong enthu- 
 siasts have already risen up in America who, grounding themselves 
 on these notions of Emerson, decide on renouncing the world and 
 its ways somewhat in the style of the old eremites of the Thebaid ; 
 and retire into remote raral places to dig and delve with their 
 own hands, 'to live according to Nature and Truth,' and for one 
 thing eat vegetables only. We had a missionary of that kind here 
 — a man of sincere convictions, but of the deepest ignorance, and 
 calmly ari'ogant as an inspired man may be supposed to be — on the 
 whole, one of the intensest bores I have ever met with. He made 
 no proselytes in this quarter ; but the spiritual state of New 
 England as rendered visible through him was very strange to 
 me. . . . 
 
 I had three days of a riding excursion into Oliver Cromwell's 
 country. I smoked a cigar on his broken horseblock in the old 
 
'Past aiid PresenV 237 
 
 city of Ely, under the stars, beside the graves of St. Mai7's 
 Churchyard. I almost wept to stand upon the veiy flagstones 
 under the setting sun where he ordered the refractory parson, 
 • Leave oflf your fooling, and coTue out^ sir ! ' Alas ! he too ! was 
 he paid for his work ? 
 
 Do not ask me whether I yet wrUte about Oliver. My deep and 
 growing feeling is that it is impossible. The mighty has gone to 
 be a ghost, and will never take body again. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 A.D. 1842-3. ^T. 47—48. 
 
 Slow progress with * Crc^mwell ' — Condition of England question — 
 * Past and Present ' — The Dismal Science — Letter from Lock- 
 hart— Effect of Carlyle's writings on his contemporaries— Young 
 Oxford — Reviews — Visit to South Wales — Mr. Redwood's visit 
 to the Bishop of St. David's — Impressions — An inn at Glou- 
 cester — Father Mathew — Retreat in Annandale — Edinburgh 
 — Dunbar battle-field — Return home. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 October 25, 1842. — For many months there has been no writing 
 here. Alas ! what was there to write ? About myself, nothing ; or 
 less if that was possible. I have not got one word to stand upon 
 paper in regard to Oliver. The beginnings of work are even more 
 formidable than the executing of it. I seem to myself at present, 
 and for a long while past, to be sunk deep, fifty miles deejD, below 
 the region of articulation, and, if I ever rise to speak again, must 
 raise whole continents with me. Some hundreds of times I have 
 felt, and scores of times I have said and written, that Oliver is an 
 impossibility ; yet I am still found at it, without any visible results 
 at all. Remorse, too, for my sinful, disgraceful sloth accompanies 
 me, as it well may. I am, as it were, without a language. Tons 
 of dull books have I read on this matter, and it is still only loom- 
 ing as through thick mists on my eye. There looming, or flaming 
 visible — did it ever flame, which it has never yet been made to do 
 — in what terms am I to set it forth ? I wish often I could write 
 rhyme. A new form from centre to surface, unlike what I find 
 anywhere in myself or others, wouM alone be approj^riate for the 
 indescribable chiaroscuro and waste bewilderment of this subject. 
 
 December 21. — The Preadamite powers of Chaos are in me, and- 
 my soul, with excess of stupidity, pusillanimity, tailor melancholy, 
 and approaches of mere desperation and dog-madness, is as if blotted 
 
^PoAit and VrenenV 239 
 
 out. Strange to reflect, during a three days' rain, when all is mud 
 and misery here below, that a few miles up there is everlasting 
 azure, and the sun shining as formerly. No Cromwell will ever 
 come out of me in this world. I dare not even try Cromwell. 
 
 Carlyle was to try Cromwell, and was to clothe the ghost 
 with body again, impossible as the operation seemed ; but 
 he had to raise another ghost first — an old Catholic ghost 
 — before he could practise on the Puritans. 
 
 Events move so fast in this century, one crowding an- 
 other out of sight, that most of us who were alive in 1842 
 have forgotten how menacing public affairs were looking 
 in the autumn of that year. Trade was slack, owing, it 
 was said, to the corn-laws, and hundreds of thousands of 
 operatives were out of work. Bread was dear, owing cer- 
 tainly to the corn-laws, and actual famine was in the north- 
 ern towns ; while the noble lords and gentlemen were 
 shooting their grouse as usual. There was no insurrection, 
 but the ' hands,' unwillingly idle, gathered in the streets in 
 dumb protest. Tlie poorhouses overflowed, and could hold 
 no more ; local riots brought out the yeomanry, landowners 
 and farmers, to put down the artisans, who were short of 
 bread for their families, lest foreign competition should 
 bring down rents and farmers' profits. Town and country 
 were ranked against each other for the last time. Never 
 any more was such a scene to be witnessed in England. 
 
 In his Suffolk ride Carlyle had seen similar scenes of 
 misery. Indignation blazed up in him at the sight of 
 England with its enormous wealth and haggard poverty ; 
 the earth would not endure it, he* thought. The rage of 
 famished millions, held in check only by the invisible re- 
 straints of habit and traditional order, would boil over at 
 last. In England, as in France, if the favored classes did 
 not look better to their ways, revolution would and must 
 come ; and if it could create nothing, might at least shat- 
 ter society to pieces. His * Chartism ' had been road and 
 
240 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 wondered over, but liis prophecies had been laughed at, 
 and the symptoms had grown worse. The corn-laws, it 
 is to be remembered, were still standing. If they had 
 continued to stand, if the growl of the hungry people had 
 not been heard and the meaning of it discerned, most of us 
 think that revolution would have come, and that Carlyle's 
 view of the matter was right. 
 
 Between him and all other work, dragging off his mind 
 from it, lay this condition of England question. Even if 
 the dread of revolution was a chimsera, the degradation 
 of the once great English people, absorbed, all of them, in 
 a rage for gold and pleasure, was itself sufficient to stir his 
 fury. Pie believed that every man had a special duty to 
 do in this world. If he had been asked what specially he 
 conceived his own duty to be, he would have said that it 
 was to force men to realize once moi*e that the world was 
 actually governed by a just God ; that the old familiar 
 story acknowledged everywhere in words on Sundays, and 
 disregarded or denied openly on week-days, was, after all, 
 true. His writings, every one of them, his essays, his lec- 
 tures, his 'History of the French Revolution,' his ' Crom- 
 well,' even his 'Frederick,' were to the same purpose and 
 on the same text — that truth must be spoken and justice 
 must be done ; on any other conditions no real common- 
 wealth, no common welfare, is permitted or possible. Po- 
 litical economy maintained that the distribution of the 
 profits of industry depended on natural laws, with whicli 
 morality had nothing to do. Carlyle insisted that moral- 
 ity was everywhere, through the whole range of human 
 action. As long as men were allowed to believe that their 
 business in this world was each to struggle for as large a 
 share as he could get of earthly good things, they were 
 living in a delusion with hearts poisoned and intellect 
 misled. Those who seemed to prosper under such meth- 
 ods, and piled up huge fortunes, would gather no good out 
 
^Past and Present: 241 
 
 of them. The multitude whose own toil produced what 
 they were forbidden to share would sooner or later present 
 their bill for payment, and demand a reckoning. 
 
 The scenes in the north of England in this summer — 
 from this point of view — seemed only too natural to him. 
 On August 20 he wrote to his wife at Troston : — 
 
 The Manchester insuiTection continues — the tenth day of it 
 now. I begin really to be anxious about it, and wish it were well 
 over, that blood be not shed, and seeds of long baleful vengeance 
 sown. A country in a lamentabler state, to my eyes, than oui*s even 
 now, has rarely shown itself under the sun. We seem to me near 
 anarchies, things nameless, and a secret voice whispers now and 
 then to me, * Thou, behold thou too art of it — thou must be of it ! ' 
 I declare to Heaven I would not have the governing of this England 
 at present for the richest * cream and shortbread ' that could be 
 named. 
 
 Men say that he was an idle croaker, and that events 
 have proved it. All was really going well. The bubbles 
 on the surface were only the signs of the depth and power 
 of the stream. There has been no revolution, no anarchy ; 
 wealth has enormously increased ; the working men are 
 better off than ever they were, &c. &c. 
 
 In part, yes. But how much has been done meanwhile 
 of what he recommended ? and how much of that is due 
 to the effect which he himself produced ? The coni-laws 
 have been repealed, and this alone he said at the time 
 would give us a respite of thirty years to set our house in 
 order. Laissez-faire has been broken in upon by factory 
 acts, education acts, land acts, emigration schemes, schemes 
 and acts on all sides of us, that patience and industiy may 
 be snatched from the * grinding' of * natural laws.' The 
 ' dismal science ' has been relegated to ' Jupiter and Sat- 
 urn ;' and these efforts have served as lightning-conduct- 
 ors. If we are safe now, we sliould rather thank him 
 who, more tlian any other man, forced open the eyes of 
 our legislators. 
 
 Vol. III. -16 
 
242 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 Forty years ago people were saying with Jeffrey that it 
 was true that there were many lies in the world, and much 
 injustice, but then it had always been so. Our forefathers 
 had been as ill off as we, and probably — nay, certainly — 
 worse off. Carlyle had insisted that no nation could have 
 grown at all, still less have grown to England's stature, 
 unless truer theories of man's claims on man had once 
 been believed and acted on. Whigs and Kadicals as- 
 sured him that the older methods, so far as they differed 
 from ours, were less just and less wise ; that, although the 
 artisans and labourers might be ill off occasionally, they 
 were freer, happier, better clothed, better lodged, more 
 enlightened, than in any previous age, and they challenged 
 him to point to a time in English history which could 
 honestly be preferred to the present. Jocelyn's Chronicle 
 coming accidentally across him, with its singularly vivid 
 picture of English life in the twelfth century, gave him the 
 impulse which he needed to answer them, and ' Past and 
 Present ' was written off with singular ease in the first seven 
 weeks of 1843. Plis heart was in his subject. He got 
 the book completed, strange to say, without preliminary 
 labour-pangs, and without leaving in his correspondence, 
 during the process of birth, a single cry of complaint. 
 The style shows no trace of rapid composition, unless in 
 the white-heat intensity of expression, nor is it savage and 
 scornful anywhere, but rather (for Carlyle) candid and 
 considerate. The arrangement is awkward — as awkward 
 as that of ' Sartor ' — for indeed there is no arrangement 
 at all ; and yet, as a whole, the book made a more imme- 
 diate mark than anything which Carlyle had hitherto 
 w^ritten. Prophetic utterances seldom fall into harmo- 
 nious form ; they do not need it, and they will not bear it. 
 Three letters remain, written during the parturition, in 
 which he explained what he was about. To his mother 
 he says, early in January : — 
 
'Past and PremU: 243 
 
 My health keeps good, better than it used to do. I am fast 
 getting ready something for publication too. Though it is not 
 * Cromwell ' yet, it is something more immediately applicable to 
 the times in hand. I do hope you will see it soon, though it is a 
 terrible business getting a thing wriggled out of the confusions it 
 stands amidst, and made ready for presenting to mankind. It is 
 like building a diy brick house out of a quagmire of clay and 
 glar.i 
 
 The distress of the poor, I apprehend, is less here at present than 
 in almost any other large town, yet you cannot walk along the 
 streets without seeing frightful symptoms of it. I declare I begin 
 to feel as if I should not hold my peace any longer, as if I should 
 perhaps open my mouth in a way that some of them are not ex- 
 pecting — we shall see if this book were done. 
 
 Again : — 
 
 January 20. 
 I hope it will be a rather useful kind of book. It goes rather in 
 a fiei-y strain about the present condition of men in general, and 
 the strange pass they are coming to ; and I calculate it may awaken 
 here and there a slumbering blockhead to rub his eyes and con- 
 sider wliat he is about in God's creation— a thing highly desirable 
 at present. I found I could not go on with Cromwell, or with any- 
 thing else, till I had disburdened my heart somewhat in regard to 
 all that. The look of the world is really quite oppressive to me. 
 Eleven thousand souls in Paisley alone living on three-halfpence a 
 day, and the governors of the land all busy shooting partridges and 
 passing corn-laws the while ! It is a thing no man with a speaking 
 tongue in his head is entitled to be silent about. My only diffi- 
 culty is that I have far too much to say, and require great address 
 in deciding how to say it. 
 
 And to Sterling: — 
 
 February 23. 
 No man was lately busier, and few sicklier, than I now am. 
 Work is not jwssible for me except in a red-hot element which 
 wastes the life out of me. I have still three weeks of the ugliest 
 labour," and shall be fit for a hospital then. The thing I am upon 
 is a volume to be called * Past and Present.' It is moral, political, 
 histoiical, and a most questionable red-hot indignant thing, for my 
 heart is sick to look at the things now going on in this England ; 
 
 i Olar, mud or any muist sticky subatanoe. * Correcting proofs. 
 
244 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 and the two millions of men sitting in poor-law Bastilles seem to 
 ask of eveiy English soul, ' Hast thou no word to say for us ? ' On 
 the whole, I am heartily sorry for myself — sorry that I could not 
 help writing such words, and had none better to write. Whether 
 any Cromwell, or what, is in the rear of all this, the Fates know. 
 
 ' Past andTPresent' appeared at the begiiiiiing of April, 
 1843, and created at once admiration and a storm of anger. 
 It was the first public protest against the ' Sacred Science,' 
 which its chief professors have since discovered to be no 
 science, yet which then was accepted, even by the very 
 clergy, whose teaching it made ridiculous, as being irre- 
 fragable as Euclid. The idol is dead now, and may be 
 laughed at with impunity. It was then in its shrine above 
 the altar, and to doubt was to be damned — by all the news- 
 papers. In ' Chartism ' Carlyle had said that the real aim 
 of all modern revolutionary movements was to recover for 
 the free working man the condition which he had lost 
 when he ceased to be a serf. The present book was a 
 fuller insistence upon the same truth. The world's chief 
 glory was the having ended slavery, the having raised the 
 toiler with his hands to the I'ank and dignity of a free man ; 
 and Carlyle had to saj^ that, under the gospel of political 
 economy and free contract, the toiler in question had lost 
 the substance and been fooled with the shadow. Gurth, 
 born thrall of Cedric the Saxon, had his share of the bacon. 
 The serf was, at least, as well cared for by his master as a 
 horse or a cow. Under free contract he remained the slave 
 of nature, which would kill him if he could not feed him- 
 self ; he was as much as ever forced to work under the 
 whip of hunger ; while he was an ownerless vagrant, to be 
 employed at competitive wages, the lowest that would 
 keep him alive, as long as employment was to be had, and 
 to be turned adrift to pine in a workhouse when it was no 
 longer any one's interest to employ him. A cow, a horse, 
 a pig, even a canary bird, was worth a price in the market, 
 
^ Past and Present' 245 
 
 was worth feeding and preserving. The free labourer, ex- 
 cept at such times as there happened to be a demand for 
 him, was worth nothing. The rich, while this gospel was 
 believed in, might grow richer ; but the poor nmst remain 
 poor always, without hope for themselves, without prospect 
 for their children, more truly slaves, in spite of their free- 
 dom, and ev^n in consequence of their freedom, in a coun- 
 try so densely peopled as England, than the Carolina 
 Nigger, The picture was set out with the irony of wliich 
 Carlyle was so unrivalled a master, with the indignation of 
 which irony is the a7't. 
 
 With the existing state of things the book begins ; 
 with the existing state of things, and the only possible 
 remedies for it, the book ends; in the middle stands hi 
 contrast the ancient English life under the early Plan- 
 tagenet kings, before freedom in the modern sense had 
 begun to exist ; and the picture of St. Edmund's Abbey 
 and its monks, which is thus drawn, is without a rival in 
 modern literature. As to the relative merits of that ao:e 
 and ours there will be different opinions. We know so 
 well where the collar galls our own necks, that we think 
 anyone better off whose shoulder does not suffer at that 
 particular point. Nor did Carlyle insist on drawing 
 comparisons, being content to describe real flesh-and-blood 
 human beings as they were then, and as they are now, and 
 to leave us to our own reflections. 
 
 On the whole, perhaps we shall agree with what 
 Lockhart answered, when Carlyle sent his book to him. 
 Lockhart said he could accept none of his friend's inferen- 
 ces, except one, that * we were all wrong, and were all like 
 to be damned ; ' but that ' it was a book such as no other 
 man could do, or dream of doing; that it had made him 
 conscious of life and feeling as he had never been before; 
 and that, finally, he wished Carlyle would write something 
 more about the middle ages, write some romance, if he 
 
246 Carlyle's Life in London, 
 
 liked. He liad more power of putting life into the dry 
 bones than anyone but Scott ; and that, as nothing could 
 be less like Scott's manner of doing it than Carlyle's, there 
 could be no suspicion of imitation.' 
 
 But it is unnecessary for ine to review or criticise further 
 a work which has been read so universally, and as to whicl 
 no two persons are likely entirely to think alike. I shall 
 endeavour rather at this point to describe something of 
 the effect M'hich Carlyle was producing among his contem- 
 poraries. 'Past and Present' completes the cycle of 
 writings which were in his first style, and by which he 
 most influenced the thought of his time. He w^as a 
 Bedouin, as he said of himself, a rough child of the desert. 
 His hand had been against every man, and every man's 
 hand against him. He had offended men off all political 
 parties, and every professor of a recognised form of 
 religion. He had offended Tories by his Kadicalism, and 
 Radicals by his scorn of their formulas. He had offended 
 Pligh Churchmen by his Protestantism, and Low Church- 
 men by his evident unorthodoxy. I^o sect or following 
 could claim him as belonging to them ; if they did, some 
 rough utterance w^ould soon undeceive them. Yet all had 
 acknowledo:ed that here was a man of extraordinary Intel- 
 lectual gifts and of inflexible veracity. If his style w^as 
 anomalous, it was brilliant. No such humourist had been 
 known in England since Swift ; and the humour, while as 
 searching as the great Dean's, was infinitely more genial. 
 Those who were most angry with Carlyle could not deny 
 that much that he said was true. In spite of political 
 economy, all had to admit there was such a thing as 
 justice; that it was the duty of men to abstain from 
 lying a great deal more than they did. ' A new thinker,' 
 in Emerson's phrase, ' had been let loose upon the planet ; ' 
 the representatives of the Keligiones Licitse, the conven- 
 tional varieties of permitted practice and speculation, found 
 
Position cmd Influence, 247 
 
 themselves encountered by a novel element which would 
 assimilate with none of them, which disturbed all their 
 digestions, yet which they equally could not ignore. 
 
 This on the surface. But there were circumstances in 
 the time which made Carlyle's mode of thought excep- 
 tionally interesting, to young men especially whose con- 
 victions were unformed and whose line of life was yet 
 undetermined for them. It was an era of new ideas, of 
 swift if silent spiritual revolution. Reform in Parliament 
 was the symbol of a general hope for the introduction of 
 a new and better order of things. The Church had 
 broken away from her old anchorage. The squire parsons, 
 with their sleepy services, were to serve no longer. Among 
 the middle classes there was the Evangelical revival ; the 
 Catholic revival at Oxford had convulsed the University, 
 and had set half the educated men and women in Enoj. 
 land speculating on the authority of the priesthood, and 
 the essential meaning of Christianity. All were agreed 
 to have done with compromise and conventionalities. 
 Again the critical and enquiring spirit which had been 
 checked by the French Revolution had awakened from 
 the sleep of half a century. Physical science, now that 
 it was creating railroads, bridging the Atlantic with steam- 
 ships, and giving proof of capacity which could no longer 
 be sneered at, was forming a philosophy of the earth and 
 its inhabitants, agitating and inconvenient to orthodoxy, 
 yet difficult to deal with. Benthamism was taking posses- 
 sion of donynions which religion had claimed hitherto as 
 its own, was interpreting morality in a way of its own, and 
 directing political action. Modern history, modern lan- 
 guages and literature, with which Englishmen hitherto 
 liad been contented to have the slightest acquaintance, 
 were pushing their way into school and college and pri- 
 vate families, forcing us into contact with opinions as to the 
 most serious subjects entirely different from our own. We 
 
248 CarlyMs Life in London. 
 
 were told to enquire ; but to enquire like Des Cartes with 
 a preconceived resolution that the orthodox conclusion 
 must come out true — an excellent rule for those who can 
 follow it, which all unhappily cannot do. To those who 
 enquired with open minds it appeared that things which 
 good and learned men were doubting about must be them- 
 selves doubtful. Thus all round us, the intellectual light- 
 ships had broken from their moorings, and it was then 
 a new and trying experience. The present generation 
 which has grown up in the floating condition, which has 
 got used to it and has learned to swim for itself, will never 
 know what it was to find the lights all drifting, the com- 
 passes all awry, and nothing left to steer by except the 
 stars. 
 
 In this condition the best and bravest of my own con- 
 temporaries determined to have done with insincerity, to 
 find ground under their feet, to let the uncertain remain 
 uncertain, but to learn how much and what we could hon- 
 estly regard as true, and believe that and live by it. Ten- 
 nyson became the voice of this feeling in poetry ; Carlyle 
 in what was called prose, though prose it w^as not, but 
 something by itself, with a form and melody of its owm. 
 Tennyson's poems, the group of poems wdiich closed with 
 ' In Memoriam,' became to many of us what the ' Chris- 
 tian Year ' was to orthodox Churchmen. We read them, 
 and they became part of our minds, the expression in ex- 
 quisite language of the feelings which were working in 
 ourselves. Carlyle stood beside him as a prophet and 
 teacher ; and to the young, the generous, to everyone who 
 took life seriously, who wished to make an honourable use 
 of it, • and could not be content with sitting down and 
 making money, his words w^ere like the morning reveillee. 
 The middle-aged and experienced who have outgrown their 
 enthusiasm, who have learnt wdiat a real power money is, 
 and how inconvenient the absence of it, may forego a 
 
Position wnd Influence. 249 
 
 liigher creed ; may believe without much difficulty that 
 utilitarianism is the only basis of morals ; that mind is a 
 product of organised matter; that our wisest course is to 
 make ourselves comfortable in this world, whatever may 
 become of the next. Others of nobler nature who would 
 care little for their comforts may come at last, after long 
 reflection on this world, to the sad conclusion that nothing 
 can be known about it ; that the external powers, what- 
 ever they may be, are indifferent to human action or human 
 welfare. 
 
 Kuxai 6fjia)5 o r* depyos dvnp o re noWa eopywf, 
 (V 5e l^ Tifj.^ fj fxev KOKOs rje Koi taOXos. 
 
 The good and the evil lie down together, the eaorth covers them, 
 and there is no difference. 
 
 To such an opinion some men, and those not the worst, 
 may be driven after weary observation of life. But young 
 men will never believe it ; or, if they do, they have been 
 young only in name. Young men have a conscience, in 
 which they recognise the voice of God in their hearts. 
 They have hope. They have love and admiration for gen- 
 erous and noble actions, which tell them that there is more 
 in this world than material things which they can see and 
 handle. They have an intellect, and they cannot conceive 
 that it was given to them by a force which had none of its 
 own. Amidst the controversies, the arguments, the doubts, 
 the crowding uncertainties of foi'ty years ago, Carlyle's 
 voice was to the young generation of Englishmen like the 
 sound of * ten thousand trumpets ' in their ears, as the 
 Knight of Grange said of John Knox. They had been 
 taught to believe in a living God. Alas ! it had seemed 
 as if the life might be other moods and tenses, but not in 
 the present indicative. They heard of what lie had done 
 in the past, of what He would do in the future, of what it 
 was wished that He might do, of what we were to pray to 
 
250 Carlyle's Life in London, 
 
 Him that He \Yould do. Carl jle was the first to make us 
 see His active and actual presence now in this working 
 world, not in rhetoric and fine sentiments, not in problem- 
 atic miracles at Lom-des or Salette, but in clear letters of 
 fire which all might read, written over the entire surface 
 of human experience. To him God's existence was not an 
 arguable probability, a fact dependent for its certainty on 
 Church authority, or on Apostolic succession, or on so- 
 called histories which might possibly prove to be no more 
 than legends ; but an awful reality to which the fates of 
 nations, the fate of each individual man, bore perpetual 
 witness. Here and only here lay the sanction and the 
 meaning of the word duty. We were to do our work, not 
 because it would prove expedient and we should be re- 
 warded for doing it, but because we were bound to do it 
 by our Master's orders. We were to be just and true, be- 
 cause God abhorred wrong and hated lies ; and because an 
 account of our deeds and words was literally demanded 
 and exacted from us. And the lesson came from one who 
 seemed ' to speak with authority and not as the Scribes,' 
 as if what he said was absolute certainty beyond question 
 or cavil. 
 
 Religious teachers, indeed, had said the same thing, but 
 they had so stifled the practical bearing of it under their 
 doctrines and traditions, that honest men had found a difil- 
 culty in listening to them. In Carljde's writings dogma 
 and tradition had melted like a mist, and the awful central 
 fact burnt clear once more in the midst of Heaven. Nor 
 could anyone doubt Carlyle's power, or Carlyle's sincerity. 
 He was no founder of a sect bent on glorifying his own 
 personality. He was no spiritual janissary maintaining a 
 cause which he was paid to defend. He was simply a 
 man of high original genius and boundless acquirements, 
 speaking out with his whole heart the convictions at which 
 he had himself arrived in the disinterested search after 
 
Position and Influence. 251 
 
 truth. If we asked who he was, we heard that his cliar- 
 acter was like his teaching ; that he was a peasant's son, 
 brought up in poverty, and was now leading a pure, simple 
 life in a small house in London, seeking no promotion for 
 himself, and content with the wages of an artisan. 
 
 I am speaking chiefly of the efPect of Carlyle in the 
 circles m which 1 was myself moving. To others he was 
 recommended by his bold attitude on the traditionary 
 formulas, the defenders of which, though they could no 
 longer use stake or gibbet, yet could still ruin their an- 
 tagonists' fortunes and command them to submit or starve. 
 Mere negations, whether of Voltaire or Hume or David 
 Strauss, or whoever it might be, he valued little. To him 
 it was a small thing comparatively to know that this or 
 that theory of things was false. The important matter 
 was not to know what was untrue, but what was true. 
 He never put lance in rest simply for unorthodoxy. False 
 as the priestly nmmmeries at Bruges might be, he could 
 not wish them away to make room for materialism which 
 was falser than they. Yet he had not concealed that he 
 had small faith in bishops, small faith in verbal inspira- 
 tions, or articles of religion, small concern for the bap- 
 tismal or other controversies then convulsing the Church 
 of England ; and such side cuts and slashes were welcome 
 to the Theological Liberals, who found him so far on their 
 side. 
 
 The Radicals again might resent his want of reverence 
 for liberty, for political economy, and such like ; but he 
 could denounce Corn-laws and Game-preserving aristocrats 
 with a scorn which the most eloquent of them might envy. 
 Li the practical objects at which he was aiming, he was 
 more Radical than they were. They feared him, but they 
 found him useful. 
 
 There were others, again, who were attracted by the 
 quality which Jeffrey so much deprecated. That he was 
 
252 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 so ' dreadfully in earnest,' that he could not sit down 
 quietly and enjoy himself ' without a theory of the uni- 
 verse in which he could believe,' was not an offence, but a 
 recommendation. Some people cannot help being in earn- 
 est, cannot help requiring a real belief, if life is not to be- 
 come intolerable to them. Add to this the novelty of 
 Carlyle's mode of speech, his singularly original humour 
 and imagery ; add also the impressiveness of his personal 
 presence, as reported by those who had been privileged to 
 see him, and we have an explanation of the universal 
 curiosity which began to be felt about the Prophet of 
 Cheyne Row, and the fascination which he exercised over 
 a certain class of minds in days of the Melbourne ministry 
 and the agitation over the ' Tracts for the Times.' 
 
 I, for one (if I may so far speak of myself), was saved 
 by Carlyle's writings from Positivism, or Romanism, or 
 Atheism, or any other of the creeds or No Creeds which 
 in those years were whirling us about in Oxford, like 
 leaves in an autumn storm. The controversies of the 
 place had unsettled the faith which we had inherited. 
 The alternatives were being thrust upon us of believing 
 nothing, or believing everything which superstition, dis- 
 guised as Church authority, had been pleased to impose ; 
 or, as a third course, and a worse one— of acquiescing, for 
 worldly convenience, in the established oi'der of things, 
 which had been made intellectually incredible. Carlyle 
 taught me a creed which 1 could then accept as really true ; 
 which I have held ever since, with increasing confidence, 
 as the interpretation of my existence and the guide of my 
 conduct, so far as I have been able to act up to it. Then 
 and always I looked, and have looked, to him as my mas- 
 ter. In a long personal intimacy of over thirty years, I 
 learnt to reverence the man as profoundly as I honoured 
 the teacher. . . . But of this I need say no more, and 
 can now go on with the story. 
 
Bevkws of ' Past and Present!' 253 
 
 John Carlyle was in Clieyne Row when ' Past and Pres- 
 ent' came out, and was a stay and comfort to liis brotlier 
 in the lassitude which always followed the publication of a 
 book. He had left the Duke of Buccleugh. Lady Clare 
 had wished him to go back with her to Italy, but for this 
 he had no inclination. An opening had presented itself 
 in London. Lord Jeffrey had recommended him to Lady 
 Holland as physician in attendance, and that distinguished 
 lady had been favourably inclined ; but Carlyle, when 
 John consulted him, considered ' that she was a wretched, 
 unreasonable, tyrannous old ci'eature,' of whom it would 
 be wise for John to steer clear. As a guest at Chelsea he 
 was welcome always, both to his brother and his sister-in- 
 law : good-humoured, genial, always a sunny presence in 
 a house where sunshine was needed. The book sold fast. 
 On April 28, 1843, Carlyle wrote to his brother James, at 
 Scotsbrig : — 
 
 People seem to get themselves ccnsiderably stnick by it, and 
 ' look two ways for Sunday,' which is a very proper result for them ; 
 but, indeed, I for one care but little what becomes of them with 
 it. That is tJieir outlook now, not mine. 
 
 In May John left for Scotland, leaving regrets belnnd 
 him. 
 
 I was very sad about your going (Carlyle said) ; I was weak and 
 in bad spirits at any rate. As I saw you roll off, it was an emblem 
 to me of all the partings, bodily and others, men have in this 
 world, summed up at last by the grand parting which awaits us all 
 — which, if it be God*s will, may perhaps prove but a meeting under 
 happier omens. 
 
 The reviewers were all at work on ' Past and Present,' 
 * wondering, admiring, blaming — chiefly the last.' 
 
 Glitter, clatter (he said of it in his Journal) hat niclits zu bedetUen 
 — except, indeed, a few pages from Emerson in his 'Dial,' which 
 really contain a eulogy of a magnificent sort. A word from F. 
 Maurice in defence of me from some Church of England reviewer 
 is also gratifying. One knows not whether even such things are a 
 benefit — are not a new peril and bewilderment. I believe it must 
 
254 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 have gone into the heart of one and the other in these times. It 
 has been to me a considerable relief to see it fairly out of me ; and 
 I look at the disastrous condition of England with much more pa- 
 tience for the present, my conscience no longer reproaching me 
 with any duty that I could do, and was neglecting to do. That 
 book always stood between me and Cromwell, and now that has 
 fledged itself and flown off. 
 
 ' Cromwell,' however, w^as still not inimediatelj executa- 
 ble. Tired as he was with the efforts of the winter, he 
 was less than ever able to face the London season, espe- 
 cially as increasing popularity increased people's eagerness 
 to see him. An admirer — a Mr. Redwood, a solicitor — 
 living at Llandough, a few miles from Cardiff, had long 
 hnmbly desired that Carlyle would pay him a visit. An 
 invitation coming at the same time from Bishop Thirlwall, 
 at St. David's, which could be fitted in with the other, he 
 decided to lay his work by for the present, and make ac- 
 quaintance with new friends and a new^ part of the conn- 
 try. Mr. Hedw^ood, a quiet lawyer, of no literary preten- 
 sions, engaged that he should not be made a show of, 
 promised perfect quiet, sea-bathing, a horse if he wished to 
 ride, and the absence of all society, except of himself and 
 his old mother. These temptations w-ere sufficient. Qn 
 July 3 he left London by train from Paddington to Bris- 
 tol. A day or two were to be given -to acquaintances at 
 Clifton, and thence he was to proceed by a Cardiff steamer. 
 All was strange to him. He had never before been in the 
 South or West of England ; and his impressions, coming 
 fresh, formed themselves into pictures, which he threw 
 down in his letters to his wife. Here is Bath, as seen 
 from the window of the railway carriage — rapidly ob- 
 served, yet with what curious minuteness : — 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Clifton : July 4, 1843. 
 Bath, built of white stone in trim streets, enclosed amid gnarled, 
 beautifully green, and feathered hills, looked altogether princely 
 
Visit io South Wales. 255 
 
 after those poor brick towns, like an ancient decayed prince — for 
 it was smoke-soiled, dingj', and lonely looking — yet in the cbim- 
 ney-pots and gables of a certain polite fantasticality, and all ranked 
 in straight, short streets, which ran in every direction on every 
 variety of level, as if they had been all marching and drilling in 
 that hollow, rough place, each in the road that suited him best. 
 There was something in all this that reminded one of Beau Nash 
 and Smollett's Lady of Quality. My Cockney tourist lady (com- 
 panion in compartment) pronounced it to be a city built of stone, 
 and of considerable extent — facts both. 
 
 The house in Cheyne Row was cleaned and painted 
 during his absence, his wife superintending. On sucli oc- 
 casions he was liiniself better out of the way. Her letters 
 may be referred to occasionally by the side of Carlyle's 
 reports of his own doings to her.* 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Clifton : July 6, 1843. 
 My Baira, — I have been at Chepstow in all kinds of weather — 
 in rain, in glowing heat, and then home through the heart of thun- 
 derstorms. I am totally wearied, and have just got uj) to my 
 sleeping-place, which seems tolerably quiet. I must not spend 
 above a minute or two in writing. Take my kind good-night, 
 therefore, dear Goody, and thanks for the punctual, most wel- 
 come dispatch which I found lying on my table on returning to- 
 day. You are very good — write always ; except by youi* letters, I 
 am at present disunited from all the earth. 
 
 Later : — 
 
 Chepstow is beautiful. The rocks of the Avon at Clifton, on the 
 road thither by steam, excel all things I have seen. Even I, the 
 most determined anti-view hunter, find them worthy of a word. 
 I have passed the day, perhaps not ill, though in laborious idle- 
 ness. Who knows ? Yesternight we had a soiree at Mr. Hare's ; 
 one or two intelligent peraons — Dr. Symons, a hectic clergyman ; 
 a Mr. Fripps (I think), very deep in business ; all decided Car- 
 lylians. Ach (>oU ! There was also a tremendous artist, fiddler, 
 and piano-player ; and certain pretty young women sate speech- 
 leas. I will to sleep, I will to sleejj ! The scoundiel umbrella 
 > Letters and MemoriaU^ toL i , p. 145, ^o. 
 
256 Carlijle's Life in London. 
 
 vendor ! ' He is the first below Darwin's entry, on the same side. 
 Send the Stiviahile '^ in his brougham to thunder eight-ninths of the 
 wretched tailor-life out of him. Adieu, and a thousand good- 
 nights. Ever your affectionate 
 
 T. Cablyle. 
 
 Llandough, Cowbridge : Thursday, July 7, 1843. 
 Dearest, — Your precious little billet came to me at breakfast. 
 I got down in good time to my Cardiff steamer ; a biisk breezy 
 morning, promising well ; and again, after endless ringing of bells 
 and loading of hamj^ers and bullying and jumbling, we got off 
 down the muddy Avon once more. I iDassed a most silent day — 
 remembrances of all kinds — and these my only occupation. On 
 the Somersetshire shore we passed a bathing establishment — hap- 
 less mothers of families sitting on folding-stools by the beach of 
 muddy tide streams. It is a solitary sea, the Severn one. We 
 passed near only one ship, and in that there lay a cabin-boy sound 
 asleep amidst ropes, and a black-visaged sailor had raised his shock 
 head, only half awake, through the hatches to see what w^e were. 
 They lay there waiting for a wind. I smoked two cigars and a 
 half. I hummed all manner of tunes — sang even portions of 
 Psalms in a humming tone for my own behoof, reclining on my 
 elbow ; and so the day wore on, and at three o'clock we got into 
 Cardiff dock, and I, sharp on the outlook, descried the good Red- 
 wood waiting there. He had a tub-gig — a most indescribable, thin- 
 bodied, semi-articulate, but altogether helpful kind of a factotum 
 manservant, who stepped on board for my luggage ; and so, in 
 few minutes after, giving a glance at Cardiff Castle and buying a 
 few cigars, we got eagerly to the road, and not long after five had 
 done our twelve miles and were safe home. It was the beauti- 
 fullest day ; a green, pleasant country, full of shrubby knolls and 
 white thatched cottages ; altogether a very reasonable drive. Un- 
 expectedly, in a totally solitaiy spot, I was bidden dismount ; and 
 looking to the right, saw close by the Redwood mansion — a house 
 about the capacity of Craigenputtock, though in Welsh style, all 
 thin shaven, covered with roses, hedged off from the parish road 
 by invisible fences and a patch of very pretty lawn. The old lady, 
 an innocent native old Quakeress, received me with much simplic- 
 ity, asked for you, &c. Our dinner, which she had carefully 
 
 ^ Carlyle had bought an umbrella for his wife, which was to have been sent 
 home, and was not. 
 
 * John Sterhng's father. Letters and Memorials^ vol. i., p. 20. 
 
visit U) South Wales, 257 
 
 cooked and kept hot for an hour and a half, consisted of — vealJ 
 Nay, I heard of a veal pie for future use. I suppose they have 
 killed a fatted calf for me, knowing my tastes ! There was good 
 ham and a dish of good boiled peas, and a pudding. I did very 
 well, and we have been to walk since ; and the place, on the whole, 
 is the loneliest and the most silent in all the earth, and I think I 
 shall leai-n to do very well. Adieu, adieu ! Sleep well and dream 
 of me. T. C. 
 
 Friday morning, 7.30 A.M. 
 
 Being on my feet again too early, I will add a word till there be 
 some likeness of breakfast, or, at lowest, of shaving. All is still 
 here as in a hermitage of La Trappe. But one dirty little yelp of 
 a dog was sufficient to awaken me a while ago. A niessin is as good 
 as a lion ! 
 
 My Bishop is some sixty miles inland. I know not whether I 
 shall get to him, nor, indeed, what my capabilities yet are. Oh 
 dear! I wish I was near thee, with thy hot coffee-pot, at this 
 moment ; but I would not stay there when I was so. I will end, 
 and go shave at present. Has that accursed chimsera of a Cockney 
 not sent the umbrella yet ? I could see him trailed thrice through 
 the Thames for his scoundrel conduct. No man knows what break- 
 ing his word will do for the general injuiy. Adieu — a thoustind 
 blessings ! T. C. 
 
 Almost a fortnight was given to Llandongh. His friends 
 were all kindness and attention, and their efforts were 
 gratefully appreciated ; but the trutli must be told — Car- 
 lyle required more than simple, quiet people had to give 
 him. He was bored. He reproached himself, but he could 
 not help it. Mr. Redwood was engaged all day in his 
 office at Cowbridge. His guest was left mainly to him- 
 self — to ride about the neighbourhood, to bathe, to lie 
 under the trees on the lawn and smoke, precisely what he 
 had fancied that he had desired. * All was totally somno- 
 lent, not ill fitted for a man that had come out of London 
 to see if he could sleep.' He amused himself tolerably 
 with his wife's letters and with Tieck's * Yittoria Acco- 
 rombona,' which she had provided him with, and had 
 
 > Carlyle could not digest veaL 
 Vol. III.— 17 
 
258 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 begged him to read. He could not approve, however, of 
 this singular book : ' a dreadful piece of work on Tieck's 
 part,' he called it. But occasionally his poor host, to show 
 his respect, absented himself from his own work to do the 
 honours of the country, and Carlyle required all his self- 
 command not to be uncivil. 
 
 I liave been at St. Donat's (he writes, July 12). I have just got 
 home through rain and precipitous, rough roads, at a gallop which 
 has jumbled me all to pieces. Devil take all * days ' of that sort ! 
 I had just got your letter when I went away. I went happy, I re- 
 turn mee-s^erahle — fly up into my sooty * study,' to be at least alone 
 for a while. How happy I was over * Quarterly Review, ' peace, 
 silence, and my Goody's letter ! 
 
 Yesterday, with a rational exertion of ill-nature, I briefly de- 
 clined going for an Arcadian ramble to the coast all day ; or, in- 
 deed, going any whither, indicating that I preferred the green 
 grass, sunshine, and solitude among the trees and winds. The 
 good R. in an instant cheerfully surrendered, cheerfully went off 
 to his attorney's office, and left me totally alone till dinner. I have 
 not for long had so peaceable a day. The old black cobweb coat 
 was warm enough for the temperature. I lay upon the grass on the 
 brae-side, under shadow if I liked ; smoked my pipe and looked out 
 upon the waving woods, and felt their great deep melancholy 
 sough a real blessing to me. 
 
 ' Accorombona ' is far the pleasantest thing I have yet fallen in 
 with since I left you ; a very gorgeous composition, but too showy 
 in diamonds — Bristol diamonds— tinsel, and the jjrecious metals 
 for my taste. One finds it to be untrue, almost as an opera ; yet 
 much is true, genial, warm, and very grand. Vittoria herself is 
 about the best of all opera heroines — a right divine stage goddess. 
 Bracciano, too, is clearly her mate, as you say ; yet I could not 
 but abhor that murder he did of the poor, frivolous, trembling 
 creature — it is detestable ! The sublime Song of Solomon passages 
 did also somewhat transcend me. In fact, it is a grand thing ; but 
 Bristol diamond, not a little of it. A thousand thanks to Tieck 
 and the Coadjutor for such a gift in these latitudes. Alas ! this 
 morning I am reduced to ' Lyell's Geology,' a twaddling, circum- 
 fused, ill-writing man. I seem to hear his uninspired voice all 
 along, and see the clear leaden twinkle of his small bead eyes. 
 However, I will persist a little. 
 
Visit to South Wales, 259 
 
 July 18. 
 
 This day has been as close, dim, and snltry as a day need be : 
 
 thunder rumbling on all sides of the horizon ever since morning. 
 
 I have read several articles in the * Quarterly Review,' kept aloof 
 
 from Lyell hitherto, declined to ride, walked out a Rttle way — in 
 
 short, sauntered in the idlest manner I have written 
 
 to Thirlwall that I leave this on Monday. A coach goes through 
 Cowbridgo about noon. Some sixty miles, I believe it is, to Car- 
 marthen. How long I may stay with Thirlwall is not perfectly 
 clear. Two days was the time I talked of, but, if all prospered 
 exceedingly, it might extend to three. I shall get no rest in any 
 of these places, and it may as well be in a plenum as in a vacuum. 
 . . . . In Llandough, close at hand here, over the knoll top, 
 I saw certain of the population in the street as I passed along : 
 little flabby figures, brown as a berry ; fat, squat, wide flowing ; 
 their clothes, of almost no colour (such is the prevalence of time 
 and i)overty), hung round them as if ' thrown on with a pitchfork * 
 — very noteworthy little fellows (of both sexes) indeed. They 
 saluted kindly as I passed. An old Squire something lives in 
 Llandough Castle close at hand, a little behind the village. Poor 
 fellow ! the grave of his old wife is the newest in Llandough 
 Church-yard, and he sits solitaiy, R. says, and * scolds his servants, 
 being a proud man.' 
 
 The 14th of July was Mrs. Carlyle's birthday, lie 
 never forgot it after her mother died, and always provided 
 bonie pretty present for her. He enclosed in this letter an 
 ornament of some kind, to be ready for the day, which, 
 ' as the umbrella went aback,' he required her ' to accept 
 with all resignation.' 
 
 July 15. 
 Yesterday passed as the brightest, beautifullest day in the whole 
 year might do in these circumstances. I had an excellent four 
 hours till two o'clock, then an excellent solitaiy gallop to the soli- 
 tary seashore, a dip in the eternal element there, and gallop back 
 again. The world was all bright as a jewel set in polished silver 
 and sunshine, the sky so purified by the past day's thunder. The 
 little hamlet of Aberddaw, a poor grey clachan^ crouched under the 
 shelter of a kind of knoll, the half of which was eaten sheer off by 
 the sea. * Poor Aberddaw ! ' I said to myself, ' thou sittest there, 
 ill enough bested — God help thee ! ' The bits of Welsh women. 
 
260 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 with their cuddies, higging small merchandise about, a veiy scrubby 
 kind of figures, seemed highly praiseworthy — humanly pitiable to 
 me. The wood is so beautiful when you see it from the knoll-tops 
 — soft, green, yet shaggy and bushy — and sunshine kisses all 
 things ;. and the upper moors themselves — dull, blunt, hilly regions 
 — look sapphire in the distance. At my return to dinner Redwood 
 produced, instead of port, a bottle of excellent claret, and said we 
 must drink Mrs. Carlyle's health, as it was her birthday ! This 
 fact he had gathered from feeding me purchase the bit of riband 
 for a band for the said Mrs. C. Well, the feat accordingly was 
 done ; and even the ancient Quaker mother had her glass filled, 
 and wished * many happy years to Jane Carlyle,' for which I duly 
 returned thanks. The day had no other public event in it. R. 
 made me sit with him till we finished the bottle, and the afiair did 
 me no harm at all, rather good. 
 
 My malison on this glazed paper, on this detestable leather pen ! 
 The world gets even madder with its choppings and changings and 
 never-ending innovations, not for the better. My collars, too, 
 are all on a new principle. Oh for one hour of Dr. Francia ! But 
 here comes our great, stalking maid, an immensely tall woman : 
 'The 'oss is out, sir.' I must instantly be off. Adieu, with my 
 heart's blessing ! T. Cablyle. 
 
 In relation to this last paragraph, it is my duty to say 
 that Carlyle would have invoked Dr. Francia on a wrong 
 occasion ; for the glazed paper in question is now, after 
 forty years, in perfect condition, not needing smj malison- 
 and the leather pen must have been good, too ; for the 
 handwriting — even for Carlyle, who at this tiiiie wrote 
 most beautifully — is exceptionally excellent. 
 
 Llandough : July 16. 
 Yet a few last words before quitting this place. I have had, as 
 usual, a divine forenoon, lying under shady trees in the most ex- 
 quisite summer atmosphere ; and then a most lahorious afternoon 
 — bathing, galloping, dining, talking, till now, when I ought to 
 proceed to pack and arrange, if I did not prefer scribbling to 
 Goody still a word or two. . . . To-moiTow at noon I shall 
 have to be on the roof of the mail at Cowbridge : a day of hot 
 travel. I shall certainly not again be lodged so quietly anywhere. 
 There will be rapid spiritual conversation in the Bishop's, and no 
 green tree with book and tobacco to lodge under. 
 
Visit to Scnith Wales, 261 
 
 One must take the good and the evil. I find this Redwood a 
 really excellent man ; honest, true to the heart, I should think, 
 with a proud and i)ure character hidden under his simplicity and 
 timidity. He has been entirely hospitable to me, is sorry that I 
 should go, speculates on my coming back, &c., as a proximate 
 event. The old mother, too, is very venerable to me. Poor old 
 woman ! with her * Yearly Monitor,' with her suet dumplings, and 
 all her innocent household gods. 
 
 Occasional spurts of complaint over dulness lie scat- 
 tered in these Llandougli letters ; but Carlyle knew good 
 people when he saw them. The Eedwoods liad left him 
 to himself with unobtrusive kindliness. They had not 
 shown him off to their acquaintances. They had thouglit 
 only what they could do for the comfoi-t of an honoured 
 guest — a mode of treatment very different from what he 
 had sometimes experienced. * They are a terrible set of 
 fellows,' he said, ' those open-mouthed wondering gawpies, 
 wlio lodge you for the sake of looking at you : that is 
 horrible.' It was not, however, with alarm on this score 
 that he entered on his next visiting adventure. He would 
 have preferred certainly that such a man as Thirlwall 
 should not have stooped to be made a bishop of, but he 
 claimed no right to judge a man who was evidently of 
 superior quality. How far he actually knew Thirlwall's 
 opinions about religion I cannot say. At all events, he 
 thought he knew them. Thirlwall had sought Carlyle's 
 acquaintance, and had voluntarily conveised with him on 
 serious subjects. Carlyle was looking forward now with 
 curiosity to see how a man who, as he believed, thought 
 much as he did himself, was wearing his anomalous dig- 
 nities. The reader wmII, perhaps, be curious also. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Abergwili, Carmarthen : July 18, 1843. 
 I have been in many * new positions,* but this of finding my- 
 self in a bishop's palace, so called, and close by the chapel founded 
 by old scarecrow Laud of famous memory, is one of the newest. 
 
262 Carlylis Life in London. 
 
 Expect no connected account of the thing, nor of anything what- 
 ever to-day. I have not yet learnt the airts of the place in the 
 least, and it is a morning of pouiing rain, and in an hour (at noon) 
 the brave Bishop, be the weather what it may, decides on riding 
 with me ' four hours and a half ' through the wildest scenery of 
 the country, that it may not suffer through the tempestuous nature 
 of the elements. The post will be gone before I return : take one 
 word, therefore, to assure thee that I am alive, comparatively 
 speaking well, and that I think of thee here — here very especially, 
 where all is so foreign to me. Heavens ! do but think : I was 
 awoke before seven o'clock, after a short sleep, by a lackey coming 
 in in haste to indicate that I must come and say my prayers in 
 Laud's Chapel of St. John. I did go, accordingly, and looked at 
 it and at myself with wonder and amazement. 
 
 Yesterday, at noon, I got handsomely away from Llandough. 
 The good old dame desired me : * Thou please to give my regards 
 to Mrs. Carlyle.' I was taken in the * tub ' to Cowbridge, and then 
 the mail came up, full all but one inside seat. I had to take that 
 seat, such as it was, the rather as it turned out there was to be a 
 vacancy on the roof in some seventeen miles further. It was very 
 hot and disagreeable inside ; a huge grazier fast asleep, a detest- 
 able-looking parson with yellow skin and jet-black tattery wig, 
 and an old burgher of the town of Neath, very talkative, very 
 innocent. To this latter I chiefly attached myself. Neath at last 
 came, the end of the seventeen miles, and I got out and had a 
 cigar, and saw undeniably clear around me the face of heaven and 
 earth — an earth very tolerable, sandstone coal country, green sharp 
 hills with wood enough, green fields ill ploughed and cultivated, 
 houses plastered with whitewash, ridiculous Welsh bodies, all the 
 women of them now with men's hats, a great proportion of them 
 looking very hungry and ragged. Swansea, enveloped in thick 
 poisonous -copper fumes, and stretching out in winged desolation 
 (for the copper forges are of the last degree of squalor ; low huts, 
 with forests of chimneys, and great mountains of red dross, which 
 never changes into soil), is a very strange and very ugly place. 
 We dined there, and then bowled along into the hills of the in- 
 terior — no great shakes of hills ; but as the road goes over the top 
 of them all, it makes them somewhat impressive. About seven in 
 the evening we plunged down by a steep winding way into the 
 ' Valley of the Towy,' a dim enough looking valley ; for there was 
 a windy Scotch mist by that time,*with a river of some breadth and 
 
 # 
 
Stay with the Bishop of St. Da/vida. 263 
 
 of muddy colour running through it ; and a little farther up, a 
 strange bleared mountain city, hanging in a disconsolate manner 
 on the farther bank and steep declivity. Carmarthen at last ! No 
 bisJiop^s carnage was waiting for me — ah, no 1 I hired a gig and 
 flunkey, for which, to this distance of two miles, I paid five shil- 
 lings, and one and sixpence (to driver) — six shillings and sixpence 
 in all. There is a way of doing business ! 
 
 Abergwili is a village of pitiful dimensions, all daubed as usual 
 with whitewa.sh and yellow ochre. It is built, however, like a 
 common village, on both sides of the public road. At the farther 
 end of it, you come to solemn, lai'ge, closed gates of wood ; on 
 your shout they open, and you enter upon a considerable glebe- 
 land jj/eostmce, with the usual trees, turf walks, peacocks, &c., and 
 see at fifty yards distance a long, irregular, perhaps C7*oss-shaped, 
 edifice, the porch of it surmounted by a stone mitre. Ach Golt ! 
 
 I was warmly welcomed, though my Bishop did seem a little 
 uneasy too ; but how could he help it ? I got with much pomp 
 an extremely bad and late dish of tea, then plenty of good talk till 
 midnight, and a room at the farther wing of the house, still as the 
 heart of wildernesses, where, after some smoking, &c., I did at last 
 sink into sleep, till awakened as aforesaid. 
 
 We have had an excellent cup of tea to breakfast, and I feel 
 ready for a bit of the world's fortune once more. My Bishop, I 
 can discern, is a right solid honest-hearted man, full of knowledge 
 and sense, excessively delicate withal, and, in spite of his positive 
 temper, almost timid. No wonder he is a little embarrassed 
 with me, till he feel gradually that I have not come here to 
 eat him, or make scenes in his still house ! But we are getting, 
 or as good as got, out of that, and shall for a brief time do admir- 
 ably well. Here is medicine for the soul, if the body fare woi-se 
 for such sumptuosities, precisely the converse of Llandough. It 
 is wholly an element of rigid, decently elegant forms that we live 
 in. Very wholesome for the like of me to dip for a day or two 
 into that, is it not ? For the rest, I have got two otlier novels of 
 Tieck, of which the admiring Bishop possesses a whole stock. 
 
 Oh, I do hope thou wilt write to me this day ! I feel as if a 
 little friendly speech, even about * Time and Space,' with my poor 
 Goody, would be highly consolatoiy to me. To-night I shall sleep 
 better. To-morrow I shall be more at home ; and the next day — 
 there is nothing yet settled about the next day. 
 
 Coaches, it seems, and some kind of straggling chances and pos- 
 
264 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 sibilities of conveyance, do exist till one gets within wind of Liv- 
 erpool. I think of persisting by this route. The mountains lie 
 all upon it which one is bound to ' see.' Oh, my dear ! how much 
 richer am I than many a man with 3, 000^. a year, if I but knew it ! 
 What is the worth of Goody herself, thinkest thou ? God bless 
 thee! T. Caelyle. 
 
 Abergwih : July 19. 
 
 I am very conscientious in writing to you. Here, for example, 
 I have missed viewing the city of Carmarthen for your sake, hav- 
 ing, by candid computation when I got hither to my own room, 
 found that I could not write to you if I went. What a favour ! 
 you will say. Yes, you gipsy, and a favour to myself too. Your 
 letter of last night was a real consolation to me. I have lost my 
 libei^ty : I have lost my sleep : I am in a baddish way here ; but it 
 will soon be done. From vacuum I have got into plenum with a 
 vengeance. What with chapel-duty, riding to see views, talking 
 with the brave Bishop, late dining, limited tobacco, and flunkeys 
 awaking you at seven in the morning (the very terror of whom 
 awakens you at six), it is a business one needs to be trained to. and 
 that is not worth while at present. 
 
 We sallied out yesterday in the midst of thick rain on two 
 horses. Mine was the highest 1 ever rode, bigger fully than Dar- 
 win's cabhorse. We rode for four mortal hours, no trotting per- 
 mitted, except when I, contrary to all politeness, burst off into a 
 voluntario, and then had soon to lie to for my host, who rides some- 
 what ecclesiastically. What was worse, too, my high horse was in 
 the fiercest humour for riding, and I longed immensely to take the 
 temper out of him. But, no ; we plodded away, and saw a circle 
 of views — views very good. Valleys, scrubby or woody hills, old 
 churches, and ragged Welsh characters in torn hats — all very good. 
 But, though the rain abated and finally subsided into mud and 
 soapy dimness, I was glad enough to get home. To-day, again, 
 while the weather is bright, we are to renew the operation at three 
 o'clock. Well, and yet I am very glad I came in by this establish- 
 ment, even at the expense of sleep. Nothing similar had ever 
 before fallen in my way, and it was worth seeing once. Do but 
 think of a wretched scarecrow face of Laud looking down on us in 
 Laud's own house, that once was, as we sit at meat. And there is 
 much good in all that, I see. A perfection of form which is not 
 without its value. With the Bishop himself, I, keeping a strict 
 
Stay with the BiaJiop of St. Davids. 205 
 
 guard on my mode of utterance, not mode of thinking, get on ex- 
 tremely well. I find him a right solid, simple-hearted, robust 
 man, very strangely swathed ; on the whole, right good company. 
 And so we fare along in all manner of discourse, and even laugh a 
 good deal together. Could I but sleep ! — but, then, I never can. 
 I had, according to the original programme, decided to be oflf to- 
 morrow morning, but the worthy host insists with such an earnest- 
 ness that I, by way of handsome finish, shall be obliged to put off 
 till Friday morning, and see two other sleeps still before me. 
 Then, however, it is up. I see my route, and am off. 
 
 By the maturest calculation, it seems my far best route will be 
 north-eastward, through Brecknockshire and Monmouthshire, to 
 Gloucester, Worcester, Bii*mingham, and LiveiiDOol. A coach 
 passes here to Gloucester in one day. The rest of it is railway. 
 I am about done with my capacity of visiting for this heat. I 
 shall like about as well to take my ease at my inn. Spending the 
 night at Gloucester, I shall view the city in the morning ; a 
 Cromwellian place that I wanted this long wliile to see. Then 
 Worcester in like manner, till the railway train come that will 
 take me to Birmingham arfd Liverpool. That will be best. 
 
 I am writing too much — I will end now. What a blessed 
 rustle among these green trees, on that sunny lawn, with woods 
 and fields and hills in the distance ! How happy could I be, 
 would all the world except one small cook's assistant fall asleep 
 and leave me alone with Tieck's * Vogelscheuche ' I We are in an 
 excellent building ; long galleries, spacious quiet rooms, all softly 
 carpeted, furnished — room enough for the biggest duke. The 
 mitre does not exclude soft carpeting, good chee?-, or any con- 
 trivance for comfort to the outer man. X is here ; good- 
 humoured, entirely polite, drinks well, eats well, toadies as far as 
 l^ermitted, turned of forty, lean and yellow ; has boiled big eyes, 
 a neck, head, and nose giving you a notion of a gigantic human 
 snipe. Is nob that a beauty ? I have had to look into about a 
 thousand books. The good Bishop is simple as a child. We are 
 alone all but the snipe. To-morrow there is talk of a judge dining 
 with us. Hang it ! Perhaps that is one of the reasons why I am 
 to be kept here. 
 
 Oh Goody, I send thee a hundred kisses. I have much need to 
 be kissed myself by a Goody. Adieu, adieu. 
 
 Ever affectionate 
 
 T. Carltlb. 
 
266 Carlyle^ Life in London. 
 
 Abergwili : July 20. 
 
 We had our grand dinner last night ; a judge' named N , and 
 
 about twenty advocates ; a dreadful explosion of dulness. Cham- 
 pagne and ennui, which, however, I took little hand in, being em- 
 powered by his reverence to go out and smoke whenever I found 
 
 it dull. N r, first fiddle on this occasion, was a man that I had 
 
 seen at the Stanleys', or some such place, playing fourth or fifth 
 fiddle. The advocates generally filled me with a kind of shudder. 
 To think that had I once had 200/. I should perhaps have been 
 that ! One of them named Vaughan pleased me not a little. 
 They all went ofi" soon, and then I had a long questionable bout of 
 prints to front — sound sleep for a few hours, and a lackey to 
 awaken you at half-past six. It is over now, all that lackeyism, 
 thank God ! The Bishop received your compliments (did I tell 
 you?) with much modesty and gratitude, mumbled something 
 about you being here — how happy, &c. He has been most kind to 
 me. Poor fellow ! Think of a solid bishop riding post as he had 
 to do to-day. It was literally altogether very good. Oar talk has 
 been extensive, rather interesting occasionally, always worth its 
 kind, or nearly so. Peace be with Abergwili, and may it be a while 
 before I run across such a mass of form again, requiring such a 
 curb-bridle on your liberties to observe them rightly ! For what we 
 have received the Lord make us thankful. Adieu, dearest, adieu 
 — I wish I were with thee. T. C. 
 
 The expression ' strangely swathed ' implies that he had 
 found the Bishop not entirely sympathetic ; and perhaps 
 he had not remembered sufficiently how beliefs linger 
 honestly in the ablest mind, though the mode of thought 
 be fatally at variance with them. 
 
 However this may have been, the visit w^as over, and 
 Carlyle went his way. His plan was to go first to Glou- 
 cester and Worcester to look at the battle-field ; afterwards 
 to go to Scotland, through Liverpool, to see his mother; 
 then to make a tour with his brother John in E^orth 
 Wales ; and, finally, before returning to London, to ex- 
 amine the ground of Oliver's great fight at Dunbar. He 
 w^as in good spirits, and Ins accounts of his adventures are 
 characteristically amusing. He had spoken of taking his 
 
A71 Inn at Gloitcester. 267 
 
 ease in his inn. He tried it first at tlie Bell Inn at 
 Gloucester, which he found to be ' a section of Bedlam.' 
 * Sounds of harps-and stringed instruments, ruffing of ap-' 
 plausive barristers over table oratory heard at a distance, 
 waiters running about in a distracted state; liapless bag- 
 men either preparing to go off " by mail," or else swallow- 
 ing punch in the hope to escape their wretchedness by 
 getting drunk.' * He had felt hap-hap-happy in the morn- 
 ing, and then he was meeserahle.^ Spite of all, he went to 
 bed ' with noble defiance,' and slept sounder than lie ex- 
 pected. But ' no gladder sight had he seen on his travels 
 than the omnibus in the morning which was to take him 
 out of the Bell Inn for all time and all eternity.' ' The 
 dirty scrub of a waiter,' he said, * grumbled about his al- 
 lowance, which I reckoned liberal. I added sixpence to 
 it, and produced a bow which I was near rewarding with 
 a kick. . . . Accursed be the race of flunkeys ! ' The 
 boots complained next. ' As they were never to meet 
 more through all eternity,' the boots was allowed a second 
 sixpence also. The railway train carried him past the 
 hills where ^ the Gloucester Puritans saw Essex's signal 
 fires and notice that help was nigh.' The scene of the 
 last battle of the Civil War was to have a closer inspection. 
 ' Worcester,' he writes, ' was three miles off the station 
 westward.' 
 
 I rode thither, smoking, by the London* road, and was set down 
 at some Crown Inn, vacant of customers, to a most blessed break- 
 fast of coffee and ham and accompaniments, a considerable * Chris- 
 tian com/oart.' I set rapidly out to explore the city. From Severn 
 Bridge I could see the ground of Oliver's battle. It was a most 
 brief survey. A poor labourer whom I consulted * had heard of 
 such a thing,' wished to God * we had another Oliver, sir ; times 
 is dreadful bad.' I spoke with the poor man awhile ; a shi'ewd, 
 \\ ell-conditioned fellow ; left a shilling ^^dth him, almost the only 
 good deed I did all day. In the railway train I had adventures of 
 ft small evil kind ; two men to quench who attempted, pai*tly by 
 
268 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 mistake, to use me ill. They proved quencliable without difficulty ; 
 for indeed I myself was in a somewhat snlphnrous condition, not 
 laandy to quarrel with. One of them, my fellow-passenger in the 
 railway, took it into his head to smile visibly when I laid off my 
 white broadbrim, and suddenly produced out of my jDocket my 
 grey Glengarry. He seemed of the mercantile head-clerk species, 
 and had been tempted to his impropriety by a foolish-looking, 
 pampered young lady in tiger-skin mantle whom he seemed to 
 have charge of. I looked straight into his smiling face and eyes ; a 
 look which I suppose inquired of him, ' Miserable ninth part of 
 the fraction of a tailor, art thou sure that thou hast a right to laugh 
 at me ? ' The smile instantly died into another expression of emo- 
 tion. When a man is just come out of a section of Bedlam, and has 
 still a long confused journey in bad weather in the second-class 
 train, that is the time for getting himself treated with the respect 
 due to genius. 
 
 At Liverpool Carlyle was warmly welcomed by liis 
 wife's uncle, in Maryland Street. He found his brother 
 John waiting for him there. They arranged to wait where 
 they were for a day or two, and then to make their expe- 
 dition into North "Wales together before the days began 
 to shorten. "While in Liverpool Carlyle encountered a 
 person then much talked of, whose acquaintance Mrs. Car- 
 lyle made shortly after in a striking manner in London.' 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Liverpool : July 24. 
 Passing near some Catholic chapel, and noticing a great crowd 
 in a yard there, with flags, white sticks, and brass bands, we 
 stopped our hackney-coachman, stepped forth into the thing, 
 and found it to be Father Mathew distributing the temperance 
 pledge to the lost sheep of the place, thousands strong, of both 
 sexes — a very ragged, lost-looking squadron indeed. Father M. 
 is a broad, solid, most excellent-looking man with grey hair, mild 
 intelligent eyes, massive, rather aquiline nose and countenance. 
 The very face of him attracts you. . . . We saw him go through 
 a whole act of the business, ' do,' as Darwin would say, ' an entire 
 batch of teetotallers.' I almost cried to listen to him, and could 
 not but lift my broadbrim at the end, when he called for God's 
 " Letters and Memorials, vol. i. p. 165. 
 
I 
 
 Liverpool, 269 
 
 blessing on the vow these poor wretches had taken. ... I 
 have seen nothing so religious since I set out on my travels as the 
 squalid scene of this day — nay, nothing properly religious at all ; 
 though I have been in Laud's chapel and heard daily with damn- 
 able iteration of ' the means of gi*ace and the hope of glory ' from 
 that portentous human snipe. Not a bad fellow either, poor devil ! 
 But we are in a dreatiful mess as to all that ; and even a strong 
 }3ishop Thirlwall constitutes himself a Macready of Episcopacy as 
 the best he can do, and does it uncommonly well ; and is * a strong- 
 minded man, sir,' and a right worthy man in his unfortunate kind. 
 . . . God bless thee, and so ends 
 
 Thy unfortunate T. C. 
 
 The Xorth "Wales tonr was brief. The brothers went 
 in a steamer from Livei'pool to Bangor, and thence to 
 Llanberis, again in a ' tub-gig,' or Welsh car. They trav- 
 elled light, for Carlyle took no baggage with him except a 
 razor, a shaving-brush, a shirt, and a pocket-comb ; ' tooth- 
 bi-ush ' not mentioned, but we may hope forgotten in the 
 inventory. They slept at Llanberis, and the next day 
 went up Snowdon. The summit was thick in mist. They 
 met two other parties there coming up from the other side 
 of the mountain ' like ghosts of parties escorted by their 
 Charons.' They descended to Beddgelert, and thence drove 
 down to Tremadoc, where they were entertained by a Lon- 
 don friend, one of the Chorleys, who had a house at that 
 place. Carlyle began to feel already that he had had 
 enough of it, to tire of his * tossings and tumblings,' and 
 to find that he did not ' at the bottom care twopence for 
 all the picturesqueness in the world.' One night sufficed 
 for Tremadoc. They returned thence straight to Liver- 
 pool, and were again in Maryland Street on August 1. 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle had been suffering from heat and her ex- 
 ertions in house repairs, and her husband thought it pos- 
 sible that he might take a seaside lodging at Formby, at 
 the mouth of the Mersey, where they could remain to- 
 gether for the rest of the summer. Formby had the ad- 
 
270 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 vantage of being near Seaforth, where the Panlets lived, 
 with whom. Mrs. Carlyle had already become intimate. 
 Mr. Paulet was a merchant, a sensible, well-informed, good 
 kind of man. Mrs. Paulet, young, gifted, and beautiful, 
 was one of Carlyle's most enthusiastic admirers. The 
 neighbourhood of such friends as these was an attraction ; 
 but the place when examined into was found desolate and 
 shelterless. The experiment of lodgings at ]N''ewby had 
 not been successful, so Mrs. Carlyle was left to take care 
 of herself, which she was well able to do, and her husband 
 made off for Scotland by his usual sea route to Annan. 
 Misadventures continued to persecute him on his travels, 
 or rather travelling itself was one persistent misadventure, 
 for he could never allow for the necessities of things. The 
 steamer, to begin with, left Liverpool at three in the morn- 
 ing. When he went on board ' it was chaos, cloud}^ dim, 
 bewildered, like a nasty, damp, clammy dream of confu- 
 sion, dirt, impediment, and general nightmare.' In the 
 morning there was some amendment. He could meditate 
 on his own condition, and find an idyll in the story of 
 another passenger. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Scotsbrig : August 5, 1843. 
 The voyage, thanks to a bright sunshine all day, was far more 
 tolerable than it promised to be. Nay, in spite as it were of very 
 fate, I snatched some five hours of sleep at various dates. I on 
 the whole fared well enough. My poor native Annandale never 
 looked so impressive to me that I remember : black rain curtains 
 all around — but there when I saw it a kind of bewept brightness. 
 All seemed so small, remote, eternally foreign ; I said to myself, 
 ' There among these poor knolls thy life journeyings commenced, 
 my man ! there didst thou begin in this outskirt of creation, and 
 thou hast wandered very far since then — far as Eternity and 
 Hades, so to speak, since then. Nobody was there to receive me. 
 I got a kind of gig at Benson's inn and came hither to kind wel- 
 come, to dinner, tea, and sleep all in the lump almost. My de- 
 termination is to rest here for a space. I feel quite smashed, 
 
i 
 
 Retreat in Annandale, 271 
 
 done up, and pressingly in need to pause and do nothing what- 
 ever. I have spread out my things. I sit in the little easternmost 
 room sacred from interruption. I will rest now. My poor mother 
 is very cheeiy, but very pale, thin, and has evidently been suffer- 
 ing much since I saw her. Jamie goes on in the old cheerfully 
 stoical manner in these worst of times. 
 
 I declare I am veiy sorry for all people. Yesterday was an old, 
 dirty, feckless-looking man, in tattered straw hat, sitting in the 
 steamer ; notable to me all day. At night a nigged, hearty kind 
 of old woman came on deck, who- proved to be his wife. They 
 had been in America, where all their children, eleven in number, 
 were bom ; * but the auld man, ye see, wadna bide,* though they 
 had sent for him ; and so here he was with his old dame come daun- 
 dering back again to beggaiy and the Hawick native soil ! Poor 
 old devil ! I was heartily sorry for him and the sturdy old wife. 
 I honoured her as a tnie heart of oak, the mainstay of her old man, 
 who grinned intelligence as he saw Scotch land again. Their 
 goods were in certain duddy pokes, and one painted chest of 
 which the woman carried the key. Her sturdy way of undoing 
 the padlock had first attracted my attention to her. Is not life a 
 * joyous ' kind of thing to this old woman? ' I declare I'se quite 
 shamed,' she said, * to gang hame sa dirty ; a's dirty, and I could 
 get nothing washed.' 
 
 Oh Goody, why do I twaddle to thee about all and sundry in 
 this manner ? Really silence would be preferable, and the saving 
 of a penny stamp. 
 
 He lay still for a month at Scotsbrig doing nothing 
 save a little miscellaneous reading, and hiding himself 
 from human sight. These few letters and fragments will 
 serve as a specimen of many written during this period of 
 eclipse. 
 
 To Jane Wehh Carlyle. 
 
 Scotsbrig : August 16, 1843. 
 I have no appetite for writing, for si>eaking, or in short doing 
 
 anything but sitting still as a stone, while that is conceded me 
 
 Confound it ! Here are two beggarly people from Ecclefechan 
 come driving in a gig in probable search for me. May the Devil 
 give them luck of it ! I hope Jenny will gulp a lie (door lie) for 
 my sake. I will wait perdu and fling down the pen till I see. 
 
272 Caflyle^s Life in London. 
 
 No ; Jenny had not the sense to make a white lie for me, and I 
 had to enter. A poor West Indies bilious youth home for his 
 health ' extremely desirous to see me ' (many thanks to him), ' just 
 called with his father.' I have given them whisky and w'ater and 
 sent them on their way. There is no rest for the wicked. 
 
 Here it is as hot as Demerara, windless, with a burning sun. I 
 am lazy in addition to all. Lazy as I almost never was. Work, 
 past or future, not to speak of present, is a weariness to me. I 
 sometimes think of Cromwell. Oh heavens ! I shall need to be 
 in another mood than now. I must take new measui'es. This will 
 never do. 
 
 The tailor has turned me out two pairs of trousers ; ^ has two 
 winter waistcoats and much else in progress. I find nothing 
 wrong but the Dumfries buttons yet, which I have duly execrated 
 and flung aside. Poor hunger-ridden, quack-ridden Dumfries ! 
 Wages yesterday at Lockerbie fair ' were lower than any man ever 
 saw them.' A harvestman coming hither for five weeks is to have 
 one sovereign. A weaker individual works through the same 
 period for 15s. or 12.s-. 6c/. , according as he proves. The latter is a 
 shoemaker's apprentice, who has harv^est granted to him, to earn 
 his year's apparel. Ruin by sliding scales and other conveyances 
 slides rajjidly on all men. 
 
 Last afternoon I had a beautiful walk on the Dairland Hills 
 moor. A little walking shakes away my sluggishness. The bare 
 expanse of silent green upland is round me, far off the world of 
 mountains, and the sea all changed to silver. Out of the dusky 
 sunset — for vapours had fallen — the windows of Carlisle city 
 glanced visibly upon me ; tw^enty thousand human bipeds whom I 
 could cover with my hat. On these occasions, unfortunately, I 
 think almost nothing. Vague dreams, delusions, idle reminis- 
 cences, and confusions are all that occupy me. I am an unprofit- 
 able servant. 
 
 I have taken up with a biography of Ralph Erskine, the first of 
 'CciQ Seceders. It is absolutely very strange. A long, soft, poke- 
 cheeked face, with busy, anxious black eyes, * looking as if he 
 could not help it ; ' and then such a character and form of human 
 existence, conscience living to the fingers-ends of him in a strange, 
 venerable, though highly questionable manner ! There have been 
 strange men in this world ; and indeed every man is strange 
 
 ^ Carlyle had his clothes made at Ecclefechan, partly for economy, partly 
 because he could not believe in the honesty of London work. 
 
Anncmdcde Anecdotes. 2T3 
 
 eDough. This Ralph makes me reflect, "Whitherward are we now 
 bound ? "What has become of all that ? Is man grown into a kind 
 of brute that can merely spin and make railways ? ' * Mir wiire 
 liebet' class ich pldtzlich stiirbe* 
 
 Again, a day or two later : — 
 
 The reading of Ralph Erskine has given me strange reflections 
 as to the profoundly enveloped state in which all sons of Adam 
 live. . . . This poor Ralph, and his formulas casing him all 
 round like the shell of a beetle. "What a thing it is I And yet 
 what better have the rest of us made of it? Far worse most of us 
 in our Benthamisms, Jacobinisms, George Sandisms. Man is a 
 bom owl. I consider it good, however, that one do not get into 
 the state of a beetle, that one try to keep one's shell open, or at 
 least openable. I mean to persist in endeavouring that. 
 
 The lives of all men in all ranks, places, and times have 
 their tragedy, their comedy, their romance in them ; and 
 are at once poetical, if there is a man of genius at hand to 
 observe, especially if he have radical fire in him. Human 
 creatures love, hate, have their pride and their passions, 
 do wrong and sufFer wrong, wlierever they are. Here are 
 two small pictures from peasant life in Annandale, as 
 Carlyle saw it in 1843 : — 
 
 August 21. 
 A poor slut of a man, Jamie's next neighbour here, has a farm 
 too dear, deficient stock, arrears of rent, with all manner of soitow- 
 ful et cseteras, and hangs of late years continually on the verge of 
 ruin. He is fumed of foiiy — a great, heavy, simple, toilsome lump 
 of nut-brown innocency ; has wife and children ; an old mother, 
 stone-blind, who 'milks all the cows.' His soul's first care is to 
 raise 100/. annually for his landlord to buy port wine or whisky 
 with. According to the lex terrce as it at present stands, they can 
 strip him to the skin any time for past aiTears, but prefer to let 
 him struggle along, • doing his best.' At this last rent-day he was 
 nearly out of his wits, Jamie says. The com he meant to sell was 
 not ripe enough for selling ; the bare bent or the inside of a gaol 
 his only other outlook. For ten days he rode and i-an, ' sleeping 
 none,' or hardly sleeping. By Jamie's help he did at length get 
 the 50/. ready. He paid it duly, got on his horse to come home 
 again, had a stroke of apoplexy by the way, arrived home still 
 Vol. UI.— 18 
 
274 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 sticking to his horse, but unable to speak or walk, and has walked 
 or spoken none since. What a joyous existence his ! And that old 
 stone-blind mother ! We are very despicable drivellers to make 
 any moan. Oh heavens ! can that be the tarsk of an immortal soul, 
 
 catching apoplexy to provide whisky for of ? Je me 
 
 suis dit unjour, cela n'est pas juste. No, it is not, and by God's help 
 shall not be held so. 
 
 August 30. 
 I must tell you another thing I heard which struck me consid- 
 erably. You remember a lump of an old woman, half haveral,i 
 half genius, called Jenny Fraser. The ' Duke ' had decided on 
 high that not an inch of ground should be allowed for a 'non- 
 intrusion ' church in that region. No church shall there or there- 
 abouts be. It is paltry to stop the mouths of men that observe 
 any measure in their complainings — very poor, even if a Duke had 
 made all the land he refuses to concede a few yards of. Well ; but 
 old Jenny Fraser possesses about Boatford a patch of ground in- 
 dependent of all persons, just about equal to holding a church and 
 its eavesdrops, and says she will give it. Hunter of Merton Mill 
 and agents are at work. Go to Jenny, offer her 101. , 201.; indicate 
 possibilities of perhaps more. Jenny is deaf as whinstone, though 
 poor nearly as Job. She answers always, ' I got it from the Lord, 
 and I will give it to the Lord.' And there, it seems, the Free 
 Kirk, in spite of Duke and Devil, is to be. I had a month's mind 
 to go and give Jenny a sovereign myself ; but I remembered two 
 things : first, that she had for some reason or other become a 
 stranger to her former benefactress [Mrs. Carlyle herself?], and 
 then, secondly, it might have a factious look, bettei- to avoid at 
 that moment ; we can do it better afterwards, and I can hear your 
 opinion withal — ' Duke versus Jenny Fraser ! ' it is as ridiculous a 
 conjecture as has happened lately. These poor people, living 
 under their Duke in secret spleen and sham loyalty, are somewhat 
 to be pitied. ' The earth's the Lord's and no the Duke's,' as 
 Charlie Eae said. 
 
 This little story is worth preserving as part of the 
 history of the Free Kirk, independently of Carlyle's com- 
 ments. Jenny Fraser was a true daughter of the Cove- 
 nanters. 
 
 Carlyle's time in the l^orth was running out ; he had 
 
 * Haveraly a half-witted peiBon. 
 
Crawford Churchyard, 275 
 
 still to see Dunbar battle-field, and he had arranged his 
 movements that he should see it on Oliver's own 3rd of 
 September, the day of the Dunbar fight, the day of the 
 Worcester fight, and the day of his death. One or two 
 small duties remained to be discharged first in Dumfries- 
 shire. His wife had asked him to go once more to Thorn- 
 liill and Templand to see after her mother's old servants, 
 and to visit also the grave in Crawford Churchyard. To 
 Crawford he was willing to go ; from Templand he shrank 
 as too painful. In leaving it, he thought that he had bid 
 adieu to the old scenes for ever. Still this and anything 
 he was ready to undertake if it would give her any pleas- 
 ure. Most tender, most afl^ectionate, were the terms in 
 which he gave his promise to go. lie did go. He distrib- 
 uted presents among the old people, who in Mrs. Welsh had 
 lost their best friend. Finally, he went also to the church- 
 yard, seeing Thornhill a second time on the way. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Edinburgh : September 2. 
 As the mail was to start from Dumfries at six o'clock without 
 pause by the way, I preferred the heavy coach yesterday at nine. 
 It took me by Thornhill, &c. I had not duly calculated on that ; 
 and yet who knows but a day of such sad solemnity spent in utter 
 silence, though painful exceedingly, was worth enduring. Nobody 
 knew me. I sate two minutes in Thornhill Street, unsuspected by 
 all men, a kind of ghost among men. The day was windless : the 
 eai'th all still : grey mist rested on the tops of the green hills, the 
 vacant brown moors : silence as of eternity rested over the world. 
 It was like a journey through the kingdoms of the dead, one Hall 
 of Spirits till I got past Crawford. ... I was as a spirit in 
 the land of spirits, called land of the living. ... At Crawford 
 I was on a sacred spot, one of the two sacredest in all the world — 
 I was at the grave. I tried at first to gain as much time on the 
 coach [as was needed]. This being impossible, the good-natured 
 driver offered to wait. In my life I have had no more unearthly 
 moment. Perhaps it was not right, though doubtless you will 
 thank me. At any rate, I could not decide to pass. Oh heavens ! 
 
276 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 and all so silent there, smoothed into the repose of God^s eternity ; 
 and the hills look on it, and the skies, and I thought how blessed 
 all that was, beyond the dreary sorrows and agitations of all this. 
 Why should I dwell on such a matter ? I mean to go and see your 
 brave father's grave, too, and I will speak no word about it — you 
 shall hold it done without my speaking. 
 
 This was written from Edinburgh on September 2. Tlie 
 3rd was to be given to Dunbar, and along with Dunbar 
 was to be combined the pilgrimage to that last solemn spot 
 to which he referred with so fine delicacy. Without stay- 
 ing to see any Edinburgh acquaintance except David Laing, 
 he went on direct to Haddington, where he was to be the 
 guest of his wife's old and dear friends, the Miss Donald- 
 sons of Sunny Bank. The thoughts which he had brought 
 from Crawford attended him still as he came among the 
 scenes of Mrs. Carlyle's childhood, where he and she had 
 first looked in each other's faces. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Haddington : September 4, 1843. 
 These two days the image of my dear little Jeannie has hovered 
 incessantly about me, waking and sleeping, in a sad yet almost 
 celestial manner, like the spirit, I might say, of a beautiful dream. 
 These were the streets and places where she ran about, a merry, 
 eager little fairy of a child : and it is all gone away from her now, 
 and she from it : and of all her possessions, poor I am, as it were, 
 all that remains to her. My dearest, while I live, one soul to trust 
 in shall not be wanting. My poor little Jeannie ! How solemn is 
 this Hall of the Past, beautiful and mournful ; the miraculous river 
 of existence rolling its grand course here, as elsewhere in the most 
 prophetic places, now even as of old ; godlike, though dark with 
 death. 
 
 Carlyle feeling and writing with such exquisite tender- 
 ness, and Carlyle a fortnight later when he was in Cheyne 
 Row making a domestic earthquake and driving his wife 
 distracted because a piano sounded too loud in the adjoining 
 house^ are beings so different, that it seemed as if his soul 
 
Dunbar Battlefield. 277 
 
 was divided, like tlie Dioscuri, as if one part of it was in 
 heaven, and the otlier in the place opposite to heaven. 
 But the misery had its origin in the same sensitiveness of 
 nature which was so tremulously alive to soft and delicate 
 emotion. Men of genius have acuter feelings than com- 
 mon men ; they are like the wind-harp, which answers to 
 the breath that touches it, now low and sweet, now rising 
 into wild swell or angry scream, as the strings are swept by 
 some passing gust. 
 
 The rest of this letter describes the expedition to Dun- 
 bar, and is written at a more ordinary pitch. September 
 3 was a Sunday. 
 
 No coaches going to Dunbar on that day, I had to resolve on 
 doing the thing by walking. Before quitting Edinburgh, I had 
 gone to David Laing, and refreshed all my recollections by look- 
 ing at his books, one of which he even lent me out hither. Forti- 
 fied with all studies and other furtherances, I took a stick from 
 the lobby here and set forth about half-past nine ; the morning 
 grey and windy, wind straight in my back. To Linton the walk 
 was delightful ; the rich autumn country and Sabbath solitude 
 altogether solacing to me. At Linton, a shoal, or rather endless 
 shoals, of ragged Irish reapers made the highway thenceforth too 
 populous for me. Indeed, between Musselburgh and Dunbar they 
 have made all thoroughfares a continued Donnybrook, every 
 variety of ragged savagery and squalor — the finest peasantry in the 
 world. There is not work for a fourth part of them — wages one 
 shilling a day. They seemed to subsist on the plunder of turnips 
 and beanfields. They did not beg : only asked me now and then 
 for ' the toime, plaise sur,' seeing I had a watch. It was curious 
 to see at Linton the poor remnant of Highland shearers all lying 
 decently in rows on the green, while the Irish were hovering they 
 knew not whitlier, without plan, without repose. 
 
 At Dunbar I found the battle-ground much more recognisable 
 than any I had yet seen ; indeed, altogether what one would call 
 clear. It is at the foot and further eastward along the slope of the 
 hill they call the doun that the Scots stood, Cromwell at Brox- 
 mouth (Duke of Roxburghe's place), where he * saw the sun rise 
 over the sea,' and quoted a certain Psalm. I had the conviction 
 that I stood on the veiy ground. Having time to spare (for din- 
 
278 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 ner was at six), I surveyed the old Castle, washed my feet in the 
 sea — smoking the while — took an image of Dunbar with me as I 
 could, and then set my face to the wind and the storm, which had 
 by this time risen to a quite tempestuous pitch. No rougher work 
 have I had for a long time, boring through it with my broadbrim, 
 not perpendicular to it ; face parallel to the highway — that was the 
 only possible method, except sometimes that I set the broadbrim 
 on my breast and walked bare-headed ; the only ill effect of which 
 is that is has filled my hair with sand till the sea-Avater wash it 
 cut again. 
 
 Duties all finished, there remained now to get back to 
 Chelsea. The cheapest, and to Carlyle the pleasantest, 
 way was by sea. A day could be given to Edinburgh, two 
 to the Ferguses at Kirkcaldy. Thence he could go to Mr. 
 Erskine and staV at Linlathen till the 15th, when a steamer 
 would sail for Dundee. After the sight of the battle- 
 fields, tlie ' Cromwell ' enterprise seemed no longer impos- 
 sible. He was longing to be at home and at work ; ' at 
 home with Goody and her new house and her old heart.' 
 The boat would be forty -five hours on the w^ay. He would 
 be at Chelsea by the 19th, and ' his long pilgrimage be 
 ended.' He had seen many things in the course of it, but 
 ' nothing half as good as his own Goody.' In the most 
 amiable mood he called on everyone that he knew in Edin- 
 bm-gh — called on his wife's aunts at Morningside, called on 
 Jeffrey at Craigcrook, to whom he was always grateful as 
 his first active friend. 
 
 I found him (he says) somewhat in a deteriorated state. The 
 little Duke had lamed his shin ; sate lean, disconsolate, irritable, 
 talkative, and argumentative as ever, with his foot laid on a stool. 
 Poor old fellow ! I talked with him chiefly till two o'clock, and 
 then they drove me off in their carriage. 
 
 The days with Erskine in his quiet house at Linlathen 
 were an enjoyment and amusement. Erskine officiating 
 as a country gentleman, as chief commander of a squire's 
 mansion, was a novel spectacle, the most gentle of men 
 
Eiid of Summer Tour, 279 
 
 and yet obliged to put on the air of anthority, and * doing 
 it dreadfully ill/ But Carlyle's thoughts were riveted on 
 home. He had been irritable and troublesome before he 
 went away in the summer. He was returning with the 
 sense that in Cheyne Row only was paradise, where he 
 would never be impatient again. 
 
 Oh Goody ! (he exclaimed in his last letter) I wish I was with 
 thee again. We will go into a room together, and have a little 
 talk about time and space. Thou wilt hardly know me again. I 
 am brown as a berry, face and hands ; terribly bilious — sick even, 
 yet with a feeling that there is a good stock of new liealth in me 
 had I once leave to subside. Courage ! in a few hours more it 
 will be done. 
 
CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 A.D. 1843-4. ^T. 48-49. 
 
 A repaired house— Beginnings of 'Cromwell' — Difficulties — The 
 Edinburgh students — Offer of a professorship — The old 
 mother at Scotsbng — Lady Harriet Baring — A day at Addis- 
 combe — Birthday present — Death of John Sterling. 
 
 Alas for the infirmity of mortal resolution ! Between the 
 fool and the man of genius there is at least this symptom 
 of their common humanity. Carlyle came home with the 
 fixed determination to be amiable and good and make his 
 wife happy. 'No one who reads his letters to her can 
 doubt of his perfect confidence in her, or of his childlike 
 affection for her. She was the one person in the world 
 besides his mother whose character he completely admired, 
 whose judgment he completely respected, whose happiness 
 he was most anxious to secure ; but he came home to 
 drive her immediately distracted, not by unkindness — ^for 
 unkind he could not be — but through inability to endure 
 with ordinary patience the smallest inconveniences of life. 
 These were times wlien Carlyle was like a child, and like 
 a very naughty one. 
 
 During the three months of his absence the house in 
 Cheyne Kow had undergone a 'thorough repair.' This 
 process, which the dirt of London makes necessary every 
 four or five years, is usually undergone in the absence of 
 the owners. Mrs. Carlyle, feeble and out of health as she 
 was, had remained, to spare her husband expense, through 
 the paint and noise, directing everything herself, and re- 
 
A Repaired House. 281 
 
 storing everything to order and cleanliness at a minimum 
 of cost. The walls had been painted or papered, the 
 floors washed, the beds taken to pieces and remade, the 
 injured furniture mended. With her own hands she had 
 newly covered chairs and sofas, and stitched carpets and 
 c-urtains ; while for Carlyle himself she had arranged a 
 library exactly in the form which he had declared before 
 that it was essential to his peace that his own working- 
 room should have. For three days he was satisfied, and 
 acknowledged 'a certain admiration.' Unfortunately 
 when at heart he was really most gratified, his acknowl- 
 edgments were limited ; he was shy of showing feeling, 
 and even those who knew him best and understood his 
 ways were often hurt by his apparent indifference. He 
 had admitted that the house had been altered for the bet- 
 ter, but on the fourth morning the young lady next door 
 began upon her fatal piano, and then the tempest burst 
 out which Mrs. Carlyle describes with such pathetic 
 humour.' First he insisted that he would have a room 
 made for himself on the roof where no sound could enter. 
 When shown how much this would cost, he chose to have 
 his rooms altered below — partitions made or taken down — 
 new fireplaces introduced. Again the house was filled 
 with dust and workmen ; saws grating and hammers 
 clattering, and poor Carlyle in the midst of it, ^ wringing 
 his hands and tearing his hair at the sight of the uproar 
 which he had raised.' And after all it was not the piano, 
 or very little the piano. It is in ourselves that we are 
 this or that, and the young lady might have played her 
 fingers ofF, and he would never have heard her, had his 
 work once been set going, and he absorbed in it. But go 
 it would not, except fitfully and unsatisfactorily ; his 
 materials were all accumulated ; he had seen all that he 
 needed to see, yet his task stDl seemed impossible. The 
 
 * Letters and MemoriaU^ voL L p. 187. 
 
282 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 tumult in the house was appeased : another writing-room 
 was arranged ; the unfortunate young lady was brought 
 to silence. ' Fast and Present ' was done and out of the 
 way. The dinner-hour was changed to the middle of the 
 day to improve the biliary condition. No result came. 
 He walked about the streets to distract himself. His 
 mind wandered to other subjects as one thing or another 
 suggested itself. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 Chelsea: October 10, 1843. — Began yesterday to dine at 2.30. 
 Perhaps it will do me good on the dyspeptic side. Walked from 
 three to six yesterday afternoon, saw some of Wilkie's prints in a 
 shop-window — ' Card-players,' * Beading a Will,' &c. The pictures 
 I had never seen— discovered for the first time what a genius was in 
 this Wilkie : a great broad energy of humour and sympathy ; a 
 real painter in his way, alone among us since Hogarth's time— re- 
 flected with sorrow that the man was dead, that I had seen him 
 with indifference, without recognition, while he lived. Poor 
 Wilkie ! A very stunted, timidly proud, uninviting, unproductive- 
 looking man. I spoke with him a little in his own house while he 
 was painting Sir David Baird and Seringapatam. The picture 
 seemed to me a hollow cloud, as our other pictures are. The man 
 himself was cold, shy, taciturn. I saw Wilkie and did not know 
 him. One should have his eyes opener. The Life of Wilkie by 
 poor Allan Cunningham, the most chaotic compilation in the 
 world, revealed to me the small but genuine spirit of a man strug- 
 gling confusedly amid the boundless element of twaddle, dilettan- 
 tism, shopkeeperism, and other impurity and inanity, of which our 
 earth, and most of all the painter's earth, is at present full. He 
 rebukes me by several of his qualities — by his patience, his sub- 
 missive, unwearied endeavour in such element as he finds — a truly 
 well-doi7ig man. His ' Card-players ' struck me more than any of 
 his engravings I chanced to see last night ; genuine life-figures, a 
 great gluttonous substantiality, some glimpse of universal life 
 looking out through the coarse boor shapes ; the awfully massive 
 hips and seats, the teeth and laugh of that President at the board 
 head, &c. Alas ! poor Wilkie is not here any more. 
 
 Oh, miserable ' slip the labour,' what is become of thi/ endeavour ? 
 Not a word of it yet got to paper ; the very scheme and shadow of 
 
Beginiiinga of * CromweW 283 
 
 it hovering distracted in the cloud rack, sport of every wind. I 
 am truly to be pitied, to be condemned. 
 
 So Carlyle had been when lie began the ' French Revolu- 
 tion.' So it was, is, and must be with every serious man 
 wlien lie is first starting upon any great literary work. 
 * Sport of every wind ' he seems to himself, for every 
 triHe, piano or what not, distracts him. Sterling was in 
 London, then on tlie edge of his last fatal illness. In the 
 Journal of October 23 Carlyle enters : — 
 
 Methinks I see a hieroglyphic bat 
 Skim o'er the zenith in a slipshod hat, 
 And to shed infants' blood with horrid strides 
 A damned potato on a whii'lwind rides. 
 
 Fabulously attributed to Nat Lee in Bedlam; composed, I 
 imagine, by John Sterling, who gave it me yesterday. 
 
 After this he seemed to make progress. *Have been 
 making an endeavour one other time to begin writing on 
 Cromwell. Dare not say I have yet begun ; all beginning 
 is difficult.' Many pages were covered, with writing of a 
 sort. Mrs. Carlyle, on November 28, describes him as 
 ' over head and ears in Cromwell,' and ^ lost to humanity 
 for the time being.' That he could believe himself 
 started gave some peace to her ; but he was trying to make 
 a consecutive history of the Commonwealth, and, as he 
 told me afterwards, ' he could not get the subject rightly 
 taken hold of.' There was no seed fitly planted and or- 
 ganically growing; and the further he went, the less 
 satisfied lie was with himself. He used to say that he had 
 no genius for literature. Yet no one understood better 
 what true literary work really was, or was less contented 
 to do it indifferently. 
 
 To John Sterling. 
 
 Chelsea : December 4, 1843. 
 I am very miserable at present ; or call it heavy-laden with fruit- 
 less toil, which will have much the same meaning. My abode is, 
 
284 Carlt/le's Life in London. 
 
 and has been, figuratively speaking, in the centre of chaos. On- 
 wards there is no moving in any yet discovered line, and where I 
 am is no abiding — miserable enough. 
 
 The fact is, without any figure, I am doomed to write some book 
 about that unblessed Commonwealth, and as yet there will be no 
 book show itself possible. The whole stagnancy of the English 
 genius two hundred years thick lies heavy on me. Dead heroes 
 buried under two centuries of Atheism seem to whimper pitifully 
 * Deliver as ! Canst thou not deliver us ? ' And alas ! what am I, 
 or what is my father's house ? Confound it ! I have lost four years 
 of good labour in the business ; and still the more I expend on it, 
 it is like throwing good labour after bad. On the whole, you 
 ought to pity me. Is thy sei-vant a dead dog that these things 
 have fallen on him ? My only consolation is that I am struggling 
 to be the most conservative man in England, or one of the most 
 conservative. If the past times, only two centuries back, lie 
 wholly a torpedo darkness and dulness, freezing as with Medusa 
 glance all souls of men that look on it, where are our foundations 
 gone ? If the j)ast time cannot become melodious, it must be for- 
 gotten, as good as annihilated ; and we rove like aimless exiles that 
 have no ancestors, whose world began only yesterday. That must 
 be my consolation, such as it is. 
 
 I see almost nobody. I avoid sight rather, and study to 
 consume my own smoke. I wish among your buildings ^ you 
 would build me some small Prophet's chamber, fifteen feet square, 
 with a separate garret, and a flue for smoking, within a furlong of 
 your big house, sacred from all noises of dogs, cocks, pianofortes, 
 insipid men, engaging some dumb old woman to light a fire for 
 me daily and boil some kind of kettle. 
 
 To Margaret Carlyle, Scotshrig. 
 
 Chelsea : December 31, 1843. 
 The saddest story is that of my book, which occasions great 
 difficulty. I not long ago fairly cast a great mass of it into the 
 fire, not in any sudden rage at it, but after quiet deliberation, and 
 deciding on this as the best that I could do. I am now tiying the 
 business on another side with hopes of better prosperity there. 
 Prosper or not, I must hold on at it, on one side or the other. I 
 must get in upon it, and drive it before me. But the truth is, it 
 will be a long heavy piece of labour, and I must not grumble that 
 
 * Sterling was improving a house which he had lately bought at Ventnor. 
 
Be^n7iing8 of * Cromwell,'^ 285 
 
 mj progress seems so small. I do make progress, as much prog- 
 ress as I can ; and on the whole why should I plague myself or 
 others about the quantity of my progress ? I am a poor discontented 
 creature, and ought at least to hold my peace and * be thankful 
 I am not in purgatoiy.' 
 
 One of his ditficulties lay in his extreme conscientious- 
 ness. No sentence would be ever deliberately set down 
 on paper without his assuring himself, if it related to a 
 fact, that he had exhausted every means of ascertaining 
 that the fact was true as he proposed to tell it ; or, if it 
 was to contain a sentiment or opinion, without weighing 
 it to see if it was pure metal and not cant or insincere 
 profession. This, however, lay in his nature, and, though 
 it might give him trouble, would give him no anxiety. But 
 his misgiving was that he was creating no living organic 
 work, but a dead manufactured one, and this was intoler- 
 able. He flung aside at last all that he had done, burnt 
 part of it, as he said, locked away the rest, and began 
 again, as he told his mother, *on another side.' He gave 
 up the notion of writing a regular history. He would 
 make the person of Oliver Cromwell the centre of his 
 composition, collect and edit, with introductions and con- 
 necting fragments of narrative, the extant letters and 
 speeches of Oliver himself — this, at least, as a iirst opera- 
 tion — a plain and comparatively easy one. When it was 
 finished, he told me that he found to his surprise that he 
 had finished all which he had to say upon the subject, and 
 might so leave it. 
 
 With the new year he was working upon the fresh 
 lines, still diffident, but in better humour with himself and 
 his surroundings. 
 
 For my book (he wrote again to his mother on January 11 [1844]) 
 I dare not say much about it, and, indeed, had better altogether 
 keep silent and plague nobody with it further, for nobody can 
 help me in it, do what he will. It is a most difficult book ; but 
 by the blessing of Heaven I hope to get it done yet, and to have 
 
286 Carlyle^s Life m London. 
 
 accomplished something useful thereby. Naj^ indeed, I am some- 
 times taught more distinctly than usual that vntJiout the blessing 
 of Heaven / cannot get it done ; which surely is a wholesome 
 lesson, and one we should be thankful for for ever, even though it 
 come to us in pain. I have heard of an Italian popular preacher 
 who one day before a grand audience fairly broke down, and had 
 not a word to say. His shame was great ; he blushed ; he almost 
 wept ; but, gathering himself at last, he said : ' My friends, it is 
 the punishment of my pride ; let me lay it to heart and take a 
 lesson by it.' So be it with us all. . . . The people in the next 
 house, whose piano was so loud when I sate down to write, have 
 behaved with the noblest chivalry. They keep their piano silent 
 every day rigorously till two o'clock. At other hours I am not 
 writing, and it does me no ill ; rather does me good, when I reflect 
 how civil the people are. There is great honour shown here to 
 the literary man. 
 
 Jowmal. 
 
 February 2, 1844. — Engaged in a book on the Civil Wars, on 
 Oliver Cromwell, or whatever the name of it prove to be ; the most 
 frightfully impossible book of all I have ever before tried. It is 
 several years since the thing took hold of me. I have read hun- 
 dredweights of dreary books, searched dusty manuscripts, corre- 
 sponded, &c. &c., almost with no results whatever. How often 
 have I begun to write, and after a certain period of splunging and 
 splashing found that there was yet no basis for me. Since my re- 
 turn from Scotland and Wales and the North in September last it 
 is just about five months complete. Most part of that time I have 
 been really assiduous with this book, or one or the other adjuncts 
 of it, and there really stands now on m/ paper in any available 
 shape, as it were correctly — nothing. Much I have blotted, fairly 
 burnt out of my way. What will become of it and of me ? Some- 
 times I get extremely distressed. What of that? Was it ever 
 otherwise ? Will it ever be ? Carpenters with contrivances to se- 
 cure me from noises, treaties about neighbouring pianos, complaints 
 of barking dogs, above a hundred 'Musseum headaches ; ' no books 
 but *Rushworthian Torpedos ; ' little company that is not a torpedo 
 to me ; and, to crown the whole, not a vestige of work actually 
 done. This is bad enough. The fact is, I am myself very much 
 to blame, I am full of ' choler,' of impatience, alas ! of insincerity 
 of heart. There will be no good come by talking of it here. Yester- 
 
Professorship m St. Andrew' h. 2*^7 
 
 day at the Musseum. To-day in quiet sorrow, attempting to begin 
 again to wiite somewhat. Non omnes occiderunt soles. 
 
 Scotland meanwhile was remembering Carlyle. The 
 Edinburgh students were not alone in their effort to call 
 hiul back across the irremeabUis unda. 
 
 As to my book (he wrote a fortnight later to Scotsbrig) it is not 
 absolutely stopping, but is going its own gate, a much longer one 
 than I expected it might be. I study to keep holdiug on. * Slow 
 fire does make sweet meat.* I think I shall perhaps make some- 
 thing of it in the end, if I be at once patient and diligent. At all 
 events, I must and will endeavour. This morning there came a let- 
 ter from Sir Da\-id Brewster, about a Professorship in St. Andrews 
 for me. I have already written to decline it. Professorships of 
 that kind do not suit me now. They come a day behind the fair. 
 
 The offer of a Scotch professorship was unacceptable, 
 but was of course gratifying. So in a higher degree was 
 the begiiming of a new order of legislation setting aside 
 the received doctrines of laissezfaire^ which he might fairly 
 think to be due at least in part to his own writings. Lord 
 Ashley — Lord Shaftesbury, as he has been so long and so 
 honourably known to us — must have the first place as 
 having successfully carried through the great measure for 
 the protection of the factory children. But Carlyle, too, 
 had affected the thoughts of the younger generation of re- 
 flecting politicians, and made possible Lord Ashley's attack 
 upon the political economists. It was with real delight 
 that he informed his mother of the first introduction of 
 this measure. 
 
 To Margaret Carlyle, Scotsh'^ig. 
 
 Chelsea : March 30, 1844. 
 All the people are in controversy about Lord Ashley's proposal 
 to restrict the hours of factory labour to twelve, with two allowed 
 for meals — that is, ten hours in all. Numbers of people are loud 
 and bitter against it. As for me, I rejoice greatly that the Govern- 
 ment has in any way begun to deal with that hoi-rid business, the 
 Btate of the working people. Innumerable tasks lie there for all 
 
288 Carlyle^s Life i?i London. 
 
 manner of wise goveniors and parliamenteers and prime ministers. 
 Lord Ashley's Bill was carried once ; but Peel and Graham have 
 turned again upon him, saying they will go out if he can-y it ; so 
 that probably it will be lost this time. But the business is begun, 
 that is the great fact. The other day I saw one of the official 
 people — Lord Elliot — in a company who were all talking about 
 this. I told him the Government were absolutely bound either to 
 try whether they could do some good to these people, or to draw 
 them out in line and openly shoot them with grape. That would 
 be mercy in comparison. He seemed much astonished ; but I 
 had a fair share of the company on my side. 
 
 It was always to his mother that he wrote first when he 
 had anything interesting to tell, whether it was about an 
 Act of Parliament, or the progress of his writing, or when 
 the kitlin had an American mouse to send to the Auld 
 Cat. She was seldom out of his thoughts, as he was 
 seldom out of hers ; and she was now growing old and 
 ailing. Here is another of his letters to her : — 
 To Margaret Carlyle^ Scotshrig. 
 
 Chelsea : April 24, 1844. 
 
 You have been too frequently ill this spring, my dear mother ; 
 you really must take more pains with yourself. Let me beg 
 Jenny, ^ too, to be in all ways careful of you. Alas ! what can I 
 do ? I am far off, and cannot be of help to you myself, which I 
 would so gladly be. Surely it is well the part of one and all of us 
 to do for our good, true mother whatsoever we can. She did 
 faithfully for us what lay in her when the time was. Jean tells 
 me she has sent you a fowl or two. I have earnestly urged her to 
 continue that. A little soup and wheat bread for dinner would 
 certainly be much w^holesomer than what you usually dine on. 
 Besides, the good weather is now come — that of itself will be a 
 great relief to you. Go up to the moor on a sunny day. The 
 sight of the bonny world growing green again will be like a 
 sermon to your pious heart, as indeed such a heart can nowhere 
 want for sermons. The stars in the heavens and the little blue- 
 bells by the wayside alike show forth the handiwork of Him who 
 is Almighty, who is All Good. In a bad, weak world, what would 
 become of us did not our hearts understand at all times that this 
 » The sister living at home with her mother. 
 
Difficulties with ' CromweU: 289 
 
 is even so? ... I struggle away here, not always in the 
 Bucoessfullost manner, yet trying alwliys to make some progress 
 in my work. 'Many a little makes a mickle.' It will be a long, 
 dreigh,^ and weaiy job; but I must plod along; keep chopping 
 on, and hope to get through it in time. My health is not to be 
 complained of. I should study well to husband what strength is 
 given me, not fret, as I too often do, on what is denied me. Jane, 
 too, gets better in the bright weather. All is bright here — sunny, 
 and full of blossom. I study to go out to dinner as little as pos- • 
 sible, and write refusals to the right and left. Dinners will do 
 nothing for me ; only the getting on with my book will do some- 
 thing. . . . Jeffrey is here in poorish health, but liiuch better 
 than he was. He is nearly of your age, but grows no more serious 
 as he grows older. At least, lie thinks proper to affect the same 
 light ways— to me not the beautifullest in an old man. 
 
 How anxious he was about his mother — how inexpressi- 
 bly dear she was to him — appears from a note in his 
 Journal : — 
 
 Ma(/ 8. — My dear old mother has, I doubt, been often poorly 
 this winter. They report her toell at present ; but, alas ! there is 
 nothing in all the earth so stern to me as that constantly advanc- 
 ing inevitability, which indeed has terrified me all my days. 
 
 The same day he enters : — 
 
 My progress in * Cromwell ' is frightful. I am no day absolutely 
 idle, but the confusions that lie in my way require far more fire of 
 energy than I can mu.ster on most days, and I sit not so much work- 
 ing as painfully looking on work. A thousand times I have re- 
 gretted that this task was ever taken up. My heart was never 
 righlly in it. My conscience it rather was that drove me on. My 
 chief motive now is a more and more burning desire to have done 
 with it. EJieUy eheu ! I am very weak in health, too. I am oftenest 
 very sad. The figure of Age, of greyhaired weakness, twilight, and 
 the inevitable night never came on me so forcibly as this year. 
 Age is sad, yet it is noble after a sort ; the advance of it upon me 
 is a peculiar tragedy, new for every new life. Words are weak in 
 general to express what I feel. Thou art verily growing old, and 
 thou hast never been young ; and thy Ufe has amounted to this 
 poor paltriness, and, &c. ^o, &o. There is no wisdom in writing 
 » Dreiffh, tedious. 
 Vol. m.^X9 
 
290 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 such thoughts, or even in more than partially entertaining them. 
 The Future alone belongs to us. Let us doubly and trebly struggle 
 to profit by that — turn that to double and treble account. Oh heav- 
 ens ! get on with thy * Cromwell.' 
 
 Tlie dissatisfaction of Carlyle with his own work, as long 
 as he was engaged upon it, is a continuous feature in his 
 (character. 'The "French Revolution" was worth notli- 
 iiig.' 'To have done with it' was the chief desire which 
 he had. 'To have done with it' was his chief desire 
 again now. 'To have done with it' was the yet more 
 passionate cry in the prolonged agony of ' Frederick.' The 
 art of composition was merely painful to him, so conscious 
 was he always of the distance between the fact as he could 
 represent it and the fact as it actually was. He could be 
 proud when he measured himself against other men ; but 
 his estimate of his merit, considered abstractedly, was 
 utterly low. His faults disgusted him ; his excellences he 
 could not recognise ; and when the work was done and 
 printed, he was surprised to find it so much better than he 
 had thought. 
 
 It is always so. The better a man is morally, the less 
 conscious he is of his virtues. The greater the artist, the 
 more aware he must be of his shortcomings. If excellence 
 is to be its own only reward, poor excellence is in a bad 
 way ; for the more there is of it, the less aware of itself it 
 is allowed toibe. There is and must be, however, a certain 
 comfort in the sense that a man is doing a right thing, if 
 not well, yet as well as he can. Flashes of this kind do 
 occasionally shine in among Carlyle's sad meditations. On 
 May 31 he reports to his mother: — 
 
 My book now goes along better or worse, though still far too 
 slowly. I am now, however, beginning to see above ground some 
 fruit of the unspeakable puddlings and welterings I had under- 
 ground. I do hope sometimes that I shall get the poor book done, 
 and that it will turn out to have been worth doing. Oliver Crom- 
 
Mrs. Carlyle, 291 
 
 well IS an actually pions, praying, God-fearing, Bible-reading man, 
 and struggles in the high places of the world before God and man 
 to do what he finds written in his Bible — an astonishing spectacle, 
 unexampled, altogether incredibl,^ to the beggarly Peel, Russell, 
 and company that have got the guidance of the world now, to all 
 our soiTows. If I can show Oliver as he is, I shall do a good turn ; 
 but it is terribly difficult to such an age as this is and has loDg 
 been. 
 
 There was to be no Scotland for Carlyle this year. The 
 starting with ' Cromwell ' had been so hard that he did 
 not mean to pause over it till it was done ; and an occa- 
 sional rest of a day or two at the houses of friends near 
 London was all that lie intended to allow himself. It 
 was his wife's turn to have a holiday. She had not been 
 in the North since she had lost her mother. All the last 
 summer had been spent with the workmen in Cheyne 
 Row. In autumn and winter she had been ill as usual 
 with coughs, sleeplessness, and nervous headaches. As 
 long as the cold weather lasted she liad not been well for 
 a single day, and only her indomitable spirit seemed to 
 keep her alive at all. She never complained — perhaps 
 fortunately — as with Carlyle to suffer in any way was to 
 complain loudly and immediately, and when complaint was 
 ahsent he never realised that there could be occasion for 
 it. Anyway she was now to have a holiday. She was to 
 go first to lier uncle at Liverpool, then to the Paulets at 
 Seaforth, then to stay with Geraldine Jewsbury at Man- 
 chester ; then, if she washed, to go to Scotland. She 
 was always economical, and travelled at smallest cost. 
 Money matters no longer, happil}^, required such narrow 
 attention as in former years. Her letters (or parts of 
 them) describing her adventures are published in the 
 ' Letters and Memorials.' Carlyle, busy as he was, made 
 time to write to her regularly, witli light affectionate 
 amusing sketches of his visitors or tlie news of tlie day ; 
 most particularly of the progress of the new acquaintance 
 
292 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 wliicli was to have so serious an influence on her own fli- 
 tui-e peace. ... Mr. and Lady Harriet Baring, whom 
 lie had met two years previously, were now both of them 
 becoming his intimate friends. From Mr. Baring ' there 
 are many letters preserved among Carlyle's papers. They 
 exhibit not only respect and esteem, but the strongest per- 
 sonal confidence and affection, which increased with fuller 
 knowledge, and ceased only with death. They show, too, 
 a fuller understanding of, and agreement with, Carlyle's 
 general views than are to be found in almost any of those 
 of his other correspondents. From Lady Harriet, too, 
 there are abundance of notes, terse, clear, and peremptory, 
 rather like the commands of a sovereign than the easy 
 communications of friendship. She was herself gifted, 
 witty, unconventional, seeing men and things much as 
 they were, and treating them accordingly. She recog- 
 nised the immense superiority of Carlyle to everyone else 
 who came about her. She admired his intellect ; she 
 delighted in his humour. He at first enjoyed the society 
 of a person who never bored him, who had a straight 
 eye, a keen tongue, a disdain of nonsense, a majestic arro- 
 gance. As they became more intimate, the great lady af- 
 fected his imagination. He was gratified at finding him- 
 self appreciated by a brilliant woman, who ruled supreme 
 over half of London society. She became Gloriana, 
 Queen of Fairyland, and he, with a true vein of chivalry 
 in him, became her rustic Red Cross Knight, who, if he 
 could, would have gladly led his own Una into the same 
 enchanting service. The ' Una,' unfortunately, had no in- 
 clination for such a distinguished bondage. The Barings 
 had a villa at Addiscombe, and during the London season 
 frequently escaped into the Surrey sunshine. Carlyle had 
 been invited to meet a distinguished party there. 
 
 1 Lord Ashburton afterwards. 
 
An Mjeiiing at Addisoomhe. 293 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle^ at Liverpool. 
 
 Chelsea : July 7, 1844 
 Yesterday I did go to the Barings, bnt I got home the same 
 night, which was an immense point. We were a truly sublime 
 party, as many as the table would hold. Lord Howick and his 
 wife. Earl Grey's son, a thin, lame man, turned of forty, looking 
 very weak of body, but earnest, clear, affectionate, and honest, 
 with good talent, too, for the spiritual part ; the Lady Howick, 
 a pale, aquiline, dark-eyed beauty, bleached white, who did not cap- 
 tivate me or estrange me ; the immortal old Lady Holland, really a 
 kind of Witch of the (Kensington) Alps, veiy impressive in her 
 way. She is terribly broken, poor old lady ! has a doctor, the 
 strangest little fellow I have seen, who did not speak one word, 
 good or bad, but seemed happy and perfect in the social gesticu- 
 hitions. Besides him, she canies with her a page, and an old 
 woman to nib her legs. These, with the natural et caeteras, al- 
 most fill a house of themselves. BuUer of course was there, as in 
 his home ; Stanley, too, again, but without his wife ; he and 
 others too tedious to mention. The gooseberries were ripe ; I 
 had a pocket of cigars, and other smokers to keep me company. 
 The day was soft, gi*ey, without rain : a temperature like silk. 
 The Lady Harriet is the most consummate of landladies, regard- 
 less of expense. Baring himself has radiances of real talent. He 
 is, I do think, a good, modest man. Tlie whole matter went off 
 with effect. It is really entertaining to me to be a part of such a 
 company now and then. Their ai*t in speech, more and more no- 
 ticeable gradually, is decidedly a thing to be considered valuable, 
 venerable. Real good breeding, as the people have it here, is one 
 of the finest things now going in the world. The careful avoid- 
 ance of all discussion, the swift hopping from topic to topic, does 
 not agree with me ; but the graceful skill they do it with is be- 
 yond that of minuets. 
 
 Among other subjects, we came over, pretty late in the evening, 
 upon Mazzini's letters. ' Brougham had been privately telling all 
 people in the Lords one day that Mazzini was a scamp after all, 
 that he once 'kept a gaming-house.' So Stanley reported, glad of 
 any stab to Brougham. The old stem Witch of the Ali)s there- 
 upon asked Lady Harriet what he really was, this Mazzini. * A 
 
 > Opened in the English Post Office, about which there was so loud a stir 
 in those years. 
 
294 Carlyl^s Life in London. 
 
 Kevolutionary man, the head of young Italy,' answered she. * Oh, 
 then, they surely ought to take him up,' rejoined the Witch. Our 
 adroit hostess hinted No, and that she herself knew him. * What ? ' 
 exclaimed the astonished Witch, with wide-open eyes. The other 
 persisted, with the gentlest touch of light irrefragability, ' had ac- 
 tually asked him to come and see her.' I added, addressing the 
 Witch, ' He is a man well worth seeing, and not at all si^ecially 
 anxious to be seen.' * And did he not keep a gaming-house ? ' said 
 she. ' He had never the faintest shadow of connection with that 
 side of human business,' said I. ' The proudest person in this 
 company is not farther above keeping a gaming-house than Maz- 
 zini is.' 'That means Byng ' (an absurd old curly-headed diner- 
 out whom they call Poodle Byng), said Buller, looking at the man, 
 upon which an explosion of laughter swallowed u^) my over-em- 
 phasis and the whole discussion in a lightly felicitous manner. 
 
 A certain Mr. Something (Kane, I think : really a very civil 
 official gentleman) volunteered to give me half his cab to Picca- 
 dilly — a blessed arrangement for me, for Mr. Kane and I smoked 
 in a very social manner all the way, and the drive did me great 
 good, so that to-day I am far less damaged than could have been 
 anticipated. 
 
 The fine society did not make Carljle forget his own 
 nearer attentions : — 
 
 July 13. 
 It is poor Goody's birthday when she reads this ; and one ought 
 to have said what the inner man sufficiently feels : that one is right 
 glad to see the brave little Goody with the mind's and the heart's 
 eye on such an occasion, and wishes and prays all good in this 
 world and in all worlds to one's poor Goody — a brave woman, and, 
 on the whole, a ' Necessary Evil ' ' to a man. And now, dearest, 
 here is a small gift, one of the smallest ever sent. Do not think it 
 cost me any trouble to buy the thing ; once fairly in the enterj^riso, 
 there was a real pleasure in going through with it. I tried haid 
 for a workbox, but there was none I could recommend to myseU" 
 I was forced to be content with a little jewel-box, and there, y( i 
 see, is the key. Blessings on thee with it ! I wish I had diamonds 
 to till the places with for my little wifie. I knew you had a jewoi- 
 box already, but this is a newer one, a far smaller one. Besido .. 
 I bought it very cunningly, and ' the lady, if she would liks any- 
 
 ^ Name by which he often laughingly described his wife. 
 
Evening Parties, 295 
 
 thing better, can at any time get it exchanged.' And so, dear 
 Goody, kiss me and take my good wishes. While I am here there 
 will never want one to wish thee all good. Adieu on the birthday, 
 and may the worst of our days be all done and the best still coming. 
 
 Thine evermore. 
 
 Tlie * sulphurous humour' lay close beside the tender, 
 very far from extinct, not even dormant. What Carlyiu 
 could least endure was being bored. The anathemas which 
 he heaped on unfortunate bores exceed Ernulphus's in 
 exquisite variety. He mentions soon after this that three 
 gentlemen from Edinburgh had called to see him, intro- 
 duced by some acquaintance from Haddington. He de- 
 scribes them as ' wretched duds,' ' a precious three to be 
 selected from all the populations of the world ; ' ' miser- 
 able snaffers full of animal magnetism, Free Kirk and 
 other rubbish.' He ' had doubts whether not to rise with 
 redhot oaths, and pack them all instantly into the street.' 
 He says ' he bit in his rage as best he could,' took his hat, 
 pretended business, ' and walked the three out instead of 
 kicking them out' ' One of Cavaignac's snorts was all 
 that he could give to such things.' ' That visit was the 
 beginning of sorrows to him.' Evening parties could not 
 be wholly escaped. He had been invited to one * at the 
 ColeridgesV where he expected an equal degree of suffer- 
 ing, ' half thought he would fall sick and stick to Crom- 
 well,' and V wished he was in Goody's pocket.' Luckily it 
 did not turn out quite so ill. ' Trench, Maurice, Boxall 
 the painter, and other shovel-hatted persons, male and 
 female, were there assembled ; ' but he met a daughter of 
 Southey, whom he was actually pleased to see, and Mr.- 
 Henry Coleridge also, * really a kind of Phantasmion, ii> 
 small, so delicate, pretty, and orthodox wise.' In the worst 
 extremities there was always the resource of Bath House. 
 
 Last night (he wrote on July 19) I called for Lady' Harriet. Tlie 
 usual Buller sate there apparently almost asleep in the * fever of 
 
296 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 digestion ' when I entered. The lady herself, in spite of her sick- 
 ness, is always brisk as a huntress. BuUer brightened np soon, 
 argued, talked with me, not to great purpose, but in a cheery, 
 rational manner, presided over by this divinity, and with one cup 
 of innocent black tea and a mouthful of polite human speech J. 
 came home little injured. Mazzini is authorised to call 'next 
 week some evening.' Poor victim! At a certain turn of the con- 
 versation I was asked to come out to Addiscombe next Sunday, 
 and could not for the moment find means of declining, but did in- 
 ternally decline, and must externally now send some note to that 
 eifect. It is very brilliant all at Addiscombe ; wealth in abun- 
 dance, ruled over by gi-ace in abundance ; but I — I — am bilious ; 
 I am busy — not equal to it for the present. 
 
 Some misgiving may have crossed Carlyle's mind that 
 too near an intimacy in these great circles might not be 
 profitable to him. As long as social distinctions survive, 
 an evenness of position is a condition of healthy friend- 
 ship ; and though genius is said to level artificial inequali- 
 ties, it creates inequalities of another kind, which rather 
 complicate the situation than simplify it. However this 
 may have been, hard work and the London heat tired him 
 out by the end of the summer. He was invited to stay at 
 the Grange, a beautiful place belonging to the Barings in 
 Hampshire, and as the visit was to be a short one he 
 went. Mrs. Baring's father, the Lord Ashburton of the 
 American Treaty, still lived and reigned there. He had 
 heard of Carlyle, and wished to make his acquaintance, 
 as his Transatlantic wife did also. The Grange, in Sep- 
 tember especially, was the perfection of an English 
 country palace. The habits of it did not suit Carlyle. He 
 was off his sleep, woke early, could get no breakfast till 
 ten, and no food but cigars and sunshine. . But the park 
 was beautiful, the riding delightful, ' the solitude and 
 silence divine.' He tried to be amused and happy, and 
 succeeded tolerably. 
 
First Visit to the Grange. 297 
 
 ..►i-^ The Grange: September 13, 1844. 
 
 We are a small party. Lady Ashburton is a surgeon patient at 
 present, a stripping off of the skin upon a carriage step, ill dealt 
 with for some days back. She lies in a back drawing-room, keeps 
 all the women about her all day, and we never see her till she is 
 wheeled in at night to tea. She seems very fond of talking to 
 me ; a fmnk, i-attling woman, with whom, perhaps, I shall grow to 
 do veiy well. Were it not for Lady Harriet, who is herself a host, 
 we should be ill oif for women. My chief resource at present is 
 the old Lord, a really good old man, of most solid, cheerful ways ; 
 fond of talking and being talked to above any rational thing. 
 
 September 14, 1844. 
 
 Alas ! if I could sleep, I might be very well here : but sleep 
 does not come, sleep flies ; and I have nights in which the vii-tue 
 of patience is very useful to me. I do study to keep patient. In 
 fact, there is something very soothing in the deep, dead silence, 
 broken only by the rare hooting of a poor owl, seemingly a mile 
 off, who appeared to be the only living thing awake beside myself. 
 I start generally in the morning with a dull headache, veiy stupid ; 
 but the breezy fresh air, and the constant motion they keep one in, 
 drive it away gi-adually, and I feel pretty well again. 
 
 We are not a brilliant party here ; nay, if it were not for the 
 Lady Hariiet and myself, we should be almost definable as a dull, 
 commoni)lace one. Buller is not yet come, but is confidently 
 expected to-night, and will be a welcome acquisition to us. Poodle 
 Byng's comjiauion was one Greville, an old ofiicial hack of quality 
 who runs racehorses, whom I have often enough seen before : 
 memorable as a man of tme aristocratic manner, without any 
 aristocratic endowment whatever — a Lais without the beauty. He 
 has Court gossip, political gossip, &c., and is civil to all pei-sons, 
 careless about all persons — equal nearly to zero. Lady Asliburton 
 improves upon one — a square, solid American woman, happily 
 without the accent ; but with the rugged go-ahead character of 
 that people. It is from her that your lover Baring takes his feat- 
 ures. The old Lord Ashburton, especially as he smokes, is my 
 favourite of all— a really good, solid, most cheery, sagacious, 
 simple-heai-ted old man. He takes me long walks to see his new 
 churches, his labourers* cottages, his old cedars and yew trees, 
 carries in his pocket cigare, and talks and is talked to. To finish 
 my description, I have only to say that our house is built like 'a 
 Grecian temple,* of two stories ; of immense extent, massive in 
 
298 Cai'lyle's Life in London. 
 
 appearance and fronting every way. The inteiior is by Inigo 
 Jones, with modern improvements. The rooms are full of exqui- 
 site pictures, and there is every convenience. 'All things that 
 were pleasant in life. But the all- wise, great Cre-a-a-tor, &c.' ' 
 
 While this new acquaintance was rising np into Carl yle's 
 sky, another was setting or had set. I^ews were waiting 
 for him when he returned to Cheyne Eow, which melted 
 the Grange and its grandeurs into bodiless vapour. John 
 Sterling was dead. Of all the friends whom Carlyle had 
 won to hhnself since he came to London, there was none 
 that he valued as he valued this one. Sterling had been 
 his spiritual pupil, his first, and also liis noblest and best. 
 Consumption had set its fatal mark npon him. His spirit 
 had risen against it and defied it. He had fled for life in 
 successive winters to Italy, to France, and then to Fal- 
 mouth and to Italy again. If not better, there had been 
 no sign that he was becoming definitely worse. He had 
 lately settled at Yentnor, in the Isle of Wight. He had 
 added to his house ; he had hoped, as his friends had 
 hoped before for him, that years of useful energy might 
 still be granted to him. It seemed impossible that a soul 
 so gifted, so brilliant, so generous, should have been sent 
 upon the earth merely to show how richly it had been en- 
 dowed, and to pass away while its promise was but half 
 fulfilled. But in this past summer he had been visibly 
 declining. To himself, if to no one else, it had become 
 sternly certain that the end was now near ; and on August 
 10 he had written the letter of farewell, printed by Car- 
 lyle in his lost friend's biography, which I am therefore at 
 liberty to transfer to these pages. 
 
 To T. Carlyle. 
 
 Ventnor ; August 10, 1844. 
 My dear Carlyle, — For the first time for many months it seems 
 possible to send you a few words ; merely, however, for lemem- 
 
 » See Letters and Memorials, vol. i. p. 160. 
 
Death of John Sterling. 299 
 
 brance and farewell. On higher matters there is nothing to say. 
 I tread the common road into the great darkness, without any 
 thought of fear, and with veiy much of hope. Certainty, indctnl, 
 I have none. With regard to you and me, I cannot begin to wiite, 
 having nothing for it but to keep shut the lid of those secrets with 
 all the iron weights that are in my power. Towards me, it is still 
 more true than towards England, that no man has been and done 
 like you. Heaven bless you! If I can lend a hand when tlic:o, 
 that will not be wanting. It is all veiy stmnge, but not a hun- 
 dredth part so sad as it seems to the standers-by. Your wife knows 
 my mind towaids her, and will believe it without asseveration. 
 
 Yours to the last, 
 
 John Sterling. 
 
 Sterling lingered for six weeks after writing this, lie 
 had been apparently dying more than once already, and 
 yet had rallied. Carlyle conld not believe that he was to 
 lose hira, and hoped that it might be so again. But it 
 was not so to be. On September 18, within a day of Car- 
 lyle's return from the Grange, his friend was dead. 
 
CHAPTEE XIII. 
 
 A.D. 1845. MT. 50. 
 
 Slimmer in London — Mrs. Carlyle in Liverpool — Completion of 
 ' Cromwell ' — Remarks upon it— Effect of Cromwell's history 
 on Carlyle's mind — Rights of majorities — Right and might — 
 Reception by the world — Visit to the Barings— Lady Haniet 
 and Mrs. Carlyle — Letter to Sir Robert Peel — Meditations. 
 
 Sterling's death was the severest shock which Carlyle had 
 yet experienced. Perliaps the presence of a real sorrow 
 saved liim from fretting over the smaller troubles of life. 
 He threw hiinself the more determinately into his work. 
 All the remainder of this year and all the next till the 
 close of the summer he stayed at home, as far as possible 
 alone, and seeing few friends in London except the Bar- 
 ings. His wife had been improved by her excursion. She 
 had been moderately well since her return. Strong she 
 never was ; but for her the season had been a fair one. 
 In July 1845, the end of ' Cromwell ' was coming definitely 
 in sight. She could be spared at home, and went off again 
 to her relations at Liverpool. Carlyle had another horse 
 — ' Black Duncan ' this one was called. He rode daily, and 
 sent regular bulletins to his 'Necessary Evil' — many, 
 through haste, undated. The Barings were still his chief 
 resource outside his serious occupations. 
 
 Chelsea: July 27, 1845. 
 
 Visit to Addiscombe— not the very best of joys ; but one ought 
 
 to be content with it. I had a great deal of talk with Everett, the 
 
 American Ambassador, who surprises me much, as a thorough 
 
 drawling Yankee in manner, yet with intelligence and real gentle- 
 
Progress with * Cromwell? 301 
 
 manhood looking through it. Senior, seeing me there, came up 
 in the most cordial manner to shake hands, and we even had a 
 quantity of smoking together and philosophical discoursing to- 
 gether — by motion of his — with unbated aversion of mine. Peace 
 to him I 
 
 August 1. 1S45. 
 
 Thy blight little missives are a real consolation to me in my 
 solitude here — a solitaiy wrestle with the blockheadisms. That is 
 what I have just now, and there is need of some consolation at 
 times if it could be had. 
 
 The leech ' is very well. I went and saw it this morning ; it has 
 an allowance of fresh water every day, and comj^lains of nothing, 
 lying all glued together at the top of the glass (the little villain), 
 and leading a very quiet life of it, never even asking what is taxes ? 
 Wednesday proved wet — no riding possible. Walked up to Bar- 
 ingdom in the evening. The poor lady had cold ; was sitting with 
 a fire — even she : we are all as cold here as you are in Lancashire. 
 Yesternight had a gi*and ride over in SuiTey ; took the conceit out 
 of Duncan ; made him gallop at discretion till quite tame. Did 
 my own wearied self some good by the job. After that, while at 
 tea, Thackeray. 
 
 August 1. 
 
 Just now I have finished copying the last letter of Oliver's. I 
 will tiy hard yet to be through the original stuff this week. There 
 will then be a conclusion of some kind to do ; an index to set 
 going. After which I am off iw's Frele. Ay de mi ! The merits 
 of yoiu* letters are mirrored in a very fair glass when it is I that 
 read them, and if I call them • bits of letters ' (she had laughingly 
 resented that expression of his), it is perhaps all the better for 
 them from a soul so sulky, so dispirited, dead and buried, as mine 
 now is, in this honid business of mine. Courage ! courage ! it 
 will be done soon, and then perhaps better days will covie. 
 
 Angnst. 
 This place is getting very empty. Last night I came accident- 
 ally jn the Kensington (hardens band. Their retinue of park 
 lorses has dwindled to mei*e nothing, a thing you could ride 
 without diflSculty through the middle of. It is astonishing what 
 real pity I do feel for these poor squires and squires' daughters, 
 all parading about in such places. Good heavens ! and is this 
 
 ' One of Mrs. Carlyle'B singular pets, of which her husband had charge in 
 her absence. 
 
302 Carlyle^s Life in London, 
 
 what you call the flower of life : and age, and darkness, and the 
 grand Perhaps lying close in the rear of it — ' Damn ye, be wae for 
 yonrsel'." So I am too ; and will now run and put on my riding 
 clothes — just three minutes for it. Adieu. Ever your affection- 
 ate, bad T. C. 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle had fallen in at Liverpool with a Uni- 
 tarian clergyman named J. M., witii whom she had con- 
 versed on serious matters with considerable interest.^ 
 JVI. had seemed to her to be inclined to leave his Uni- 
 tarianism and to become a pupil of Carlyle. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle, 
 
 Chelsea : August 8, 1845. 
 
 "What did M say to you? It was a great thing in him to 
 
 quote me in his preaching ; but, like the deacon of the weavers at 
 Dumfries, one must exclaim, ' Oh, gentlemen, remember that I am 
 but a man.' Thursday night, after a day of thunder, I had my 
 longest ride since you heard last, far out towards Harrow. As I 
 turned homewards there rose visible from the big beautiful Baby- 
 lon a tree of smoke, which said very plainly, ' Here is a house on 
 fire.' It grew and grew, till it covered whole fields of air. I 
 never in any ride saw a more impressive object, seeming to say 
 with a tragical tone of reproach, * Wilt thou take me for inctu- 
 resque? I am the blazing furniture of terrified, distracted men 
 and women.' Phew ! 
 
 August. 
 
 Harvest is a month too late ; wiU hardly fail therefore to be 
 bad ; and if the railway bubble burst at the same time, as is like- 
 liest, there will be a precious winter for the poor operatives again, 
 and those that have charge of them. The naked, beggarly greed 
 and mammon-worship of this generation is soiTowfully apparent 
 at present ; and I confess sometimes I do not care if their ' wealtli ' 
 and all the greasy adjuncts of it were actually to take wings and 
 fly away. I think we might have a less detestable existence with- 
 out it ; a chance for a less fated life-element than this. 
 
 Good be with thee, dear little Goody mine. * We clamb the 
 hill together' in a very thorny but not paltry way. Now let us 
 
 J See Letters and Memorials, vol. i. p. 245, &c. I may as well say that 
 initial letters are not to be relied upon, as 1 frequently change them. 
 
Literature and Action. 303 
 
 sit and look around a little. We shall have * to totter down ' also ; 
 but ' hand in hand we'll go.' 
 
 Adieu, dear Jeannie, T. C. 
 
 August 18. 
 Beally, I begin almost to pity poor J. M. The lot of a poor 
 man, of so many poor men, doomed to twaddle all their lives in 
 Socinian jargon, and look at this Divine Universe through dis- 
 tracted, despicable Jew Greek spectacles, and a whole Monmouth 
 Street of ♦ Old Cloe,' seems to me very sad. . . . The last speetli 
 of Oliver's is faiily ready for printing. Not a line of his now re- 
 mains, thank Heaven ! I have now only to have him die, and then 
 to wind up in the briefest endurable way. I say to myself, why 
 should not, for instance, the^rs^ of September actually see me free 
 of the job altogether, and ready for the road somewhither ? Wo 
 will try. As a preliminary I have started to-day by — a blue pill 
 and castor. Oh heavens! But I suppose it was the most, judi- 
 cious stej) of all. 
 
 Augr.st21. 
 
 I know not if you mean to take Egypt's advice [I do no. know 
 the pei"son alluded to], and write some book. I have often said 
 you might, with successful effect ; but the impulse, the necessity, 
 has mainly to come from within. It is a poor trade othenvlse, so 
 we will be content with Goody whether she ever comes to ;i book 
 or not. One way or other, all the light, and order, and energy, and 
 genuine Thntkraft or available virtue we had, does come out of us, 
 and goes very infallibly into God's Treasury, living and working 
 through eternities there — very infallibly, whether the morning 
 papers say much about it or say nothing ; whether the wagers wo 
 get be more or less ! We are not lost ; not a solitary atom of us 
 —of one of us. When I think of our Oliver Cromwell and of the 
 father of a Burns and other such phenomena, I am very indifTerent 
 on the book side. Greater, I often think, is he that can hold his 
 peace, that can (h his bit of light, instead of speaking it. . . . 
 Eheu ! what a business is the society of Adam's posterity b(H-om- 
 ing for me— a considerable of a bm-e for most part. Helps walked 
 home to the door with me last night. We saw Green, the aero- 
 naut, just get aloft from Vauxhall, throwing out all manner of 
 fireworks, red, green, and indigo-coloured stars, and transit ory 
 milky ways, the best he could, poor devil ! He was hanging a 
 goodish way up in the air, quite invisible except by a cluster of 
 confused fireworks, which looked very small in the great waste 
 
304 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 deep of things, and did not last above half a minute in all. No 
 paltrier phenomenon was ever contrived for the solacement of hu- 
 man souls. I figured the wretched mortal sailing through the 
 chill, clear moonshiny night, destitute of any object now, and with 
 peril of his life, for the sake of keeping his life in, and had a real 
 pitj for him. I am very dark as to the extreme closing uj) of 
 ' Cromwell,' but it seems to me as if it lay quite close at hand — 
 some one bright day, all that was needed for it — perhax^s to-mor- 
 row. Keally, I am quite near it. 
 
 August 23. 
 
 Do not seduce poor J. M. from his Unitarian manger, poor fel- 
 low ! I do not in the least want proselytes. Ach Gott I no ! 
 "What is the use of them ? And for himself it might cut olf the 
 very staff of bread. Let him hang on there till the rope of itself 
 gives way with him. 
 
 You will be sure to see me if you continue staying where you 
 are — my one fixed element of a plan is to go to Annandale, and 
 the way thither leads me through Lancashire. I could also be a 
 very pretty guest at Seaforth, I too for a few days, and be happy 
 and much liked, if the devil of sleeplessness and indigestion did 
 not mark me for a peculiar man. I do hope to have done all my 
 Oliver writing, good heavens ! the day after to-morrow. 
 
 Fuz (John Forster) came here the night before last, talked long, 
 or was talked to, really not in a quite distracted manner, and pas- 
 sionately solicited and thankfully received your address. They — • 
 Dickens, he, and a squad of that sort — have decided to act a play 
 at one of the small theatres, private, to five hundred friends. It 
 is actually to be on the 21st of next month, and it is an immense 
 feature of it to Fuz that you are to be there. The excellent Fuz ! 
 
 August 26. 
 I have this moment ended Oliver ; hang it ! He is ended, 
 thrums and all. I have nothing more to write on the subject, 
 only mountains of wreck to bum. Not (any more) up to the chin 
 in paper clippings and chaotic litter, hatefuUer to me than most. 
 I am to have a swept floor now again. 
 
 Thus was finished the first edition of the ' Letters and 
 Speeches of Oliver Cromwell' — the first edition — for other 
 letters, other material of various kinds, came afterwai-ds 
 and had to be woven in with the rest ; but essentially the 
 
Coinjpletion of * CromweU.^ 305 
 
 thing was done on which Carlyle had been labouring for 
 ^WQ years ; and a few words may now be given to it. 
 
 This book is, in my opinion, by far the most important 
 contribution to English history, which has been made in 
 the present century. Carlyle was the first to break the 
 crust which has overlaid the subject of Cromwell since 
 the Ilestoration, and to make Cromwell and Cromwell's 
 age again intelligible to mankind. Anyone who will read 
 what was written about him before Carlyle's work ap- 
 ]xjared, and what has been written since, will perceive 
 how great was the achievement. The entluisiast, led 
 away by ambition, and degenerating into the hypocrite, 
 the received figure of the established legend, is gone for 
 ever. We may retain each our own opinion about Crom- 
 well, we may think that he did well or that he did ill, that 
 he was wise or unwise ; but we see the real man. We 
 can entertain no shadow of doubt about the genuineness 
 of the portrait; and, with the clear sight of Oliver him- 
 self, we have a new conception of the Civil War and of its 
 consequences. The book itself carries marks of the diffi- 
 culty with which it was written. It has no clear continu- 
 ity ; large gaps are left in the story. Contrary to his own 
 rule, that the historian should confine himself to the facts, 
 with the minimum of commentary, Carlyle breaks in re- 
 peatedly in his own person, pats his friends upon the 
 back, expands, applauds, criticises to an extent which most 
 readers would wish more limited. This, however, is to 
 be remembered, that he was reproducing letters and 
 speeches, of which both the thought and the language 
 were obsolete — obsolete, or worse than obsolete, for most 
 of it had degenerated into cant, insincere in everyone who 
 uses such expressions now, and therefore suggesting insin- 
 cerity in those who used them then. Perhaps he allowed 
 too little for our ability to think for ourselves. But he 
 had seen how fatally through this particular cause the 
 Vol. IIL— 20 
 
306 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 character of the Commonwealth leaders had been ob- 
 scured, and, if he erred at all, he erred on the right side. 
 It is his supreme merit that he first understood the 
 speeches made by Cromwell in Parliament, and enabled 
 us to understand them. Printed as they had hitherto 
 been, they could only confirm the impression, either that 
 the Protector's own mind was hopelessly confused, or that 
 he purposely concealed what was in it. Carlyle has 
 shown that they were perfectly genuine speeches, not elo- 
 quent, as modern parliamentary speeches are, or aspire to 
 be thought; but the faithful expressions of a most real 
 and determined meaning, about which those who listened 
 to him could have been left in no doubt at all. Such a 
 feat was nothing less than extraordinary. It w^as not a 
 'whitewashing,' as attempts of this kind are often scorn- 
 fully and sometimes deservedly called. It was the recov- 
 ery of a true human figure of immense historical conse- 
 quence from below two centuries of accumulated slander 
 and misconception, and the work was completely done. 
 No hammering or criticising has produced the least effect 
 upon it. There once more Cromwell stands actually be- 
 fore us, and henceforth will stand, as he was when he 
 lived upon the earth. He may be loved or he may be 
 hated, as he w^as both loved and hated in his own time ; 
 but we shall lov^eor hate the man himself, not a shadow 
 or a caricature any more. 
 
 Detailed criticism of the book, or of any part of it, 
 would be out of place in a biography, and I shall not at- 
 tempt such a thing. I may mention, however, what Car- 
 lyle told me of the effect upon his own mind of his long 
 study of the Commonwealth and its fortunes. 
 
 Many persons still believe that, if the army had not 
 pushed the quarrel to extremities, if the ' unpurged ' Par- 
 liament had been allowed to complete its treaty with the 
 King, the constitutional fruits of the struggle might have 
 
Conipleiloii of * CromwelV 307 
 
 been secured more completely than they actually were; 
 that the violent reaction would never have taken place 
 which was provoked by the King's execution ; that the 
 Church of England coyld and would have then been com- 
 pletely reformed and made Protestant in form and sub- 
 stance ; the pseudo-Catholicism — Episcopacy, Liturgy, and 
 Ritual — which has wrought us all so much woe being 
 swept clean from off the stage. 
 
 Speculations on what might have been are easy. We 
 see what actually happened ; what would have happened 
 we can only guess. Charles, it is certain, was false — how 
 false is now only completely known when the secret nego- 
 tiations of himself and the Queen with the Catholic 
 Powers have been brought to light. No promises which 
 he had made would have bound him one moment beyond 
 the time when he could safely break them ; nor could any- 
 one say what the composition of a new House of Com- 
 mons might be after the next election. Taking the coun- 
 try through, the Royalists and the Moderates together 
 were in the majority in point of numbers, and Cromwell's 
 conclusion was that, so far as religion was concerned, the 
 cause for which he and the army had fought would be ut- 
 terly lost if the treaty was carried out. Wearied England, 
 satisfied with having secured control of the purse-strings, 
 would hand over the sour fanatics to Charles's revenge. 
 Carlyle was satisfied that Cromwell was right, and he 
 drew from it a general inference of the incapacity of a 
 popular assembly to guide successfully and permanently 
 the destinies of this or any other country. Ko such body 
 of men was ever seen gathered together in national coun- 
 cil as those who constituted the Long Parliament. They 
 were the pick and flower of God-fearing England, men of 
 sovereign ability, of the purest patriotism — a senate of 
 kings. If they failed, if they had to be prevented by 
 armed force from destroying themselves and the interests 
 
308 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 committed to them, no other Parliament here or anywhere 
 was likely to do better. Any pilot or conncil of pilots 
 might answer, with smooth water and fair winds; but 
 Parliaments, when circumstances were critical, could only 
 talk, as their name denoted. Their resolutions would be 
 half-hearted, their action a compromise between conflict- 
 ing opinions, and therefore uncertain, inadequate, alter- 
 nately rash or feeble, certain to end in disaster at all criti- 
 cal times when a clear eye and a firm hand was needed at 
 the helm. 
 
 This was one inference which Carlyle drew. Anotlier 
 was on the rights of so-called ' majorities.' He had been 
 bred a Radical, and a Radical he remained to the last, in 
 the sense that he believed the entire existing form of hu- 
 man society, with its extremes of poverty and wealth, to 
 be an accursed thing, which Providence would not allow 
 to endure. He had been on the side of Catholic eman- 
 cipation, hoping that the wretched Irish peasantry might 
 get some justice by it. He had welcomed the Reform 
 Bill, imagining it to mean that England was looking in 
 earnest for her wisest men, and would give them power to 
 mend what was amiss. He had found, as he said, that it 
 was but the burning off the dry edges of the straw on the 
 dunghill ; that the huge, damp, putrid mass remained rot- 
 ting where it was, and thus would remain, for anything 
 that an extended suffrage would do to cure it. No result 
 had come of the Reform Bill that he could care for. The 
 thing needed was wisdom. Parliaments reflected the 
 character of those who returned them. The lower the 
 franchise, the less wisdom you were likely to find ; and 
 after each change in that direction the Parliament returned 
 was less fit, not more fit, than its predecessor. In politics 
 as in all else, Carlyle insisted always that there was a 7nght 
 way of doing things and a wrong way ; that by following 
 the ri^ht way alone could any good end be arrived at ; and 
 
Political Conclusions, ,309 
 
 that it was as foolish to suppose that the I'igJU way of 
 managing the affairs of a nation could be ascertained by a 
 majority of votes, as the right way of discovering the lon- 
 gitude, of cultivating the soil, of healing diseases, or of 
 exercising any one of the million arts on which our exist- 
 ence and welfare depend. 
 
 This conclusion he had arrived at, ever since he had seen 
 what came and did not come of the Ileform Bill of 1832 ; 
 and it had prevented him from interesting himself in con- 
 temporary politics. But Cromwell's history had shown 
 him that the right way had other means of asserting itself 
 besides oratory and ballot-boxes and polling booths. The 
 world was so constructed that the strongest, whether they 
 were more or fewer, were the constituted rulers of this 
 world. It must be so, unless the gods inteifered, because 
 there was no appeal. If one man was stronger than all 
 the rest of mankind combined, he would rule all mankind. 
 They would be unable to help themselves. But the world 
 was also so constructed, owing to the nature of the Maker 
 of it, that superior strength was found in the long run to 
 lie with those who had the right on their side. A good 
 cause gave most valour to its defenders ; and it was from 
 this, and this alone, the supi-emacy of good over evil was 
 maintained. liight-minded men would bear nmch rather 
 than disturb existing arrangements — would submit to kings, 
 to aristocracies, to majorities, as long as submission was 
 possible ; but, if driven to the alternative of seeing all that 
 they valued perish or trying other methods, they would 
 prove that, though they might be outvoted in the count of 
 heads, they were not outvoted in the court of destiny. 
 Superior justice in the cause made superior men — men 
 who would make it good in spite of numbers. The best 
 were the strongest, and so in the end would always prove, 
 * considering who had made them strong.' Behind all con- 
 stitutions, never so popular, lay an ultimate appeal to force. 
 
310 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 Majorities, as such, had no more i-ight to rule than kings, 
 or nobles, or any other persons or groups of persons, to 
 whom circmnstances might have given temporary power. 
 Tlie right to rule lay with those who were right in mind 
 and heart, whenever they chose to assert themselves. If 
 they tried and failed, it proved only tliat they were not 
 right enough at that particular time. But, in fact, no 
 lionest effort ever did fail ; it bore its part in the eventual 
 settlement. The strong thing, in the main, was the right 
 thing, because the w-orld w^as not the Devil's ; and the final 
 issue would be found to prove it whenever the question 
 Avas raised. Society w^as in a healthy condition only when 
 authority was in the hands of those most fit to exercise it. 
 As long as kings and nobles were kings and nobles indeed, 
 superior in heart and cliaracter, the people willingly sub- 
 mitted to them, and gave them strength by their own sup- 
 port. When they forgot the meaning of their position, 
 lived for ambition and pleasure, and so ceased to be su- 
 perior, their strength passed from them, and wdth their 
 strength their authority. That was what happened, and 
 Avas happening still, in England. There being no longer 
 any superiority of class over class, the integers of society 
 were falling into anarchy, and, to avoid quarrelling, might 
 'agree for a time to decide their differences by a majority 
 of votes ; but it could be but for a time only, imless all 
 that was great and noble in humanity was to disappear for 
 ever ; for the good and the wise were few, and the selfish 
 and the ignorant were many ; the many would choose to 
 represent them men like themselves, not men superior 
 to themselves ; and, under pain of destruction, it was in- 
 dispensable that means must be found by which the good 
 and wise should be brought to the front, and not the 
 others. [Mature had her means of doing it, and in ex- 
 tremity w^ould not fail to use them. 
 
 In some such frame of mind Carlyle was left after he 
 
Retreat at Scotshriy. 311 
 
 had finished his * Cromwell.' I have de8cril>ed in my own 
 words what, in his abrupt and scornful dialect, he often 
 expressed to me. He was never a Conservative, for he 
 recognised that, unless there was a change, impossible ex- 
 cept by miracle, in the habits and character of the wealthy 
 classes, the gods themselves could not save them. But 
 the Radical creed of liberty, equality, and government by 
 majority of votes, he considered the most absurd super- 
 stition which had ever bewitched the human imaofina- 
 tion — at least, outside Africa. 
 
 Cromwell thus disposed of, he was off for Scotland, 
 * wishing,' as he said, to be amiable, but dreadfully bilious, 
 and almost sick of his life, if there were not hopes of im- 
 provement. He joined his wife at Seaforth, stayed a day 
 or two with the Paulets there, and then, leaving Mrs. 
 Carlyle to return and take care of the house in Cheyne 
 How, he made his way on by the usnal sea route to Annan 
 and Scotsbrig. 
 
 His letters, now that he had leisure, became free and 
 ample again, no reaction after exertion having this time 
 set in. He was, for him, happy, relieved of his long bur- 
 den ; his Journal, which contains chiefly a record of his 
 sorrows, was left untouched. His complaints, such as 
 they were, had reasonable external causes. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle^ Chelsea. 
 
 Scotsbrig : September 13, 1845. 
 My poor Goody is wliirliii<^ away southward, while I sit here 
 giving her some note of my arrival northward. "We are strangely 
 shovelled to and fro in this much too locomotive world. It was 
 ihove an hour after you left me before our steamship got its tu- 
 i.nlt consummated and hauled itself out of harbour. In my life 
 I have seen few more distressing and disgusting uproars ; indeed, 
 the whole voyage surpassed in discomfort for me any piece of 
 travelling I have executed for yeai*s. .We saw very near at hand 
 the Vanity Fair of Livei*pool : cockneys in full action near the 
 Bock, tents on the sand, swings and whirligigs were very evident ; 
 
312 Carlyleh Life in London. 
 
 squealing of fiddles, popping of ginger-beer corks were too con- 
 ceivable. Hudson, our captain, was engaged in clapping hand- 
 cuffs on a diTinken drover who had proved quarrelsome. One of 
 my fellow-passengers in the cabin proved to be that big Thomson, 
 the cattle-dealer, who once called at Chelsea with Macqueen ; ^ 
 grown several stones hea^der, faced like Silenus, full of dock Eng- 
 lish and familiarity, of which the thought was horrible to me. 
 By him my honoured name was imparted to the ship's company in 
 general, and I had the strangest addresses, free and easy as in the 
 Age of Gold. My difficulty not to break into sheer vocal execra- 
 tion was considerable. Then the slaeping-rooms ! — but I will talk 
 no more of it. I do not think a more brutal element of human sav- 
 agery could have been- found in any part of British land or water. 
 About half-past seven next morning I was right glad to see Jamie 
 waiting for me at the jetty. We got to Scotsbrig before ten, and 
 Jenny and my mother had some tea for me ; and I have glided 
 about ever since, or lain on beds or chairs when I could get it 
 done, very much in the humour (as I fancy it) of Jonah when he 
 found himself vomited from the whale's belly — exceedingly con- 
 fused and uncertain what his movements ought to be. 
 
 At midday I walked with my mother to the moor. It was really 
 as if Pan slept. The sun and sky were bright as silver ; the seas 
 and hills lay round, and noise of all kinds had entirely hushed 
 itself, as if the whole thing had been a picture or a dream, which, 
 in fact, the philosophers tell us it properly is. Nothing can ex- 
 ceed my mother's gratitude to you — your two letters themselves 
 had given wonderful delight. Most of them, I think, are committed 
 to memory — have committed themselves on repeated perusals [italics 
 minej. It is worth while to write now and then on such terms. 
 
 ' The mother ' was now fast growing weaker. She 
 brightened up at letters from her dangliter-in-law, or on 
 visits from her ilhistrious son, whom all the world was 
 talking of ; but ' all had grown old ' about her, except her 
 affection, which seemed younger than ever. Carlyle, while 
 at Scotsbrig, was her constant companion, drove her about 
 in the old gig, carried her down to see his sister Mary at 
 Annan, or his sister Jean at Dumfries ; and so the days 
 passed on with autumnal composure, sad but not unhappy. 
 
 » Life of Carlyle — First Forty Years, vol, ii." p. 365. 
 
Betreat at Scotah^ig. 313 
 
 Now and then troublesome proof-slieets came, wliich 
 would stir the bile a little. But he kept himself patient, 
 found ' days of humiliation and retlection ' extremely use- 
 ful to him, and grumbled little. ' All work,' he said, ' if 
 it be nobly done, is about alike: really so — one has no re- 
 ward out of it except even that same. The spirit it was 
 done in, that is blessed or that is accursed — that is all.' 
 The world was saying that he was a great man. He did 
 not believe it. Mrs. Paulet had written some wildly flat- 
 tering letter, calling him ' the greatest man in Europe.' 
 * Good heavens ! ' he said of this ; * he feels himself in 
 general almost the smallest man in Annandale ; being 
 very bilious, confused, and sleepless ; let him never trouble 
 himself what magnitude he is of.' ' As to his deserts, he 
 deserved, if it came to that, to be in purgatory.' In one 
 of his letters he described a long, late, solitary walk. 
 
 I passed through old localities like a ghost, and very much in 
 the humour of one ; past the Pennersaughs Churchyard, where my 
 grandfather and great-gmndfather (the farthest ancestor I can 
 name) lie buried ; past Mein Bridge, where I have burned whins 
 and done exploits in fishing eels and in other things. Ay de mi I 
 it was better than many sermons, sweet though sad. 
 
 Men of genius who make a mark themselves in liter- 
 ature, in art or science, or in any way which brings their 
 name before the Avorld, find ready admittance into the 
 higher social circles ; but the entree is granted less readily 
 to their wives and daughters. Where this arrangement is 
 allowed, the feeling on both sides is a vulgar one ; the 
 great lady is desirous merely that a person who is talked 
 about shall be seen in her reception rooms, and is not anx- 
 ious to burden herself with an acquaintance with his infe- 
 rior connections. The gifted individual is vain of appear- 
 ing in the list of guests at aristocratic mansions, and is 
 careless of the slight upon his family. The Barings were 
 infinitely supertor to paltry distinctions of this kind, nor 
 
314 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 would Carlyle have cared for their acquaintance if they 
 had not been. He was far too proud in himself, and he 
 had too high a respect for his wife, to visit in lordly sa- 
 loons where she would be unwelcome. Mr. Baring had 
 called on Mrs. Carlyle, had seen her often, and had cordi- 
 ally admired her. With Lady Harriet, though they had 
 probably met, there had not yet been an opportunity of 
 intimacy ; but Carlyle was most anxious that his wife, too, 
 should be appreciated as she deserved to be by a lady 
 whom he himself so much admired. Mrs. Buller, an ex- 
 perienced woman of the world, who knew both Lady Har- 
 riet and Mrs. Carlyle, was convinced that they would not 
 suit each other, and that no good would come from an at- 
 tempt to bring them into close connection. To Carlyle 
 Mrs. BuUer's forebodings seemed absurd. With all his 
 knowledge, he was innocent of insight into the subtleties 
 of women's feelings, and it w^as with unmixed pleasure 
 that he heard of a visit of his wife to Bath House on her 
 own account, soon after her return. 
 
 I am very glad (he said) . There is nothing to hinder you, in 
 spite of Mrs. Buller's prediction, to get on very well there, I 
 should hope. Persons of sense, with no tale-bearers or other piece 
 of concrete insanity between them, can get on very well. The 
 Lady Harriet has a genius for ruling. Well ! I don't know but 
 she may ; and, on the whole, did you ever see any lady that had 
 not some slight touch of a genius that way, my Goodikin ? I know 
 a lady — but I will say nothing, lest I bring mischief about my ears 
 — nay, she is very obedient, too, that little lady I allude to, and 
 has a genius for being ruled withal. Heaven bless her always ! 
 Not a bad little dame at all. She and I did aye veiy weel to- 
 gether ; and ' 'tweel, it was not every one that could have done 
 with her.* 
 
 The first impressions had apparently been favourable on 
 both sides. Mrs. Carlyle wrote brightly to him both 
 about the Bath House affair and everything else. Her 
 letters during his absence were exceptionally lively and en- 
 
New Plans. 313 
 
 tertaining. The reader of the ' Letters and Memorials" 
 will remember her adventures with the dog next door and 
 the whisky bottle which had obtained its silence. Carlyle 
 was enchanted with her, most especially because at Scots- 
 brig he was suffering from a similar cause. 
 
 That dog (he says) was more or less the soitow of my life all the 
 time you were away, though I said nothing of it. Bow-wow-wow 
 at all houi-s of the day, especially at night when one was shut in. 
 Never was bottle of whisky better bestowed if it quiet the dam- 
 nable brute even for a month or two. Alas ! one cannot get much 
 quiet in this world. Here in mornings when one awakes before 
 five there is a combination of noises, the arithmetical catalogue of 
 which might interest a mind of sensibility — cocks, pigs, calves, 
 dogs, clogs of women's feet, creaking of door-hinges, masons break- 
 ing whinstone, and carts loading stones. But I have learnt to care 
 nothing about it. I think it is a law of Nature, and are not they 
 poor brothers and sisters — poor old mothers, too, toiling away in 
 the midst of it ? Once or twice I have fallen asleep in the midst 
 of the whole concert of discords. We shall be quiet one day. 
 The destinies, I think, do mean that at least for us. 
 
 * Cromwell ' done with, he was beginning to consider to 
 what next he should put his hand, and ' Frederick the 
 Great' was already hanging before him as a possibility. 
 He had read Preuss's book in the year preceding. He 
 was now meditating an expedition to Berlin to learn more 
 about this ' greatest of modern men.' His stay in Scot- 
 land was to be short. After a fortnight of it he was 
 thinking about his return. How it was to be was the 
 question. The railway from London only reached to Pres- 
 ton, and the alternative was equally horrible — the coach 
 from Carlisle thither or the steamer to Liverpool. One 
 day he thought he would go * to the whale ' again, and 
 say to it, ' Swallow me at once,' * thou doest it at once.' 
 The whale ultimately proved the least desirable of the 
 various monstei's. He chose the coach, and was at home 
 again just when 'Cromwell' was appearing. 
 
 » VoL L p. 360. 
 
316 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 The reception of it was, as might be expected, in the 
 highest degree favourable. There was little to offend, and 
 everyone was ready to welcome a fair picture of the great 
 Protector. The sale w^as rapid, and after a few months, as 
 the hiterest grew, fresh materials were contributed from 
 unexpected quarters, to be added in new editions. For 
 the moment, liowever, Carlyle was left idle. He came 
 back to find literally that he had nothing to do. ' Fred- 
 erick ' was still but a thought, and of all conditions that 
 of want of occupation was what he was least fitted to en- 
 dure. Fie had drawn his breath when he ended his work 
 in September. He had felt idyllic. Fie and his poor 
 w^fe had climbed the hill together by a tliorny road. He 
 had arrived at the height of his fame. He was admired, 
 praised, and honoured by all England and America ; noth- 
 ing, he said, could now be more natural than that they should 
 sit still and look round them a little in quiet. Quiet, unhap- 
 pily, was the one thing impossible. He admired quiet as 
 he admired silence, only theoretically. Work was life to 
 him. Idleness was torture. The cushion on which he 
 tried to sit still was set with spines. Mrs. Carlyle says 
 briefly that after he came back ' she was kept in a sort of 
 worry.' The remedy which was tried was worse than the 
 disease. Mr. Baring and Lady Harriet invited them both 
 for a long visit to Bay House, near Alverstoke in Hamp- 
 shire. They went in the middle of N^ovember and re- 
 mained till the end of the year. Carlyle, to some moder- 
 ate extent, seems to have enjoyed himself — certainly his 
 wife did not. 
 
 During the middle of their stay he wrote to his 
 brother : — 
 
 December 1. 1845. 
 We live here i±i the most complete state of Do-nothingism that 
 I have ever in my life had experience of. The day goes along in 
 consulting how the day shall go. For most part I snatch an ef- 
 fectual ride uj^on my strong horse out of the whirlpool. I read a 
 
Ymi to the Barings. 317 
 
 little Grerman with the lady after dinner, listen to some music, 
 to miich witty talk, and that is all. I soem to improve in health 
 a little, but still do not sleep. The habit of utter idleness getting 
 possession of me is verj' sti-ange. How long we shall be able to 
 stand such a regimen is not made out. One would think not veiy 
 long! The prospect of such a thing /or ///e was absolutely equal 
 to death. Meanwhile it cannot but be said to be pleasant enough, 
 and perhaps not useless for a season. 
 
 To Mrs. Cai'lyle the visit was neither pleasant nor use- 
 ful, probably the opposite of both. 
 
 Six weeks (she wrote to her friend Mrs. Kussell when it was 
 over) I have been doing absolutely nothing but playing at battle- 
 dore and shuttlecock, chess, talking nonsense, and getting rid of 
 a certain fmction of this mortal life as cleverly and uselessly as 
 possible. Nothing could exceed the sumptuosity and elegance of 
 the whole thing, nor its uselessness. Oh dear me ! I wonder why 
 so many people wish for high position and great wealth when it is 
 such an open secret to what all that amounts in these days ; 
 merely to emancipating people from all the practical difficulties 
 which might teach them the facts of things and sympathy with 
 their fellow-creatures. This Lady Harriet Baring whom we have 
 just been staying with is the cleverest woman out of sight that I 
 ever saw in my life — and I have seen all our distinguished author- 
 esses. Moreover she is full of energy and sincerity, and has, I am 
 sure, an excellent heart. Yet so perverted has she been by the 
 training and lifelong humouring incident to her high position, 
 that I question if in her whole life she has done as much for her 
 fellow-creatures as my mother in one year; or whether she will 
 ever break through the cobwebs she is entangled in so as to be 
 any other than the most amusing and graceful woman of her time. 
 The sight of such a woman should make one veiy content with 
 one's own trials, even when they feel to be rather hard. ' 
 
 Mrs. Biiller was turning out a true propliet. Mrs. 
 Carlyle and Lady Harriet did not suit eacli other. Mrs. 
 Carlyle did not shut her ej^es to tlie noble lady's distin- 
 guished qualities : but even these qualities themselves 
 might be an obstacle to cordial intimacy. People do not 
 
 » Letters and Memorialise vol i. p. 867. 
 
SI 8 Carlyleh Life in London. 
 
 usually take to those who excel in the points where they 
 have themselves been 'accustomed to reign supreme. Mrs. 
 Carlyle knew that she was far cleverer than the general 
 run of lady adorers who worshipped her husband. She 
 knew also that he was aware of her superiority ; that, by 
 her talent as well as her character, she had a hold upon 
 him entirely her own, and that he only laughed good- 
 naturedly at the homage they paid him. But she could 
 not feel as easy about Lady Harriet. She saw that Car- 
 lyle admired her brilliancy, and was gratified by her 
 queenly esteem. To speak of jealousy in the ordinary 
 sense would be extravagantly absurd ; but there are many 
 forms of jealousy, and the position of a wife, when her 
 husband is an intimate friend of another woman, is a dif- 
 ficult and delicate one. If there is confidence and affec- 
 tion between the ladies themselves, or if the friend has a 
 proper perception of a wife's probable susceptibilities, and 
 is careful to prevent them from being wounded, or if the 
 wife herself is indifferent and incapable of resentment, all 
 is well, and the relation may be delightful. In the present 
 case there were none of these conditions. ]^o one could 
 suspect Lady Harriet Baring of intending to hurt Mrs. 
 Carlyle ; but either she never observed her discomfort, or 
 she thought it too ridiculous to notice. She doubtless 
 tried in her own lofty way to be kind to Mrs. Carlyle, and 
 Mrs. Carlyle, for her husband's sake, tried to like Lady 
 Harriet. But it did not answer on either side, and in 
 such cases it is best to leave things to take their natural 
 course. When two people do not agree, it is a mistake to 
 force them into intimacy. They should remain on the 
 footing of neutral acquaintance, and are more likely to 
 grow into friends the less the direct effort to make them 
 so. Gloriana may have a man for a subject without im- 
 pairing his dignity — a w^oman in such a position becomes 
 a dependent. Carlyle unfortunately could not see the dis- 
 
Visit to the Barings. 319 
 
 tinction. To such a lady a certain homage seemed to be 
 due ; and if liis wife resisted, lie was angry. When Lady 
 Harriet required her presence, she told John Carjyle tliat 
 she was obliged to go, or the lady would quarrel with her, 
 * and that meant a quarrel with her husband.' ' The Ked 
 Cross Knight was brought to evil thoughts of his * Una ' 
 by the enchantments of Archiraage. To a proud fiery 
 woman like Mrs. Carlyle the sense that Lady Harriet could 
 come in any way between her husband and herself was in- 
 tolerable. 
 
 Things had not come to this point during the Bay 
 House visit, but were tending fast in that direction, and 
 were soon to reach it. 
 
 In February 1846 a new edition was needed of the 
 ' Cromwell.' Fresh letters of Oliver had been sent which 
 required to be inserted according to date ; a process, Carlyle 
 said, ' requiring one's most excellent talent, as of shoe- 
 cobbling, really that kind of talent carried to a high pitch.' 
 
 He had * to unhoop his tub, which already held water,' 
 as he sorrowfully put his case to Mr. Erskine, ' and insert 
 new staves.' 
 
 To T. Erskine. 
 
 Feb. 28, 1846. 
 I must not complain ; I am bound to rejoice rather : but I did 
 not so much need the new money I am to get ; and I can honestly 
 say the feeling of faithfulness to a hero's great memory and to my 
 own small task in regard to that is nearly the only consideration 
 that practically weighs with me. The unmusical or musical voice 
 of critics, totally ignorant of the matter for most part, and of most 
 insincere nature at any rate, gives me little pain and little pleasure 
 any more. We shall be dead soon, and then it is only the fact of 
 our work that will speak for us through all eternity. One thing I 
 do recognise with much satisfaction, that the general verdict of 
 our poor loose public seems to be that Oliver icas a genuine man, 
 and if so, surely to them a very surprising one. It will do them 
 much good, poor bewildered iDlockheads, to understand that no 
 
 » Undated letter of Mrs. Carlyle to John Carlyle. 
 
320 ' Carlyl^s Life in London. 
 
 great man was ever other ; that this notion of theirs about ' Ma- 
 chiavelism,' 'Policy,' and so forth, is on the whole what one might 
 call blasphemous — a real doctrine of devils. 
 
 The Barings were at Addiscombe in the spring, and it 
 was arranged that Mrs. Carlyle should be with them there 
 for the benefit of country air ; he remaining at his work, 
 but joining them on Saturdays and Sundays. She could 
 not sleep, she did not like it. He w^io had meant every- 
 thing for the best, tried to comfort her as well as he could. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle, Addiscombe. 
 
 Chelsea : April 8. 
 A considerable gap is made in the ' Cromwell ' rubbish. It is 
 fast disappearing before me. Heigho ! but my existence is not 
 now so haggard as it was for some days past. The sun is shin- 
 ing, the work going on all day. One has many sad reflections, 
 but they are not unprofitable wholly, nor the worse for being 
 sad. ' No man can help another,' sighed the melancholy Pesta- 
 lozzi, which is but partJy true. A kind and trustful word is very 
 helpful from one to another. Oh, my poor Goody, let us en- 
 deavor to be wise and just and good ! Nothing more is required 
 of mortals. That is a fact one forgets sometimes. I am very sorry 
 to hear of you ' pitted against Chaos ' all night, and coming off 
 second best. My poor little woman ! But you will be home again 
 soon. I will at least try to help you against Chaos, now and hence- 
 forth as heretofore. I will do my best in that. For one thing, I 
 really v/ish you could find an eligible house somewhere, out under 
 the quiet sky, removed fairly from these tumults and loud-braying 
 discords of every kind, which it is growing really horrible and 
 miserable to me to spend the remnant of my days among. * Like 
 living in a madhouse,' as the lady says. Truly so, and one has 
 nothing to do with it either. 
 
 Evidently he was labouring at liis task under complica- 
 tions of worry and trouble. Perhaps both he and she 
 would have been better off after all at Craigenputtock. 
 The ' stitching and cobbling,' however, was gone through 
 with. 'Cromwell' thus enlarged was now in its final 
 form ; and as soon as it was done, he took a step in con- 
 
Letter, to Sir Rohert Fed. 321 
 
 nection with it which, I believe, he never took before or 
 after with any of his writings : he presented a copy of it 
 to the Prime Minister. Sir Robert Peel had hitherto been 
 no favourite of his, neither Peel nor any one of the exist- 
 insr ireneration of statesmen ; Sir Jabesh Windbaj^ in 'Past 
 and Present ' representing his generic conception of them. 
 But Peel was now repealing the Corn-laws; not talking of 
 it, but doing it ; and imperilling in one righteous act his 
 own political fortune. That had something of greatness 
 in it, especially with Carlyle, who had believed heroic 
 sacrifice of self to be an impossible virtue in a Parliament- 
 ary leader. He discovered Peel to be a real man ; and he 
 sent his * Cromwell ' to him with the following letter : — 
 
 Chelsea: June 18, 1846. 
 
 Sir^ — "Will you be pleased to accept from a very private citizen 
 of the community this copy of a book which he has been occupied 
 in putting together, while you, our most conspicuous citizen, were 
 victoriously labouring in quite othe • work ? Labour, so far as it 
 is tme, and sanctionable by the Supreme Worker and World 
 Founder, may claim brotherhood with labour. The great work 
 and the little are alike definable as an extricating of the true from 
 its imprisonment among the false ; a \'ictoriou8 evoking of order 
 and fact from disorder and semblance of fact. In any case, citi- 
 zens who feel grateful to a citizen are permitted and enjoined to 
 testify that feeling each in such manner as he can. Let this poor 
 labour of mine be a small testimony of that sort to a late great 
 and valiant laboiu: of yours, and claim recei^tion as such. 
 
 The book, should you ever find leisure to read and master it, 
 may perhai^s have interest for you — may perhaps— who knows? — 
 have admonition, exhortation, in various ways instruction and en- 
 couragement for yet other labours which England, in a voiceless 
 but most impressive manner, still expects and demands of you. 
 The authentic words and actings of the noblest govenior England 
 ever had may well have interest for all govemora of England ; may 
 well be, as all Scripture is, as all genuine words and actings are, 
 * profttal)le ' — profitable for reproof, for correction, and for edify- 
 ing and strengthening withal. Hansard's Debates are not a kind 
 of literature I have been familiar with ; nor indeed is the arena 
 Vol. III.-21 
 
322 Carlyle's Life in London, 
 
 they proceed from much more than a distress to me in these days. 
 Loud-sounding clamour and rhetorical vocables grounded not on 
 fact, nor even on belief of fact, one knows from of old whither all 
 that and wliat depends on it is bound. But by-and-by, as I be- 
 lieve, all England will say what already many a one begins to feel, 
 that whatever were the spoken unveracities of Parliament, and they 
 are many on all hands, lamentable to gods and men, here has a 
 great veracity been done in Parliament, considerably our greatest 
 for many years past — a strenuous, courageous, and needful thing, to 
 which all of us that so see it are bound to give our loyal recogni- 
 tion and furtherance as we can. 
 
 I have the honour to be, Sir, 
 
 Your obliged fellow-citizen and obedient servant, 
 
 T. Cablyle.^ 
 
 Peel answered : — 
 
 Whitehall : June 23, 1846. 
 Sir, — "Whatever may have been the pressure of my j)ublic en- 
 gagements, it has not been so overwhelming as to prevent me from 
 being familiar with your exertions in another department of labour, 
 as incessant and severe as that which I have undergone. 
 
 I am the better enabled, therefore, to appreciate the value of 
 your favourable opinion ; and to thank you, not out of mere cour- 
 tesy, but very sincerely, for the volumes which you have sent for 
 my acceptance ; most interesting as throwing a new light upon a 
 very important chapter of our history ; and gratifying to me as a 
 token of your personal esteem. 
 
 I have the honour to be. Sir, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 T. Carlyle, Esq. Eobekt Peel. 
 
 The success of this book had been a real enjoyment to 
 Carlyle — enjoyment in the true noble sense — he felt that 
 he had done a good work, and had done it effectively. 
 
 To T. ErsUne. 
 
 Chelsea : July 11, 1846. 
 The second edition of * Cromwell ' w^hich has kept me sunk all 
 spring and summer in a very ignoble kind of labour, is now off my 
 
 1 There are two versions of this letter among Carlyle's papers, not quite 
 identical ; I do not know which was sent. The differences are unimportant, 
 except to show that the letter was carefully composed. 
 
SiLCC€88 of * Cromwell? 323 
 
 hands for ever. The lively interest the people have taken in that 
 heavy Jt)ook — the numbers that read, and in some good measure 
 understand something of it : all tliis is really surprising to me. I 
 take it as one other symptom of the rapidly deepening seriousness 
 of the public mind, which certainly has call enough to be serious 
 at present. The conviction, too, among all persons of much mo- 
 ment seems to be pretty unanimous, that this is actually the his- 
 tory of Oliver ; that the former histories of him have been extra- 
 ordinarj' mistakes — very fallacious histories — as of a man walking 
 about for two centuries in a universal masked ball (of hypocrites 
 and their hypocrisies spoken and done), with a mask upon him, 
 this man, which no cunningest artist could get off. They tried it 
 now this way, now that : still the mask was felt to remain : the 
 mask would not come off. At length a lucky thought strikes us. 
 This man is in his natural face. That is the mask of this one ! 
 Of all which I am heartily glad. In fact, it often strikes me as 
 the fellest virulence of all the misery that lies upon us in these 
 distracted generations, this blackest form of ina-edulily we have 
 all fallen into, that great men, too, were paltry shuffling Jesuits, 
 as we ourselves are, and meant nothing true in their work, or 
 mainly meant lies and hunger in their work, even as we ourselves 
 do. There will never be anything but an enchanted world, till 
 that baleful phantasm of the pit be chased thither again, and very 
 stei-nly bidden abide there. Alas ! alas ! It often seems to me 
 as if poor Loyola and that icorld Jesuitry of which he is the sacra- 
 ment and symbol, was the blackest, most godless spot in the whole 
 history of Adam's posterity : a solemn wedding together in God's 
 high name of tnith and falsehood — as if the two were now one 
 flesh and could not subsist apart — whereby, as some one now says, 
 we are all become Jesuits, and the falsity of them has, as it were, 
 obtained its apotheosis and is henceforth a consecrated falsity. 
 
 My wife went off a few days ago to Lancashire. She had been 
 in a very weakly way ever since our summer heats came on, had 
 much need of quiet and fresh air. ... I, too, am tattered 
 and fretted into great sonow of heart ; but that is partly the na- 
 ture of the beast, I believe — that will be difficult to cure in this 
 world. 
 
CHAPTER XIY. 
 
 A.D. 1846-7. ^T. 51-52. 
 
 Domestic confusions — Two letters from Mazzini — Mrs. Carlyle at 
 Seaforth — Clouds which will not disperse — Gloriana — Tour 
 with the Barings in Dumfriesshire — Moffat and its attraction 
 — Carlyle at Scotsbrig. 
 
 It was hard on Carlyle that, while engaged with work into 
 which he was throwing his entire heart and soul, he 
 should be disturbed and perplexed with domestic confu- 
 sions. But it was his fate — a fate, perhaps, wliich could 
 not be avoided ; and those confusions were to grow and 
 gather into a thick black cloud which overshadowed his life 
 for many weary years. "When Mrs. Carlyle returned to him 
 from Addiscombe, it was, as she said, * with a mind all 
 churned to froth ' — not a pleasant condition. Carlyle, in 
 spite of his good i-esolutions, was occasionally ' a little ill- 
 haired.' At last things went utterly awry. She set off 
 alone to the Paulets at the beginning of July. There was 
 a violent scene when they parted. Her words, if seldom 
 smoother than oil, were 'very swords ' when she was really 
 angry. She did not write on her arrival, as she had prom- 
 ised to do, and she drew these sad lines from him in con- 
 sequence : — 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle, Seafm'th. 
 
 Chelsea : July 6, 1846. 
 My Dear, — I hope it is only displeasure or embarrassed estrange- 
 ment from me, and not any accident or illness of your own, that 
 robs me of a note this morning. I will not torment myself with 
 that new uneasiness. But you did expressly promise to announce 
 
Domestic Clouds. 325 
 
 your arrival straightway. This is not good : but perhaps an un- 
 friendly or miserable letter would have been worse, so I will be 
 as patient as I can. Certainly we never parted before in such a 
 manner ; and all for — literally nothing. But I will not enter 
 upon that at all. CJomposure and reflection at a distance from all 
 causes of irritation or freaks of diseased fancy will show us both 
 more clearly what the God's truth of the matter is. May God give 
 us strength to follow piously and with all loyal fidelity what that is ! 
 On coming home on Saturday in miserable enough humour, the 
 saddest I think I have been in for ten years and more, I directly 
 got out my work and sate down to it, as the one remedy I had. 
 Yesterday I suppose you fancied me happy at Addiscombe. Alas ! 
 I was in no humour for anything of that laughing nature. I sate 
 digging all day in the nibbish heaps, &c. It was a day of the 
 resurrection of all sad and great and tender things within me — 
 sad as the very death, yet not unprofitable, I believe. Adieu, 
 dearest — for that is, and if madness prevail not may forever be, 
 your authentic title. Be quiet ; do not doubt of me — do not 
 yield to the enemy of us all, and may God bless thee always. 
 
 T. C. 
 
 Among Mrs. Carlyle's papers are two letters — the first 
 of them dated only July, yet in answer to one which she 
 must have written before leaving London, showing that 
 in her distress she had taken the strong step of consulting 
 a friend on the course which she ought to follow. Happily 
 she could have consulted no one who could have advised 
 her more wisely. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 London : July, 1846. 
 My dear Friend, — I was yesterday almost the whole day out, 
 and did not receive your notes, except in the evening, when it was 
 too late to answer them. Your few words sound sad, deeply, I 
 will not say in-eparably sad ; and the worst of it is that none can 
 help you but yourself. It is only you who can, by a calm, dispas- 
 sionate, fair re-examination of the past, send back to nothingness 
 the ghosts and phantoms that you have been conjuring up. It is 
 only you who can teach yourself that, whatever the present may 
 be, you must front it with dignity, with a clear perception of all 
 your duties, with a due reverence to your immortal aoul, wi*h ft 
 
326 Carlyle's Life m London. 
 
 religious faith in times yet to come, that are to dawn under the 
 approach of other cloudless suns. I could only point out to you 
 the fulfilment of duties which can make life — not happy — what 
 can ? but earnest, sacred, and resignated ; ' but I would make you 
 frown or scorn. "We have a different concej^tion of life, and are 
 condemned here down to walk on two parallels. Still it is the 
 feeling of those duties that saves me from the atheism of despair, 
 and leads me through a life every day more barren and burden- 
 some, in a sort of calm composed manner — such, I repeat, as the 
 consciousness of something everlasting within us claims from 
 every living mortal. For I now most coolly and deliberately do 
 declare to you, that pai-tly through what is known to you, partly 
 through things that will never be known, I am carrying a burden 
 even heavier than you, and have undergone even bitterer decep- 
 tions than you have. But by dint of repeating to myself that 
 there is no happiness under the moon, that life is a self-sacrifice 
 meant for some higher and happier thing : that to have a few 
 loving beings, or if none, to have a mother watching you from 
 Italy or from Heaven, it is all the same, ought to be quite enough 
 to preserve us from falling, and by falling, parting. I have mus- 
 tered up strength to go on, to work at my task as far as I have 
 been able to make it out, till I reach the grave ; the grave for 
 which the hour will come, and is fast approaching without my 
 loudly calling for it. 
 
 Awake, arise, dear friend ! Beset by pain or not, we must go 
 on with a sad smile and a practical encouragement from one an- 
 other. We have something of our own to care about, something 
 godlike that we must not yield to any living creature, whoever it 
 be. Your life proves an empty thing, you say ! Empty ! Do not 
 blaspheme. Have you never done good ? Have you never loved ? 
 Think of your mother, and do good — set the eye to Providence. 
 It is not as a mere piece of irony that God has placed you here ; 
 not as a mere piece of irony that He has given us those aspira- 
 tions, those yearnings after happiness that are now making us 
 both unhappy. Can't you trust Him a little longer ? How long 
 will you remain at Seaforth ? Does he himself propose to go any- 
 where? I was coming to see you on Saturday. Write if and 
 when it does good even homceopathically to you, and be assured 
 that to me it will always do. Ever yours, 
 
 Joseph Mazzini. 
 
 * Mazzini's Englifih, generally excelleat, tilips occasionally in a word. 
 
The BlHhday PrsBetU. 327 
 
 Either this letter or her own reflections led Mrs. Car- 
 lyle, after a day's delay, to write softly to her husband. 
 He, poor man, as innocent of any thought of wrong, as 
 incapable of understanding what he had done to raise such 
 a tornado, as my Uncle Toby himself could have been, 
 was almost piteously grateful. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle^ Senforlh. 
 
 Chelsea : July 7. 
 Thousand thanks, dear Goody, for thy good little letter ! It 
 has lifted a mountain from my poor inner man. Oh, if you could 
 see there the real fact of the thing ; verily, it would all be well. 
 It would indeed — as by God's blessing it shall yet be, and so let 
 us say not a word more of it ; but pray earnestly from our very in- 
 most heart that we may be enabled to do all that is true and good, 
 and be helpful, not hindersome to one another ; and in spite of 
 our anomalous lot be found as wise ones, not as foolish. For thy 
 great unwearied goodness, and tme ever-watchful affection, mixed 
 as it is with human infirmity, oh, my dearest, woe to me for ever 
 if I could forget it or be in any way unjust to it ! But let us say 
 nothing. Let us each try to see, try to do, better always and bet- 
 ter ; and one thing does remain ever dear to me, ever sure for 
 both of us. No honourable, truly good, and noble thing we do or 
 have done for one another, but will bear its good fruit. That is as 
 true as truth itself — a faith that should never fail us. 
 
 On July 13 he WTote, enclosing his never-forgotten 
 birthday present. 
 
 I send thee a poor little card-case, a small memorial of Bastille 
 day, and of another day also very important to me and thee. My 
 poor little Jeannie ! no heart ever wished another more tmly 
 * many happy returns ; ' or, if * happy returns ' are not in our 
 vocabulary, then * wise returns,' wise and time and brave, which, 
 after all, are the only * happiness,' as I conjecture, that we have 
 any right to look for in this segment of eternity that we are tra- 
 versing together, thou and I. God bless thee, and know thou 
 always, in spite of the chimsems and illusions, that thou ai't dearer 
 to me than any earthly creature. That t5 a fact, if it can be of 
 any use to thy poor soul to know ; and so accept my little gift and 
 kiss it as I have done, and 8ay» in tlie name of Heavea it Bhall yet 
 
398 Carlyl&s Life in London. 
 
 all be well, and my poor husband is the man I have always known 
 him from of old, is and will be. 
 
 This is the letter of which she speaks so touchingly in 
 her reply/ the letter which had been delayed at the Sea- 
 forth post-office. She, agitated by a thousand thoughts, 
 had feared that he had let the day pass without writing 
 to her, and had been thrown into a ' tumult of wretched- 
 ness.' She had written again, it appears, to Mazzini ; for 
 from him, too, came another letter, tenderly sympathetic, 
 yet wise and supremely honourable to him. No ghostly 
 confessor could have been more judicious. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle, Seaforth. 
 
 July 15. 
 My dear Friend, — I conld not write yesterday, as I intended, on 
 account of the death of Scipioni Petrucci's wife. . . . Yes ; 
 * sad as death, but not basely sad.' That is what you must be, 
 what I want you to be, and what a single moment of truly earnest 
 thought and faith will cause you to be. Pain and joy, decep- 
 tion and fulfilled hopes are just, as I often said, the rain and 
 the sunshine that must meet the traveller on his way. Bless the 
 Almighty if He has thought proper to send the latter to you. But- 
 ton or wrap your cloak around you against the first, but do not 
 think a single moment that the one or the other have anything to 
 do with the end of your journey. You know that ; but you want 
 the faith that would give you strength to fulfil the task shown by 
 the intellect. These powers will give you that too, if you prop- 
 erly apply to them — afiection, a religious belief, and the dead. 
 Y'"ou have affection for me, as I have for you : you would not shake 
 mine? You would not add yourself to the temptations haunting 
 me to wreck and despair ? You would not make me worse than I 
 am by your examj^le, by your showing yourself selfish and material- 
 ist ? You believe in God. Don't you think, after all, that this is 
 nothing but an ephemeral trial ; and that He will shelter you at 
 the journey's end under the wdde wing of his paternal love ? You 
 had, have, though invisible to the eyes of the body, your mother, 
 your father too. Can't you commune with them ? I know that a 
 single moment of true fervent love for them will do more for you 
 
 » Letters and Memorials^ vol. i. p. 273. 
 
Letter from Mazzini. • 329 
 
 than all my talking ! Were they now what yon call living, wonld 
 you not fly to them, hide your head in their bosom and be com- 
 forted, and feel that you owe to them to be strong — that they may 
 never feel ashamed of their own Jane ? Why, can you think them 
 to be dead, gone for ever, their loving immortal soul annihilated ? 
 Can you think that this vanishing for a time has made you less 
 responsible to them 'i Can you, in a word, lore them less because 
 they are far from sight ? I have often thought that tlie arrange- 
 ment by which loved and loving beings are to pass through death 
 is nothing but the last experiment appointed by God to human 
 love ; and often, as you know from me, I have felt that a moment 
 of tme soul-communing with my dead fnend was opening a 
 source of strength for me unhoped for, here down. Did we not 
 often agree about these glimpses of the link between ours and the 
 superior life ? Shall we now begin to disagree ? Be strong then, 
 and true to those you loved, and proud, nobly proud in the eyes 
 of those you love or esteem. Some of them are deeply, silently 
 suffering, but needing strength too, needing it perhaps from you. 
 Get up and work ; do not set yourself apart from us. When the 
 Evil One wanted to tempt Jesus, he led Him into a solitude. 
 Believe me, my dear friend, ever yours, 
 
 Joseph Mazzini. 
 
 The birthday present, and tlie words which had come 
 with it, ought to have made all well; and yet it did not, 
 for tlie cause remained. The condition into which she 
 liad wrought herself through her husband's Gloriana wor- 
 ship would have been ridiculous if it had not been so 
 tragic — tragic even in its absurdity, and tragic in its 
 consequences. Fault there was little on any side. Want 
 of judgment, perhaps, and want of perception ; that was 
 all. Carlyle had formed an acquaintance which he valued 
 and she disliked, because she fancied that a shadow had 
 risen between herself and him, which was taking from her 
 part of what belonged to her. A few hearty words, a 
 simple laugh, and the nightmare would have vanished. 
 But neither laugh nor spoken word of any such salutary 
 kind had been possible. Carlyle in such mattei-s had no 
 more skill thau the Knight of La Mancha would have had. 
 
330 CarlyU^s Life in London. 
 
 He was very shv, for one thing. He wrote with exquisite 
 tenderness. In conversation he shrank from expressions 
 of affection, even at moments when he felt most deeply. 
 On the other hand, he w^as keenly sensitive to what he 
 thought unreasonable or silly. He was easily provoked ; 
 and his irritation would burst out in spurts of angry meta- 
 phor, not to be. forgotten from their very point and force. 
 Thus his letters failed in producing their full effect from 
 their contrast with remembered expressions which had 
 meant nothing ; while, again, he might himself naturally 
 feel impatient when called on to abandon friends whose 
 high character he admired, and who had been singularly 
 kind to him, for a cause which he knew to be a preposter- 
 ous creation of a disordered fancy, and which, in yielding, 
 he would have acknowledged tacitly -to have been just. A 
 ' man of genius,' especially one whose function it was to 
 detect and expose chimseras, out to have contrived better. 
 Some strange mismanagement there must have been to 
 have created such a condition of things. Yet ' a man of 
 genius' is no better off in such situations than an ordinary 
 mortal. He was confronted with a problem which a per- 
 son with a thousandth fraction of his abilities, either of 
 brain or heart, would have solved in a moment by a smile ; 
 yet he wandered from mistake to mistake. He continued 
 to argue with his ' bewildered Goody.' 
 
 Do not (he wrote), oh, do not fret thyself in that way about 
 nothing at all ! In thy tragic sorrows and black confusions there 
 is a noble element peering through, a gleam of something divine 
 and true, which is worth following. By God's blessing we shall 
 yet look back on all those miserable things, and find that a bless- 
 ing beyond price did lie in them. Be still ! Oh, be still, and do 
 not fret thyself for any cobweb or brainweb ! 
 
 This was very well ; yet in the same letter he had to 
 tell her that a plan had been arranged for the Barings to 
 go to the Highlands, that it had been proposed that he 
 
Glof'iana. 331 
 
 should accompany them, that lie did not think he would, 
 but that possibly he might. 
 
 To Jane Welsh 
 
 Chelsea : July 18. 
 I was at the Barings' last night, saw BuUer, &c. I do not go to 
 Addiscombe to-day nor to-morrow, nor, indeed, for an indefinite, 
 perhaps infinite, time to come. To the lady I have, of course, 
 told nothing, except that you are veiy unwell. But she seems to 
 have discerned j^retty clearly for herself that our intercourse is to 
 be carried on under different conditions henceforth, or probably 
 to cease altogether before long : to which arrangement she gives 
 signs of being ready to conform with fully more indifierence than 
 I expected ; with no unkindness at all ; but with no discernible 
 regret either ; on the whole, with the most perfect politeness and 
 graceful conformity to destiny, such as becomes all people — such 
 as I, too, am ready for, if it come to that. That perversity of fate, 
 too, I can adopt or accept as I have had to do a few in my time. 
 An opening is left for my meeting them about Carlisle or Edin- 
 burgh on their Scotch tour ; but it seems to be with little expecta- 
 tion on either side that it will take effect. We shall endeavour 
 to see what the real monition of the matter is when the time 
 arrives. 
 
 Again : — 
 
 July 22. 
 I took leave of the Barings last night. All is handsome and 
 clear there, and nothing is wrong ; except your and my ill-genius 
 may still force it to be so a little. To the lady I ' said ' simply 
 nothing ; and her altered manner, I suppose, might proceed alto- 
 gether from the evident chagrin and depression of mine. Was 
 that unnatural in me ? In fact, I myself was heartily weaiy of a 
 relation grown so sad, and in my mind almost repented that it had 
 ever been. But you may take it as a certainty, if you Hke, that 
 there is no unkindness or injustice harboured to you there ; and if 
 you chose to -v^Tite a little word of news to Lady Harriet, as to how 
 you are and what things you are amidst, I do believe it would be 
 a real and very welcome kindness to her. Her intents towards 
 you and towards me, so far as I can read them, are charitable and 
 not wicked. My relation to her is by a very small element in her 
 position, but by a just and laudable one, and I wish to retain that 
 
332 Carlyle's Life in Londoii. 
 
 if I can and give it up if I cannot. Voila tout I Oh, Goody dear I 
 be wise, and all is well. 
 
 He was struggling in a cobweb, and w^as not on the way 
 to extricate himself. That a man of genius should enjoy 
 the society of a brilliant and gifted lady of high rank wa3 
 'just and laudable,' as he called it. It was natural, too, 
 if not laudable, that Mrs. Carlyle should not be equally 
 interested in a person who rivalled her in her own do- 
 main. She, for her own part, had no wish to be intimate 
 with a great lady who could have no interest in her. 
 Carlyle made the mistake of trying to force her into a 
 position which she detested ; and every step wliich he 
 took in this direction only made the irritation greater. 
 
 His plans for the summer had been laid out independ- 
 ent of the Highland tour. He was to go first to his mother 
 at Scotsbrig for a few days, and afterwards to run across 
 to Ireland. The ' Young Ireland ' movement, the precur- 
 sor of the Home Eule movement, w^as just then rising into 
 heat. Charles Gavan Duffy, of the ' Nation ' newspaper, 
 with others of the leaders, had sought him out in London 
 in consequence of what he had written in ' Chartism ' 
 about Irish misgovernment. He had promised to go 
 over, when he had leisure, and see what they were doing. 
 Had he confined himself to this programme, he would 
 have given time for the waves to go down ; but he went 
 for a day or two to see his wife at Seaforth on his way to 
 Scotland. It then appeared that he had engaged to meet 
 the Barings after all, and that Mrs. Carlyle herself was 
 pressed to join their party. His letters after he reached 
 Scotsbrig show that the barometer was still at ' stormy.' 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle, Seaforth. 
 
 Scotsbrig : August 8, 1846. 
 My poor old mother met me once again on the Close here, with 
 a moist radiance of joy in her old eyes : once again — not many 
 times more — perhaps never once more : and then it is all done, 
 
Gloriana. 333 
 
 and that part of the universal destiny is for me also complete. It 
 is not a merry place this world —it is a stem and awful place. Soon 
 after my arrival, I flung myself upon a bed and fell fast asleep. I 
 am very unwell, so far as biliary and other confusions go. Yes- 
 terday I did not sleej) long, and to-day I awoke at four o'clock. 
 Deep silence and some friendly i)illow, watched by some rictorious 
 loving one, to lay my head on, that was the thing for me, and that 
 is not to be had here. The loving ones here are all Mwvictorious 
 too. I do not remember a more miserable set of hours for most 
 part than those since I left you. But we will hope for a good 
 issue out of them too— nay, believe in it, and manfully strive with 
 our best strength for it. That will do something. That will do 
 instead of all. Oh, my dearest, how little I can make thee know 
 of me ! In what a black baleful cloud for myself and thee are 
 all our affairs involved to thy eyes, at this moment threatening 
 shipwreck if we do not mind ! 
 
 There will clearly be no continuing for me here beyond a very 
 few days. Jack has adjusted himself into the direction of all the 
 mechanism of this house, and there is not room for both of us at 
 all. I cannot hope for more than to get along without offence till 
 I do the indispensably necessaiy, and then fly elsewhither to look 
 for shelter ; back to Chelsea, I sometimes think. But, indeed, 
 to-day I am below par in my dispiritment, as of a hanged man — 
 one of the ' weal wight men ' that sing after they are hanged. Cour- 
 age, courage ! I say, we will not surrender to the Devil yet — we 
 will defy him yet, and do the best we can to set our foot on the 
 throat of him yet. . . 
 
 My mother entei*s with a message of kind remembrances to you 
 — emphatic earnest message, evidently far sincerer than such almost 
 ever are. Poor old woman ! she said yesterday, ' Does Jane never 
 mean to see us again, then, at all ? ' To-day she repeats in other 
 form the same sad thought, as sad, and kind, and tnily affection- 
 ate, I do believe, as dwells in any heai-t but my own for you at 
 present. . . You will toll me about Haddington ' when your 
 resolution on it is once clear. I shall be ready at the end of next 
 week — sooner, if the Barings, warned by these thunders and 
 i-ains, decide on not coming. How incredible is it to my poor 
 little Jeannie, and yet how certain in fact, that an intimation to 
 that effect would be among the gladdest I could get in a small way 
 duiing these days ! I will write to the lady to-morrow that I am 
 
 » They were to have gone to Haddington together. 
 
334 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 here according to engagement, but of invitation to her I cannot 
 have much. This too, by God's blessing, what of integrity and 
 propriety there was in all this will one day become clear to all 
 parties. Oh, to think that my affection for thee / — but I will not 
 speak on that thing at present. Adieu, my own Jane, whom noth- 
 ing can divide from me. God bless thee ever ! T. Carlyle. 
 
 For several days no answer at all came from Mrs. 
 Carlyle, and lie grew impatient. 
 
 What am I to make (he asked) of this continued silence ? It 
 surely is not fair. Write to me as b]"iefly as you like — but write. 
 There can be no propriety in punishing me by such feelings as these 
 are. It is like seething a kid in its mother's milk. If I cared less 
 about you, the punishment would be less. It is not fair nor right. 
 What thoughts I have day and night I will not state at all till 
 there come some means of getting belief to my words again. Oh, 
 if you could look into my heart of hearts, I do not think you 
 could be angry with me, or sorry for yourself either ! May good 
 angels instead of bad again visit you ! May ,/ soon meet you 
 again, for I still think I can be your good angel if you will not 
 too much obstruct me. 
 
 On the point of starting on August 14 to join his friends 
 at Carlisle, lie wrote again : — 
 
 No word from you yet ; not the scrape of a pen this morning 
 either. It is not right, my poor dear Jeannie ! it is not just nor ac- 
 cording to fact ; and it deeply distresses and disturbs me who had 
 no need of disturbance or distress otherwise, if all were well known 
 to thee. But it is best that I suffer it with little commentary. To 
 thee, also, I will believe it is no luxury. I said to myself last 
 night, while tossing and tumbling amid thousandfold annoyances, 
 outward and inward, ' It is not fair all this — really it is not fair.' 
 I wanted to do none any injury. My one wish and aim was to 
 pass among them without hurting any, doing good to some if I 
 could. My own lot has been but emptiness, and they all cry : 
 ' See, thou hast taken something of mine ! ' The jackass brayed, 
 or the horse neighed, or some of the children coughed, and roused 
 me from these unprofitable reflections. Silence is better than most 
 speech in the case. This, however, I will say and repeat : * The 
 annals of insanity contain nothing madder than "jealousy" di- 
 rected against such a journey as I have before me to-day.' Be- 
 
Glariatia. 
 
 lieved or not, that is verily a fact. To the deepest bottom of my 
 heart that I can soimd, I find far other feelings, far other humours 
 and thoughts at present than belong to * jealousy ' on your part. 
 Alas ! alas ! I must, on the whole, allow the infernal deities to go 
 their full swing : but madness sliall not conquer, if all my saints 
 can hinder it. Oh, my Jeannie I my own tme Jeannie ! bravest 
 little life-companion, hitherto, into what courses are we tending ? 
 God assist us both, and keep us free of frightful Niagaras and 
 temptations of Satan. I am, indeed, very miserable. My mother 
 asks : * No word from Jane yet ? ' And, in spite of her astonish- 
 ment, I am obliged to answer : * None.^ 
 
 It is ludicrous to contrast with all tliis tempest the fate 
 of the expedition which was the occasion of it. The pro- 
 jected tour with Mr. Baring and Lady Harriet lasted but 
 five days, and was as melancholy as Mrs. Carljle could 
 have desired. They went from Carlisle to Moffat, sleep- 
 ing ' in noisy cabins, in confused whiskey inns,' and in the 
 worst of weather. The lady was cross ; Mr. Baring only 
 patient and good-humoured. They had designed a visit to 
 Drumlanrig : but ' the Buccleuch household gave notice 
 that they had the hooping-cough,' and were not to be ap- 
 proached ; and Beattock, near Moffat, was the furthest 
 point of the journey. 
 
 Beattock (Carlyle reported) was very bad. In blinks of fair 
 weather we did tolerably well ; but they were rare. During rain 
 we had to sit in a little room where neither fire in the grate nor 
 the smallest chink of ventilation otherwise could be permitted. 
 One grew half distracted, naturally, in such an element, and 
 prayed for fair weather as the altera ative of suicide. The brave 
 Baring's cheerfulness and calmness never failed him for a moment. 
 
 They had one fine day, which was given to Moffat and 
 the neighbourhood, and then parted, the Barings to go on 
 to the Highlands, Carlyle to reatreat to Scotsbrig again — 
 * to sleep, and practical sense, and the free use of tobacco,' 
 and to prepare for his trip to Ireland. Mrs. Carlyle was 
 in no spirits for Haddington, and returned alone to lier 
 own resting-place in Cheyne liow, after a day or two with 
 
336 Carlyys Life in London. 
 
 Miss Jewsbiiry at Manchester. So the ' weighty matter,' 
 which had called up snch a storm, was over, and the gale 
 had blown itself out. She, like a sensible woman, crushed 
 down her own dissatisfaction. The intimacy was to go on 
 upon .whatever terms Carlyle pleased, and she resigned 
 herself to take a part in it, since there was no reasonable 
 cause to be alleged for cessation or interruption. But the 
 wound fretted inwardly and would not heal. . She and her 
 husband had quarrelled often enough before — they had 
 quarrelled and made it up again, for they had both hot 
 tempers and sharp tongues — but there had been at bottom 
 a genuine and hearty confidence in each other, a strong 
 sincere affection, resting on mutual respect and mutual ad- 
 miration. The feeling remained essentiall}^ unbroken, but 
 the fine edge of it had suffered. Small occasions of provo- 
 cation constantly recurred. Mrs. Carlyle consented to stay 
 with Lady Harriet and submit to her authority as often 
 and as much as she required ; the sense of duty acting as 
 perpetual curb to her impatience. But the wound burst 
 out at intervals, embittering Carlyle's life, and saddening 
 a disposition w^hich did not need further clouds upon it. 
 She wrote to him while he was at Scotsbris; about indif- 
 ferent things in the spirit of the resolution which she had 
 made, and he, man-like, believed that all was well again. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Scotsbrig : August 26, 1846. 
 My dear Goody, — I had thy letter yesterday, at last. Many 
 thanks for it, and do not keep me waiting so long again. No news 
 could be welcomer than that you have been recreating and im- 
 proving your mind by assiduous inspection of the works and ways 
 of Manchester — most welcome unexpected news. The black spider- 
 webs that take possession of one's fancy, making one poor little 
 heart and soul all one Golgotha and Egyptian darkness, are best 
 of all to be sent about their business — home to the Devil, whose 
 they are — by opening one's eyes to the concrete fact of human life 
 in some such way as that. Oh, my Goody ! my own dear little 
 
Gloriana. 337 
 
 Jeannie ! But we will hope all that black business has now got 
 safe into the past, and will not tear np our poor forlorn existence 
 in so sad a way again. God be thanked you are better ; and now 
 tell me that you eat a little food at breakfast as well as dinner, and 
 I will compose myself till we meet. 
 
 Total idleness still rules over me here. The brightest stil 
 autumn weather, blue skies, windless, with Noah's ark clouds hung 
 over them, plenty of good tobacco, worthless Yankee literature, 
 and many ruminations 6n the moor or Linn — that is all ; the voice 
 of the Devil's caldron singing me into really a kind of waking 
 sleep. In spite of cocks, children, bulls, cuddies, and various in- 
 terruptions at night, I victoriously snatch some modicum of real 
 sleep for most part, and could certainly improve in health were a 
 continuance of such scenes of quiet permitted me. But it is not. 
 I must soon lift anchor again and go. . . . Jenny and my 
 mother are this day washing with all their might, cleaning up my 
 soiled duds for me. 
 
 August, 29. 
 
 I lie totally inert here, like a dead dry bone bleaching in the 
 silent sunshine ; often enough, my feeling of loneliness, of utter 
 isolation in this universe, is great. Useful, I dare say. One re- 
 quires, occasionally, to be somewhat severely taught. Abdallah, 
 the Vizier, used to retire at intervals and contemplate the wooden 
 clogs he had first started with, and found it do him good amid his 
 vanities. Probably there may He a little more woik in me : nay, I 
 think there will and shall. Complaint is not the dialect one 
 should speak in. Courage ! . . . I sliall like better to fancy you 
 in Chelsea, earthquaking and putting all in order, than tossing 
 and tumbling as you now are. Home, therefore, is the word, and 
 remember one thing, to write a little oftener to mo, and as near 
 the old tone as you can come to, before the spider-webs got upo!i 
 the loom at all. In me is no change, nor was, nor is like to be. 
 Alas ! I do not much deserve to be loved by anybody — not much, 
 or at all ; but I am very grateful if anybody will take the trouble 
 to do it. God guide us all, for our pathway is sometimes intricate, 
 and our own insight is now and then very bad. But there will 
 come a day when all that will be intelligible again. I should ba 
 miserable if I thought there would not. Again, courage I 
 Vol. IU— 22 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 A.D. 1846-7. MT. 51-52. 
 
 Six days in Ireland — John Mitchel — Eeturn to London — Margaret 
 Fuller — Visit to the Grange — Irish famine — Dr. Chalmers — 
 Literature as a profession — Matlock — Sight near Buxton — 
 Visit to Rochdale — John and Jacob Bright — Emerson comes 
 from America — The * Jew Bill ' — Hare's Life of Sterling — 
 Plans for future books — Exodus from Houndsditch. 
 
 Ireland had long been an anxious subject of Carlyle's 
 meditations. It was tlie weak point of English constitu- 
 tional government. The Constitution was the natural 
 growth of the English mind and character. We had im- 
 posed it upon the Irish in the confident belief that a 
 system w4iich answered among ourselves must be excellent 
 in itself, and be equally suited for every other country 
 and people. Carlyle's conviction was that even for Eng- 
 land it was something temporary in itself, an historical 
 phenomenon which in time would cease to answer its pur- 
 pose even where it originated, and that Ireland was the 
 weak spot, where the faihire was first becoming evident. 
 He had wished to see the unfortunate island with his own 
 eyes', now particularly when its normal wretchedness was 
 accentuated by the potato blight and famine. He had no 
 present leisure for a detailed survey, but he had resolved 
 at least to look at it if only for a few days. 
 
 On the last of August he left Scotsbrig, went to Dum- 
 fries, and thence made a hasty visit to Craigenputtock, 
 which was now his own property, and where there was 
 
Vhit to Ireland. 339 
 
 business to be attended to. From Dumfries lie went by 
 coach to Ayr and Ardrossan, from whicli a steamer carried 
 him at night to Belfast. Gavan Duify and John Mitchel 
 had arranged to meet him at Drogheda. The drive 
 thither from Belfast was full of instruction ; the scene all 
 iiew to him ; the story of the country written in Jiiined 
 cabins and uncultivated fields, the air poisoned with the 
 fatal smell of the poisoned potato. He had an agi-eeable 
 companion on tho* coach in a clever young Dublin man, 
 ■who pleased him well. Drogheda must have had impres- 
 sive associations for him. There is no finer passage in his 
 ' Cromwell ' than his description of the stern business 
 once enacted there. But he did not stay to look for traces 
 of Oliver. He missed his two friends through a mistake 
 at the Post Office, and hurried on by railway to Dublin, 
 where he stopped at the Impei'ial Hotel in Sackville 
 Street. Here for a day or two he was alone. He had 
 come for a glance at Ireland, and that was all whicli he got. 
 He witnessed, however, a remarkable scene, the last ap- 
 pearance of O'Connell, then released from prison, in Con- 
 ciliation Hall. He says, long after: — 
 
 I saw Conciliation Hall and the last glimpse of O'Connell, chief 
 quack of the then world ; first time I had ever heard the lying 
 scoundrel speak — a most melancholy scene to me altogether ; Con- 
 ciliation Hall something like a decent Methodist Chapel, but its 
 audience very sparse, very bad and blackguard-looking; brazen 
 faces like tapsters, tavern-keepers, miscellaneous hucksters, and 
 quarrelsome male or female nondescripts the prevailing type ; not 
 one tliat you would have called a gentleman, much less a man of 
 culture ; and discontent visible among them. The speech, on 
 potato rot, most serious of topics, had not one word of sincerity, 
 not to speak of wisdom, in it. Every sentence seemed to you a 
 lie, and even to know that it was a detected lie. I was standing 
 in the area in a small group of non-members and transitoiy peo- 
 ple, quite near this Demosthenes of blarney, when a low voice 
 whispered in high accent, ' Did you ever hear such damned non- 
 sense in all your life ? * It was my Belf ast-Drogheda coach com- 
 
340 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 m 
 
 panion, and I thoroughly agreed with him. Beggarly O'Connell 
 made out of Ireland straightway and never returned — crept under 
 the Pope's petticoat to die (and be ' saved ' from what he had 
 merited), the eminently despicable and eminently poisonous pro- 
 fessor of blarney that he was. 
 
 The Young Irelanders had waited at Drogheda, and only 
 discovered their guest at last at Dundrum, to wliicli he 
 had gone to some address which Mr. Duffy had given liim. 
 There he was entertained at a large dinner-pai'tj. ' Young 
 Ireland almost in mass.' The novelist Oarleton was there, 
 ' a genuine bit of old Ireland.' ^ They talked and drank 
 liquids of various strengths.' Carlyle was scoi-nful. The 
 Young Irelanders fought fiercely with him for their own 
 views ; but they liked liim and he liked them, wild and 
 unhopeful as lie knew their projects to be. He could not 
 see even the surface of Ireland without recognising that 
 there was a curse upon it of some kind, and these young 
 enthusiasts were at least conscious of the fact, and were 
 not crying ' Peace ' when there was none. The next day he 
 dined with one of them ; then, perhaps, the most notorious. 
 
 Dined at Mitchel's (he writes) with a select party, and ate there 
 the last truly good potato I have met with in the world. Mitchel's 
 wife, especially his mother (Presbyterian parson's widow of the 
 best Scotch type), his frugally elegant small house and table, 
 pleased me much, as did the man himself, a fine elastic-spirited 
 young fellow, whom I grieved to see rushing on to destruction, 
 palpable, by attack of windmills, but on whom all my persuasions 
 were thrown away. Both Duflfy and him I have always regarded 
 as specimens of the best kind of Irish youth, seduced, like thou- 
 sands of them in their early day, into courses that were at once 
 mad and ridiculous, and which nearly ruined the life of both, by 
 the big Beggarman who had 15,000/. a year, and, prok pudor f the 
 favour of English Ministers, instead of the pillory from them, for 
 professing blarney with such and still worse results. 
 
 * Poor Mitchel ! ' (Carlyle said afterwards) ' I told him 
 he would most likely be hanged, but I told him too they 
 could not hang the immortal part of him.' 
 
Beturn to Liverpool. 341 
 
 On the last day of his stay he was taken for a drive, one 
 
 of the most beautiful in the world, by tiie Dargle and 
 Powerscourt, and round through the Glen of the Downs 
 to Bray. Before entering the Dublin mountains, they 
 crossed the low i-ich meadov/s of the old Pale, the longest 
 in English occupation, a fertile oasis in the general wretch- 
 edness. I have heard that he said, looking over the thick 
 green grass and well-trimmed fences and the herds of cat- 
 tle fattening there, ' Ah, Duff}^ there you see the hoof of 
 the bloody Saxon.' This was his final excursion, a pleas- 
 ant taste in the mouth to end with. The same evening 
 his friends saw him on board the steamer at Kingstown ; 
 and in the early morning of September 10 he was sitting 
 smoking a cigar before the door of his wife's uncle's 
 house hi Liverpool till the household should awake and let 
 him in. 
 
 He had looked on Ireland, and that was all ; but he had 
 seen enough to make intelligible to him all that followed. 
 When he came again, three years later, the bubble had 
 burst. Europe was in revolution ; the dry Irish tinder 
 had kindled, and a rebellion w^hich was a blaze of straw 
 had ended in a cabbage garden. Duffy, Mitchel, and 
 others of that bright Dundrum party had stood at the bar 
 to be tried for treason. Duffy narrowly escaped. The 
 rest were exiled, scattered over the world, and lost to Ire- 
 land for ever. Mitchel has lately died in America. The 
 ' immortal part ' of him still works in the Phenix Park 
 and in dynamite conspiracies; what will come of it has 
 yet to be seen. 
 
 To the family at Scotsbrig Ireland had been a word of 
 terror, and Carlyle hastened to assure them of his safe re- 
 turn. 
 
 Tell my dear mother (he WTote to his brother John) that the 
 Papists have not hurt me in the least ; on the contrary, they were 
 abundantly and over-abundantly kind and hospitable to me, and 
 
342 • CarlyU's Life in London. 
 
 many a rough object has been put in my head which may usefully 
 smooth itself for me some day. 
 
 In London, when he was again settled there, he had 
 notliing of importance to attend to. No fresh w^ork had 
 risen npon him. There had been trouble with servants, 
 &c. The establishment at Cheyne Row consisted of a 
 single maid-of-all-work, and to find a woman who would 
 take such a place, and yet satisfy a master and mistress so 
 sensitive to disorder, material or moral, was no easy mat- 
 ter. Mrs. Carlyle has related her afflictions on this score ; 
 just then they had been particularly severe, and she had 
 been worried into illness. The 'fame' from ' Cromwell' 
 had made Carlyle himself a greater object of curiosity than 
 ever. He did not like being an object of curiosity. 
 
 October 8, 1846. 
 Yesternight (he says) there came a bevy of Americans from 
 Emerson, one Margaret Fuller, the chief figure of them, a strange 
 lilting lean old maid, not nearly such a bore as I expected. Miss 
 Martineau was here and is gone — to Norwich, after which to Egypt 
 — broken into utter wearisomeness, a mind reduced to these three 
 elements : Imbecility, Dogmatism, and Unlimited Hope. I never 
 in my life was more heartily bored with any creature. 
 
 Margaret Fuller, then on her way to Italy to be married 
 to a Count Ossoli there, and to be afterwards tragically 
 drowned, has left an account of this meeting with Carlyle, 
 and being an external view of him and by a clever woman 
 it deserves a place here. Her first evening at Cheyiu 
 Row, she says, ' delighted ' her. Carlyle ' was in a very 
 sweet humour, full of wit and pathos, without being over- 
 bearing and oppressive.' She was ' carried away with the 
 rich flow of his discourse ; and the hearty noble earnest- 
 ness of his personal being brought back the charm which 
 was once upon his writing before she wearied of it.' She 
 admired his Scotch dialect, 'his way of singing his great 
 full sentences so that each one was like the stanza of a 
 
Margaret Fuller, 343 
 
 narrative ballad.' *He talked of the present state of 
 things in England, giving light witty sketches of the men 
 of the day ; and some sweet homely stories he told of 
 things he had known among the Scotch peasantry. . . . 
 There was never anything so w^tty as his description of 
 
 . It was enough to kill one with laughing.' ' Nor 
 
 was he ashamed to laugh himself when he was amused ; ' 
 ' he went on in a cordial human fashion.' 
 
 On a second visit the humour was less sweet, though 
 * more brilliant,' and Miss Fuller was obliged to disagree 
 with everything that he said. 
 
 The worst of hearing Carljle (she savs, and she is very correct 
 in this) is that you cannot interrupt him. I understand the habit 
 and power of haranguing have increased veiy much upon him, so 
 that you are a perfect prisoner when he has once got hold of you. 
 To internipt him is a physical impossibility. If you get a chance 
 to remonstrate for a moment, he raises his voice and bears you 
 down. True he does you no injustice, and with his admirable 
 penetration sees the disclaimer in your mind, so that you are not 
 morally delinquent ; but it is not pleasant to be unable to utter it. 
 
 This was not the last meeting, for the Carlyles in turn 
 spent an evening with their new American acquaintances. 
 Mazzini was there, w4iom Miss Fuller admired especially, 
 and had perceived also to be ' a dear friend of Mrs. Car- 
 lyle.' 'Mazzini's presence,' she writes, 'turned the con- 
 versation to Progress and ideal subjects, and Carlyle was 
 fluent in invectives on " rosewater imbecilities." Mazzini. 
 after some eflForts to remonstrate, became very sad.' Mrs. 
 Carlyle said to Miss Fuller : ' These are but opinions to 
 Carlyle ; but to Mazzini, who has given his all, and helped 
 to bring his friends to the scaffold in pursuit of such ob- 
 jects, it is matter of life and death.' 
 
 All Carlyle's talk that evening (she goes on) was a defence of 
 mere force, success the test of right. If people would not behave 
 well, put collars round their necks. Find a hero, and let them be 
 his slaves. It was veiy Titanic and Anticelestial. I wish the last 
 
344: Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 evening had been more melodious. However, I bade Carlyle fare- 
 well with feelings of the warmest friendship and admiration. We 
 cannot feel otherwise to a great and noble nature, whether it har- 
 monise with one's own or not. I never appreciated the work he 
 has done for his age till I saw England — I could not. You must 
 stand in the shadow of that mountain of Shams to know how hard 
 it is to cast light across it. 
 
 Cheyiie Row being made •ancomfortable by change of 
 servants, an invitation to Carljle and his wife to stay at 
 the Grange was accepted without objection on either side. 
 Objections on that score were not to be raised any more. 
 Mrs. Carlyle liked old Lord and Lady Aslibnrton well, 
 and the Grange was one of the pleasantest houses in Eng- 
 land. But it proved to be one of the great autumn 
 gatherings wdiich were a mere reproduction of London so- 
 ciety. The visit lasted a fortnight, and gave little pleas- 
 ure to either of them. The men were shooting all day ; 
 the women dispersed to their rooms in the forenoon, met 
 at luncheon, strolled or rode in the afternoon ; none of 
 them did anything, and Carlyle was a fish out of water. 
 He says : — 
 
 It was a strange nightmare of smoke and flame, indigestion and 
 Do-nothingism, which I was very willing to see end. We had 
 many people there, nearly all insignificant except by their man- 
 ners and rank. Old Rogers stayed the longest, indeed as long as 
 ourselves. I do not remember any old man (he is now eighty- 
 three) whose manner of living gave me less satisfaction. A most 
 sorrowful, distressing, distracted old phenomenon, hovering over 
 the rim of deep eternities with nothing but light babble, fatuity, 
 vanity, and the frostiest London wit in his mouth. Sometimes I 
 felt as if I could throttle him, the poor old wretch ! but then sud- 
 denly I reflected ' it is but for two days more.' Pity the sorrows 
 of a poor old man ! Lady Harriet lived mostly in her own apart- 
 ments, dined at another hour than we, and, except at breakfast and 
 tea, did not much appear. 
 
 The Grange was Lord Ashburton's, his son, Mr. Bar- 
 ing, and Lady Harriet living (as has been seen), when not 
 
The Grange. M5 
 
 in London or Addiscombe, at Bay House, near Alverstoke. 
 Mrs. Carlyle, after the Grange visit, became very ill, con- 
 fined to bed for three weeks with cough and incessant 
 headache. The new servant did not understand her busi- 
 ness. Carlyle himself was ' totally idle, trying merely to 
 read books, and the books a disgust to him.' Lady Har- 
 riet, when Mrs. Carlyle became able to move, proposed 
 that she and her husband should spend a month with her 
 at Bay House for change of air. Mr. Baring had many 
 engagements, and for part of the time she would be 
 alone. Carlyle, writing to his brother about it, said * that 
 he did not regard this scheme as quite unquestionable, and 
 80 liad rather held back, but Jane having engaged for it 
 would go through with the affair.' Lady Harriet was 
 most attentive ; she secured them a separate compartment 
 on the railway. Her carriage was waiting at the station 
 with rugs, wrappings, and hot-water bottles. They went 
 in tlie middle of January. On the 2Sth Carlyle wTOte : — 
 
 We have terribly windy weather here, otherwise genial and of 
 mild temperatiu'e. We are doing veiy tolerably well. In the end 
 of last week Jane took sore throat, and for three days she had a 
 very bad time of it ; but now the disorder is quite gone, and she 
 18 visibly better than before for a long time past. I myself do 
 little reading, little of anything, rove about in silence among the 
 whins and shingle beaches here, and I suppose shall get profit in 
 the long run. 
 
 February brought other visitors, Buller, Milnes, &c. 
 Lady Anne Charteris, who lived near Bay House, came 
 often to sit with Mrs. Carlyle and play chess with her. 
 On the 15th, when the month was near out, he could send 
 a good account to his mother. 
 
 To Margaret Carlyle^ Scotsbrig. 
 
 Bay House : Feb. 15, 1847. 
 Jane has greatly improved in health ; indeed she is now about 
 as well as usual, and wo hope may now do well henceforth. I 
 myself expect if we were home again to feel somewhat better. 
 
346 Cadyle^s Life in London. 
 
 Certainly I ought to be so : for I have gone bone idle these four 
 weeks and more, and have been well done to every way. But the 
 great tumult of servants and equipments here considerably con- 
 fuses me always while it lasts. ... I have passed great part 
 of my time alcnie, wandering in silence by the shore of the sea, or 
 among the shallow lanes up and down, which is not an unprofit- 
 able thing either in its course. The memory of many things which 
 it were not good at all to forget rises with strange clearness on me 
 in these solitudes, very touching, very sad, out of the depths of 
 the old dead years. Oh ! my dear old mother, what a stupendous 
 thing is this human life, that we live in many cases as if it were of 
 no consequence ! "When I think of those old dear ones that are 
 with God, and how we shall all soon be there ourselves, I have no 
 word to say.^ 
 
 Ireland weighed heavily on his thonglits. Each post 
 brought news this spring of a land stricken with death. 
 He had seen the place, and could realise what was passing 
 there. Tens of thousands were perishing, and the wretched 
 people, having lost their potatoes, were refusing even to 
 plough. 'Wh}^,' they asked, 'should they raise a crop, 
 when the landlords would come and take it all ? ' The 
 Government would be obliojed to feed them, whether tliev 
 worked or not. ' I^ever,' he cried, ' was there such a scene 
 as Ireland.' He longed to write something on it, but felt 
 that he did not yet see through the problem. Kay, he 
 believed an equal catastrophe lay. over England herself, 
 if she did not mend her ways. It was to this that lie 
 must next direct himself, when he could determine how ; 
 but there was no longer any immediate need to write any- 
 thing. He would pause and consider. 'Frederick' was 
 still far off, nearer subjects were more pressing. 
 
 To Margaret Carlyle, Scotshrig. 
 
 Chelsea : March 8, 1847. 
 In the way of putting pen to paper I am still altogether inac- 
 tive, and decline every offer made to me by such poor hawkers as 
 call on me by chance for that object ; but in the way of sorting 
 » The remainder of this letter is missing. 
 
Vi»U from Chalmers. 347 
 
 the abstruse confusions within my own self (which I suppose ia 
 the first condition of wiiting to any puipose) I have plenty to 'do ; 
 and for doing it I find one good condition is to hold your tongue^ if 
 you can. Happily I now can. My poor books bring me in a little 
 money now to fill the me^l barrel eveiy year, and the wealth of all 
 the Bank of England is daily a smaller and smaller object to me ; 
 indeed it is long since well near no object at all, which is perhap.v; 
 a Yer\' good definition of being extremely rich, the * richest author 
 in Britain ' at present. I think I shall hold my tongue for a pretty 
 while yet ; and then, if I live, there will another word perhajjs be 
 found in me which I shall be obliged to speak — a teriibly hard 
 job when it comes. I read books, but seldom find any that con- 
 tain what I want. Indeed, one's busiest time is often when alto- 
 gether silent and quiescent, if one can stand to that rightly. 
 
 In a postscript to this letter lie enclosed a five-poimd 
 note, part of which his mother was to give, if she liked, to 
 *Jeiinj' as a present from lierself, that his sister miglit 
 not feel too heavily obliged to liim — one of liis character- 
 istic bits of fine delicacy. In return came hams, butter, 
 &c., from Scotsbrig, unceasing and affectionate exchanges. 
 The months went by. The season brought its usual dis- 
 tractions, but he stayed mostly at home. 
 
 London (he wrote on May 21) is an awful whirl this month, but 
 we try to have but little to do with it — nothing for most part but 
 a glimpse at it once a day, and a thankful return out of the noise 
 and discord back to the river-side here, and to the sight of coun- 
 try fields and the company chiefly of books and one's own thoughts 
 again. . . . We had a flying \isit from Jeffrey last week. He 
 has been in the Isle of Wight and other regions hereabouts for 
 health's sake. He was just then on his way for Edinburgh again, 
 looking thin, but brisk enough, scarcely a little more serious as he 
 grows older, in fact the same old man. We are always very happy 
 with him for a 'little, but could not stand it long, I think, without 
 coming upon innumerable points of discrepancy. A much moro 
 interesting visitor than Jeffrey was old Dr. Chalmers, who came 
 down to us also last week, whom I had not seen before for, I think, 
 five-and-twenty years. It was a pathetic meeting. The good old 
 man is grown white-headed, but is otherwise wonderfully little al- 
 tered—grave, deliberate, very gentle in his deportment, but with 
 
34r8 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 plenty too of soft energy ; full of interest still for all serious things, 
 full of real kindliness, and sensible even to honest mirth in a fair 
 measure. He sate with us an hour and a half, went away with our 
 blessings and affections. It is long since I have spoken to so good 
 and really pious-hearted and beautiful old man. 
 
 Chalmers had never forgotten Carlyle, whom he liad 
 seen long before with Irving at Glasgow. lie had watched 
 his progress, recognised the essential piety of his nature 
 under the forms of heterodoxy, and in 'Cromwell' had 
 seen a noble addition to the worthy kind of English lit- 
 erature. He had gone to Cheyne Eow to express his feel- 
 ings, and look once more on Carlyle's face. Neither he 
 nor his host guessed then how near he stood to the end of 
 his pilgrimage. 
 
 To Margaret Carlyle^ Scotsbrig. 
 
 Chelsea : June 19, 1847. 
 I mentioned to you that Dr. Chalmers had seen us here for an 
 hour one day, and how interesting it was. We thought we had 
 hardly ever seen a finer-looking old man, so peaceable, so hopeful, 
 modest, pious. You have since heard of his sudden call from this 
 world. I believe there is not in all Scotland, or all Europe, any 
 such Christian priest left. It will long be memorable to us, the 
 little visit we had from him. x4nd O'Connell, too, the wretched 
 blustering quack, is dead ; died with his mouth full of supersti- 
 tious nonsense, among other things. Unfortunate old man ! on 
 what side could he look with clearness of hope ? He had been 
 lying, as no good man ever does or did, openly for fifty years, 
 preaching to the Irish that they were just about to get Repeal from 
 the English and become a glorious people — being indeed noble 
 men at bottom, though to all appearance blackguards and lying 
 slaves — and he leaves them sinking into universal wreck, and 
 nothing but their connection with England between the whole 
 mass of them and black death. To him for one I will not raise a 
 monument. . 
 
 With the hot weather came a visit to Addiscombe — 
 visits to the Barings, at one place or another, continually 
 recurring, in which Mrs. Carlyle was as often as possible 
 
Literature as a Profession, 349 
 
 included. There is nothing to be said, save that Lady 
 Harriet's attentions to her were unremitting. Carlyle 
 himself was still what he called idle, i.e., incessantly read- 
 ing all kinds of books, and watching the signs of the 
 times. Of books freshly coming out he read, among 
 others, Maurice's * Religions of the World,' on which he 
 wrote to Maurice with warm compliments. Another let- 
 ter written this summer is worth quoting for the advice it 
 contains to young men wishing to make literature their 
 profession. Some stranger from Manchester had writ- 
 ten to consult him. Having time on his hands, he sent 
 this reply : — 
 
 Chelsea: July, 1847. 
 My dear Sir,— Unluckily it is not possible to answer your main 
 inquiry. The incomes of literary men even of a high reputation 
 vary, according as the men work for popularity by itself, or for 
 other objects, from 4,000/. a year to perhaps 200/. or lower. Add to 
 which that all such incomes are uncertain, fluctuating on the wildest 
 chance, and that not one litei-aiy man in the hundred ever becomes 
 popular or successful at all. You perceive it is like asking what 
 may be the income of a man that shall decide to live by gambling. 
 No answer to be given. Reporters to the daily papers, whose in- 
 dustry is the humblest of all real or wnsei-vile kinds in literature, 
 receive, as I have heard, about 200/. a year. Perhaps, all things 
 considered, a man of sense, reduced to live by writing, would de- ■ 
 cide that, in the economical respect, these men's position was 
 actually the best. By quitting reality again, and taking in to 
 some popular department of literaiy rnpe-clanc'ing, a person of real 
 toughness and assiduity, not ashamed to feel himself a slave, but 
 able even to think himself /ree and a king in rope-dancing well paidy 
 contrives, with moderate talent otherwise, if he be really tough and 
 assiduous, to gain sometimes considerable wages ; in other cases 
 dies of heartbreak, drinking, and starvation. That really is his 
 economic position, so far as I have seen it. But for a man really 
 intent to do a maiCs work in litei*ature in these times, I should say 
 that even with the highest talent he might have to be fed often- 
 times like Elijah, by the ravens ; and if his talent, tliough real, was 
 not very high, ho might easily see himself cut off from wages alto- 
 gether ; all men saying to him, * The thing you have to offer ns is, 
 
350 Carlyl^s Life in Lo7idon. 
 
 in the supply and demand market, worth nothing whatever.' Such 
 a man as that latter, if he could live at all, I should account him 
 lucky. 
 
 This, my generous young friend, this is the sad No answer I have 
 to give you — a sad but a true one. The advice I ground on it you 
 already discover — Not by any means to quit the solid paths of 
 practical business for these inane froth oceans which, however gas- 
 lighted they may be, are essentially what I have called them some- 
 where, base as Fleet Ditch, the mother of dead dogs. Surely it is 
 better for a man to work out his God-given faculty than merely to 
 speak it out, even in the most Augustan times. Surely of all places 
 in this planet the place where the gods do most need a working 
 man of genius is Manchester, a place sunk in sordid darkness of 
 every kind except the glitter of gold, and which, if it were once 
 irradiated, might become one of the beautifullest things this sun 
 has ever seen. Believe me yours, with real good will, 
 
 Kinder than it looks, 
 
 T. Caelyle. 
 
 He was himself to see Manchester this summer, and per- 
 haps his correspondent there. At the end of July he took 
 his wife to Matlock for change of air. At Matlock they 
 were joined by the now famous W. E. Forster, then one 
 of his ardent admirers, and accompanied him to his house 
 at Rawdon, whence Carlyle sent his mother, as usual, an 
 account of his adventures, which is curious as showing his 
 habits of observation and the objects which most interested 
 him. He had seen all the watering-places, the wonders of 
 wonders in Derbyshire, ' the Devil's-i-Peak,' ' the horrid 
 cavern so called,' &c. 
 
 Among the sights (he says) was that of a lone old woman living 
 literally like a rabbit, burrowed under ground. This was near 
 Buxton, a sight worth remembering. There are huge quarries of 
 lime there ; the rubbish, ashes of the kilns, &c., when many years 
 exposed to the weather, hardens into real stone, and is then a kind 
 of rocky moleheap of large dimensions, with grass on the top. 
 The natives then scrape out the inside, and make a cottage of the 
 upper crust! There are five or six such huts in that place, and 
 used to be more. This poor old woman and her hut were all as 
 
A Sight at Bxixtoii, 351 
 
 tidy as a new pin, whitewashed, scoured, &c. ; a most sensible, 
 haughty, and even dignified old woman ; had been bom there, had 
 lost father, mother, husband, son there, and was drinking her poor 
 tea there in dignified solitude when we came, no company with her 
 but a cat, and no wish to have any, she said, ' till the Lord was 
 pleased to take her to those she had lost.' An elder sister, ui> 
 wards of fourscore, inhabiting with some children and gi-andchil- 
 dren a similar cave not far off, had just fallen into the fire and 
 been burnt to death two days before. None of us, I think, will 
 ever forget that poor old woman, with her little teapot, her neat 
 midch and black libbon, her lean hook nose and black old eyes as 
 sharp as eagles'. We left a shilling with her and gieat respect, 
 and came our way. 
 
 He might now have liad his choice among the great 
 liouses of tiie land if he had cared to visit them, but lie 
 steadily reserved every available autumn for liis mother. 
 The week at Rawdon being over, his wife went home, and 
 he made for Scotsbrig, pausing at Manchester with Miss 
 Jewsbury and her brother Frank to see iron works and 
 cotton mills ; to talk with some of the leaders of the work- 
 ing men, who were studying liis writings with passionate 
 interest, and himself to be stared at in the Jewsbury draw- 
 ing-room by the idle and curious. The most interesting 
 of his Manchester adventures was a day at Rochdale, when 
 he made acquaintance with Mr. Jacob Brighj and his dis- 
 tinguished brother. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Scotsbrig : September 13, 1847. 
 
 The mills ! oh the fetid, fuzzy, ill-ventilated mills ! And in 
 Sharp's cyclopean smithy ' do you remember the poor * grinders ' 
 sitting underground in a damp dark place, some dozen of them, 
 over their screeching stone cylinders, from every cylinder a sheet 
 of yellow ^7-e issuing, the principal light of the place? And the 
 men, I was told, and they themselves knew it, and ' did not mind 
 it,' were all or mostly An7/erf before their time, their Inngs being 
 ruined by the metal and stone dust ! Those poor fellows, in their 
 paper caps with their roaring grindstones, and theii* yellow ori' 
 * Mrs. Carlyle bad been there ia a previuus year. 
 
352 Ca/rlyle's Life in London, 
 
 Jiainmes of fire, all grinding themselves so quietly to death, will 
 never go out of my memory. In signing my name, as I was made 
 to do, on quitting that Sharp establishment, whose name think 
 you stood next, to be succeeded by mine ? In a fine flowing char- 
 acter, Jenny Lind's ! Dickens and the other Player Squadron (want- 
 ing Forster, I think) stood on the same page. 
 
 I will tell you about Bright and Brightdom, and the Eochdale 
 Bright mill some other day. Jacob Bright, the younger man, and 
 actual manager at Rochdale, rather pleased me — a kind of delicacy 
 in his features when you saw them by daylight— at all events, a 
 decided element of ' hero-worship,' which of course went for much. 
 But John Bright, the Anti-Cornlaw member, who had come across 
 to meet me, with his cock nose and pugnacious eyes and Barclay- 
 Fox-Quaker collar — John and I discorded in our views not a little. 
 And, in fact, the result was that I got to talking occasionally in 
 the Annandale accent, and communicated large masses of my 
 views to the Brights and Brightesses, and shook peaceable Bright- 
 dom as with a passing earthquake ; and, I doubt, left a very ques- 
 tionable impression of myself there ! The poor young ladies 
 (Quaker or ex-Quaker), with their ' abolition of Capital Punish- 
 ment ' — Ach Gott ! I had great remorse of it all that evening ; but 
 now begin almost to think I served them right. Any way we can- 
 not help it ; so there it, and Lancashire in general, may lie for tlie 
 present. 
 
 At Scotsbrig, when he reached it, he sank into what he 
 called ' stagnation and magnetic sleep.' ' Grej hazj dispirit- 
 ment, lit for nothing but tobacco and silence.' In his own 
 country he was as solitary as in a foreign land, and had 
 more than ever the feelings of a ghost. Even with his 
 mother he could talk less freely than usual, for he found 
 her ' teri-ibly sensitive on the Semitic side of things,' and 
 lie was beginning to think that he must write something 
 about that — the ' Exodus from lioundsditch,' as he termed 
 it, being a first essential step towards all improvement. 
 The news from Ireland disgusted him, 'Meagher of the 
 Sword ' talking open treason. 
 
 I think (he said) the native people are ripening towards rebel- 
 lion, and are not unlikely some of them to get hanged before all 
 
Mrs, Carlyle at Addwcomhe, 353 
 
 end. Oh that illustrious O'Connell ! how fast his lies, like dragons' 
 teeth, are sprouting up into armed and mad men ! The wonder- 
 fullest benefaction he that oven this foolish age has crowned with 
 vivats and welcomed as one sent from heaven I 
 
 lie wandered about the moors at night, ' tlie driving 
 clonds and moaning winds his only company.' Even these 
 were not impressive, 'for his heart was sunk into its cell, 
 and refused to be impressed.' He ' said silently to tlie 
 muddy universe, Yes, thou art there then ; the fact is no 
 better than so. Let me recognize the fact, and admit it 
 and adopt it.' 
 
 lie had reasons for uneasiness besides the state of the 
 universe. His wife had been ill again. Lady Harriet 
 Baring, hearing she was alone in Cheyne Row, had carried 
 her off to Addiscombe, and little guessing the state of her 
 mind, and under the impression that slie was hypochon- 
 driacal, had put her under a course of bracing. She 
 wanted wine when she was exhausted ; Lady Harriet 
 thought wine unwholesome. Slie was not allowed to go 
 to bed when tortured witli headache. She suffered from 
 cold, and liglited a fire in her bedroom. Fires were not 
 allowed at Addiscombe so early in the autumn, and the 
 housemaid removed the coals. Lady Harriet meant only 
 to be kind, but was herself heaping fuel on a fire of a more 
 dangerous sort. Carlyle himself was relieved when he 
 lieard that * she was at home again, out of that constrained 
 lodging.' * My mother's rage,' he wrote, ' has been con- 
 siderable ever since she heard of it ; " that the puir creature 
 could na get a bit fire ! not so much as a bit of fire for a' 
 their grandeur.'" Money, if you exclude better things 
 which are apt to go with the want of it, is of small value 
 to the possessor or others. True enough ! but one asks 
 with wonder why he could not tell Lady Harriet plainly 
 that, if she wished for his wife's friendship, she must treat 
 her differently ; why he insisted on the continuance of an 
 Vol. III.— 23 
 
354 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 intimacy which could never become an affectionate one, 
 instead of accepting and adopting the facts, as a condition 
 of the mud in the universe. His mother was full of tender- 
 ness for her forlorn daughter-in-law. She insisted, when 
 Carljle was going home, on sending her ' a pair of coarse 
 knit stockings ' by him, ' though he said she would never 
 wear them, and two missionary narratives, which even he 
 could not be persuaded to read.' He was to write his 
 wife's name in them at Chelsea, and say, ' from her old, 
 withered mother.' 
 
 Two bad nights before his departure sent him off in a 
 dreary condition. ' Ah me ! ' he exclaimed, 'my poor old 
 mother, poor old Annandale, poor old life in general ; and 
 in this shattered state of nerves all stands before one with 
 such a glaring ghastliness of hideous reality.' 
 
 It is curious that a man with such powerful practical 
 sense should have indulged such feelings. It was ' the 
 nature of the beast,' as he often said, but he was evidently 
 much disturbed. He was at home by the second week in 
 October, where an unexpected pleasure was waiting for 
 him. His friend Emerson had arrived from Boston. 
 Between Emerson and him there had been affectionate 
 correspondence ever since they had met at Craigenputtock. 
 Emerson had arranged for the publication of his books in 
 the United States, and had made his rights respected 
 there. He in tirrn had introduced Emerson's Essays to 
 the English world by a preface, and now Emerson had 
 come in person to show himself as a lecturer on English 
 platforms. I remember this visit. I already knew Emer- 
 son by his writings ; I then learned to know him person- 
 ally, for he came to see us at Oxford, and his conversation, 
 perhaps unknown to himself, had an influence on my after 
 life. On his first landing he was a guest at Clieyne Row, 
 and then went away to Manchester. ' I rather think,' 
 Carlyle wrote shortly after, 'his popularity is not very 
 
Eineraon, 355 
 
 great hitherto. His doctrines are too airy and thin for 
 the solid practical lieads of the Lancashire region. We 
 had immense talking with him here, hut found he did not 
 give us much to chew the cud upon — found, in fact, that 
 he came with the rake rather than the shovel. He is a 
 pure high-minded man, hut I thhik his talent is not quite 
 so high as 1 had anticipated.' 
 
 A far more important thing was what Carlyle was next 
 to do himself, for as long as he was idle he was certain to 
 he miserable — and he had been idle now for more than a 
 year. He brought out another edition of his ' Miscel- 
 lanies ' this autumn. 
 
 These books of mine, poor things ! (he said, in sending his 
 mother a copy) bring me in some money now, like cows that give 
 a drop of milk at last, though they had a temble time of it as 
 calves. Let us be thankful. It is better to have one's evil days 
 when one is young than when one is old. 
 
 The ' French Revolution ' was going into another edition 
 also. For this and the ^ Miscellanies ' he was paid 600^. 
 So that he could say : — 
 
 I am pretty well in funds at present, not chased about as I used 
 to be by the haggard Shade of Beggaiy, which is a great relief to 
 me. I am very thankful for my poverty, and for my deliverance 
 from it in good time. 
 
 In January came an indispensable visit to the Barings. 
 Mrs. Carlyle was to have gone, and they were to have 
 stayed four weeks ; but the wintei- was cold ; she was 
 feeble, and afraid of a chill. Wish to go she of course had 
 none ; and though Lady Harriet wrote warmly pressing 
 letters, she insisted on remaining at home. Carlyle went, 
 but if he describes his condition correctly, he could hardly 
 have been an agreeable guest. For him there was no 
 peace but in work, and life in such houses was organised 
 idleness. To his mother he speaks of himself as wander- 
 ing disconsolately on the shore watching the gangs of 
 
356 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 Portsmoutli convicts ; to his wife as ' unslept, dyspeptic, 
 bewildered.' 
 
 Ach Gott! (he writes to lier). Why do I complain to poor thee, 
 confined to thy own bed at present ? Well, I will not complain. 
 Only, if you had been strong, I would have told you how very weak 
 lid wretched I was. Some time about three, I think, I got asleep 
 ufier bathing, woke again some time after five, went out of doors 
 to smoke, had slept about three minutes more when the valet, with 
 his brushed clothes, started me up again, and there it ended. 
 That is my history, an excuse at least for incoherent writing. In 
 fact, if it were not for my own consolation— for I know thou lovest 
 me in spite of thy harsluiesses and mistrusts — I think I need not 
 have written at all. It seemed to me last night with triple and ten- 
 fold emphasis what it has all along seemed, that I had been much 
 better in my own bed at Chelsea. 
 
 He was worried, lie said, with ' the idleness, the folly, 
 the cackling and noise.' Milnes was his best resource. 
 Milnes had come, and the Taylors and Bullers and Bear 
 Ellice, and the usual circle ; but it would not do. He was 
 sickly, dispirited, unwell. 
 
 I have (he said) with less suffering and exertion compassed the 
 attendance of six college classes in my time. Perhaps there is a 
 lesson in this. Nay, doubtless there is, and I hope I shall learn 
 it, for the fees are not inconsiderable. My reflections in my few 
 hours of solitude in the early mornings, amid the tramj^lings and 
 trottings, ought to be of a didactic nature. 
 
 Again a little later : — 
 
 For me, I feel as if it were little I had got here, or were likely 
 to get, but a huge nightmare of indigestion, insomnia, and fits of 
 black impatience with myself and others — self chiefly. ... I 
 am heartily sick of my dyspeptic bewilderment and imprisonment. 
 Something beautiful and good is in the heart of the thing too, but 
 it is clearly not for me (at least so seems it) to unravel and get hold 
 
 of. says little except elaborate nothingness to the women, or 
 
 with solemnity reads Shakespeare. We are a pretty society, but a 
 distracted one. Ten days of such, with a cold to helj), is about 
 enough, I guess. 
 
Sterling. 357 
 
 Enougli it proved ; he could stand no more of it, and 
 fled home. But it is impossible not to ask ' What was 
 Carlyle doing in such a galley ? ' Why was he there at 
 all ? It is with real relief that I approach the end of the 
 half-enchanted state into which he had fallen after 'Crom- 
 well.' It had been a trying time, boih for his wife and 
 for him. The next letter, written after he had got back 
 f i-om Bay House, gives the first glimpses of intended fresh 
 occupation. 
 
 To Margaret Carlyle^ Scotsbrig. 
 
 Chelsea : Feb. 12, 1848. 
 
 Jane has had rather a wearisome bout of it ; never veiy ill, but 
 feeble, coughing, and quite unable to front the bad season with 
 any freedom. She got out of her room about a week ago, went 
 and had a short walk in the streets one day, but has never ven- 
 tured out since, the weather, though bright, having grown a little 
 frosty. She stirs about the house now, and her cough is well nigh 
 quite gone. If the sun were fairly on his feet, she too will be re- 
 established, I think. ... A book consisting of my poor friend 
 John Sterling's scattered writings has just come out, edited by one 
 Julius Hare, an Archdeacon, soon to be a Bishop, they say ; a good 
 man, but rather a weak ODe, with a Life of Sterling which by no 
 means contents me altogether. Probably one of my first tsisks will 
 be something in reference to this work of poor Sterling's ; for he 
 left it in charge to me too, and I surrendered my share of the task 
 to the Archdeacon, being so busy with * Cromwell ' at the time. 
 But I am bound by very sacred considerations to keep a sharp eye 
 over it, and will consider what can now be done.' Sterling was a 
 noble creature, but had too little patience, and indeed too thin 
 and sick a constitution of hodyy to turn his fine gifts to the best 
 account. 
 
 The Parliament has come back, and the town, especially our 
 Western quarter of it, is getting very loud with carriages and popu- 
 lation again. But we hitherto have little to do with all that. 
 There has been, as you might see, much vain controversy about a 
 
 ' Emerson told me that in the summer of this year 1848 he and Carlyle 
 talked over this subject. They concluded that Sterling was too considerable 
 a man to be set up as a 'theological cockshy,' and that either Carlyle or he 
 himself must write a true account of him. 
 
358 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 certain very useless Dr. Hampden and his being made a bishop 
 against the will of some. Nothing could seem to me more entirely 
 contemptible and deplorable than the whole figure of that thing 
 has been. Now they are for getting Jews into Parliament. For 
 the ' Jew Bill,' too, I would not give half a snuff of tobacco, for or 
 against. We will leave that too, and much else, to fight its own 
 battle. 
 
 He does not tell liis mother, as he might have done in 
 this last paragraph, that he had been invited to take a share 
 in that battle. I tell the story as he told it to me. Some 
 time while the Jew Bill was before Parliament, and the 
 fate of it doubtful. Baron Rothschild wrote to ask him to 
 write a pamphlet in its favour, and intimated that he might 
 name any sum which he liked to ask as payment. 1 in- 
 quired how he had answered. ' Well,' he said, ' I had to 
 tell him it couldn't be; but I observed, too, that I could 
 not conceive why he and his friends, who were supposed 
 to be looking out for the coming of Shiloh, should be 
 seeking seats in a Gentile legislature.' I asked what 
 Baron liothschild had said to that. ' Why,' Carlyle said, 
 ' he seemed to think the coming of Shiloh was a dubious 
 business, and that meanwhile, &c. &c.' 
 
 The Journal had remained almost a blank for four years, 
 only a few trifling notes having been jotted down in it, 
 but it now contains a long and extremely interesting entry. 
 Tlie real Carlyle is to be especially looked for in this book, 
 for it contains his dialogues with his own heart. 
 
 Journals 
 
 Feb. 9, 1848. — Chapman's money' all paid, lodged now in the 
 Dumfries Bank. New edition of * Sartor ' to be wanted soon. My 
 poor books of late have yielded me a certain fluctuating annual in- 
 come ; at all events, I am quite at my ease as to money, and that 
 on such low terms. I often wonder at the luxurious ways of the 
 age. Some 1,500/., I think, is what has accumulated in the bank. 
 Of fixed income (from Craigenputtock) 150/. a year. Perhaps as* 
 
 * Chapman <fe Hall, now Carlyle's publishers. 
 
Notes in Jaunial. 359 
 
 mnch from my books may lie fixed amid the huge fluctuation 
 (last year, for instance, it was 800/. ; the year before 100/. ; the 
 year before that about 700/. ; this year again it is like to be 100/. ; 
 the next perhaps nothing — very fluctuating indeed) — some 300/. in 
 all, and that amply suflices me. For my wife is the best of house- 
 wives ; noble, too, in reference to the property which is hei's, whicli 
 she has never once in the most distant way seemed to know to be 
 hers. Be this noted and remembered ; my thrifty little lady — 
 every inch a lady— ah me ! In short, I authentically feel indiffer- 
 ent to monfey, would not go this way or that to gain more money. 
 So do the Destinies reward us ; not in the way we expected, but 
 in a far dinner way. They do make us rich if we have desers'ed 
 to be so. How rich, for example, is Hudson, King of Railways ? 
 For certain quantities of yellow metal you can still command him 
 to go lower than any shoeblack goes, to make himself an unhang- 
 able swindlei' namely. That, I understand, as it was explained to 
 me, has been and is the intrinsic nature of many of his operations. 
 In sane hours I sometimes feel a pious thankfulness on the eco- 
 nomic side. 
 
 For above two years now I have been as good as totally idle, 
 composedly lying fallow. It is frightful to think of ! After get- 
 ting out of * Cromwell,* my whole being seemed to say, more 
 sulkily, more weariedly than ever before, * What good is it ? * I 
 am wearied and near heartbroken. Nobody on the whole ' believes 
 my report.* The friendliest reviewers, I can see, regard me as a 
 wonderful athlete, a ropedancer whose perilous somersets it is 
 worth sixpence (paid into the Circulating Library) to see ; or at 
 most I seem to them a desperate half mad, if usefullish fireman, 
 rushing along the ridge tiles in a frightful manner to quench the 
 burning chimney. Not one of them all can or will do the least to 
 help me. The blockheads ! A snuff of tobacco for them and 
 their eulogies too ! This is what they and their sweet voices are 
 worth. Neither does Art, &c., in the smallest hold out with me. 
 In fact, that concern has all gone do'vsTi with me, like ice too thin 
 on a muddy pond. I do not believe in " Art " — nay, I do believe 
 it to be one of the deadliest cants ; swallowing, it too, its heca- 
 tombs of souls. So that the world, daily growing more unspeak- 
 able in meaning to me, as well as daily more inarticulate, and I 
 quite indi.sposed to try speaking to it, the result has been silence 
 and fallow, which, unless I will go mad^ must end, as I begin to 
 see, before long. * Too much to say,' I suppose, is not so bad a 
 
360 Ca7iyle's Life in London. 
 
 complaint as ' too little ; ' but it too is very troublesome. In brief, 
 nothing is — but by labour, which we call sorrow, miseiy, &c. Thou 
 must gird up thy loins again and work another stroke or two be- 
 fore thou die. 
 
 At Alverstoke in January last, for the third time now,' and very 
 full of suffering in all ways there. Have seen a good deal of tlu^ 
 higher ranks — plenty of lords, politicians, fine ladies, &c. ^Ce:- 
 tainly a new topdressing for me that, nor attainable either withoul^ 
 l^eril. Let me see if any growth will come of it, and what. The 
 most striking conclusion to me is, how like all men of all ranks in 
 England (and doubtless in every land) intrinsically are to one an- 
 other. Our aristocracy, I rather take it, are the best, or as good 
 as any class we have ; but their position is fatally awry. Their 
 whole breeding and way of life is to go ' gracefully idle ' — most 
 tragically so ; and which of them can mend it ? X. was at Alver- 
 stoke, dull to a degree, commonplace, dogmatic, limited, product- 
 ive of very little, yet something essentially genial, true, and friendly 
 in the heart of him withal ; an honest man, precious, though with 
 only insular or even parish culture — enveloped in Southeyisms, 
 Shovel-hattisms, &c. Milnes also was there, fresh from Spain, 
 full of sophistries and socialities as usual. I was very solitary, 
 sleepless, and unhappy all the time. Came off after ten days, as 
 Jane could not risk venturing after me. , . . Alfred Tennyson 
 here sometimes lately. Gone out of town with a cer;:ain Aubrey 
 de Vere to Curragh Chase, Limerick. His * Princess, ' a gorgeous 
 piece of writing, but to me new melancholy proof of the futility of 
 what they call ' Art.' Alas ! Alfred too, I fear, will prove one of 
 the sacrificed, and in very deed it is pity.^ Emerson is now in 
 England, in the North, lecturing to Mechanics' Institutes, &c.; in 
 fact, though he knows it not, to a kind of intellectual canaille. 
 Came here and stayed with us some days on his first arrival. Very 
 exotic ; of smaller dimensions, too, and differed much from me, as 
 a gymnosophist sitting idle on a flowery bank may do from a 
 wearied worker and wrestler passing that way with many of his 
 bones broken. Good of him I could get none, excejjt from his 
 friendly looks and elevated exotic polite ways ; and he would not 
 let me sit silent for a minute. Solitary on that side, too, then ? 
 Be it so, if so it must be. But we will try a little farther. Lone- 
 
 * Carlyle mentions in one of his letters that it had been he who first set on 
 foot the requisition to the Government for Tennyson's pension. For himself 
 ha never sought a pension, nor would accept one when offered. 
 
Projects for New BooJcs. 361 
 
 lier man is not in this world that I know of. . . . No deliverance 
 from * confusion,' from pi*actical unc&i'tainty^ and all its sad train 
 of miseries and waste, is to be looked for while one continues in 
 this world. Life consists, as it were, in the sifting of huge rubbish- 
 mounds, and the choosing from them, ever with more or less error, 
 what is golden and vital to us. 
 
 Schemes of books to be now set about. 
 
 * Exodiis /ro7n Houjiclsditch.' That, alas! is impossible as yet, 
 though it is the gist of all writings and wise books, I sometimes* 
 think — the goal to be wisely aimed at as the first of all for us. 
 Out of Houndsditch, indeed ! Ah, were wo but out and had 
 our own along with us ! But they that come out hitherto come in 
 a state of brutal nakedness, scandalous mutilation ; and impartial 
 bystanders say soiTowf ully, ' Return rather, it is better even to re- 
 turn.' 
 
 * Ireland: Spiritual Sketches' Begin with St. Colm. ; end with 
 the rakes of Malloic. All lies in Spiritualism. The outer miseries 
 of Ireland, and of all lands, are nothing but the inevitable body of 
 that soul. Had I more knowledge of Ireland, I could make some- 
 thing of it in tliat foim. 
 
 * Life of John Sterling.* I really must draw up some statement 
 on that subject — some picture of a gifted soul whom I knew, and 
 who was my friend. Might not many things withal be taught in 
 the course of such a delineation ? 
 
 * The Scavenger Age.^ Chad wick's men are working in sight of 
 me daily at present at Chelsea old Church. Our age is really up 
 to nothing better than the sweeping out the gutter. Might it but 
 do that well ! It is the indispensable beginning of alL 
 
 The Exodns from Houndsditcli Carlyle saw to be then 
 impossible — impossible; and yet the essential preliminary 
 of true spiritual recovery. The ' Hebrew old clothes ' 
 were attached so closely to pious natures that to tear off 
 the wrapping would be to leave their souls to perish in 
 spiritual nakedness ; and were so bound up with the na- 
 tional moral convictions that the sense of duty could not 
 be separated from a belief in the technical inspiration of 
 the IBible. And yet Carlyle knew that it could do no 
 good to anyone to believe what was untrue ; and he knew 
 also tliafr since science had made known to us the i*eal re* 
 
362 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 lation between this globe of ours and tlie stupendous uni- 
 verse, no man whose inind and heart were sound could 
 any longer sincerely believe in the Christian creed. The 
 most that such a man could arrive at was to persuade him- 
 self by refined reasonings that it might perhaps be true, 
 that it could not be proved false, and that therefore he 
 might profess it openly from the lips outwards with a 
 clear conscience. Eut the convictions which govern the 
 practical lives of men are not remote possibilities, but con- 
 crete certainties. As long as the ' Holy Place ' in their 
 souls is left in possession of powerless opinions, they are 
 practically without God in this world. The ' wealth of 
 nations ' comes to mean material abundance, and individ- 
 ual duty an obligation to make money ; while intellect, 
 not caring to waste itself on shadows, constructs philoso- 
 phies to show that God is no necessity at all. Carlyle's 
 faith, on the other hand, was that without a spiritual be- 
 lief — a belief in a Divine Being, in the knowledge of 
 whom and obedience to whom mortal welfare alone con- 
 sisted — the human race must degenerate into brutes. He 
 longed, therefore, that the windows of the shrine should- 
 be washed clean, and the light of heaven let into it. The 
 longer the acknowledgment of the facts regarding inspira- 
 tion, &c., was delayed, the more hollow grew the estab- 
 lished creeds, the falser the professional advocates of the 
 creeds, the more ungodly the life and philosophy of the 
 world. It was said of old, ' Woe unto you, Scribes and 
 Pharisees, hypocrites ; for ye enter not in yourselves, and 
 those that would enter in ye will not suffer.' 
 
 Yes (he exclaimed), the Redeemer liveth. He is no Jew, or 
 image of a man, or surplice, or ohl creed, but the Unnameable 
 Maker of us, -voiceless, formless within our own soul, whose voice 
 ?.s every noble and genuine impulse of our souls. He is yet there, 
 in us and around us, and we are there. No Eremite or fanatic 
 whatever had more than w^e have ; how much less had most of 
 them ? 
 
Kcodus from Houndsditch, 3G3 
 
 Why, then, did he find it tmpossible to speak plainly on 
 this momentous subject ? Because, as he had said of the 
 poor priests at Bruges, because, false as they were, there 
 was notliing to take their places if they were cast out but 
 the Gospel of Progress, which was falser even than they. 
 God Himself would in due time build a new temple for 
 Himself above the ruins of the old beliefs. He himself, 
 meanwhile, would do ill to wound simple hearts like that 
 of his poor old mother. His resolution was often hardly 
 tested. Often he would exclaim fiercely against ' detest- 
 able idolatries.' Often, on the appearance of some more 
 than usuall}^ insincere episcopal manifesto, he would wish 
 the Bishops and all their works dead as Etruscan sooth- 
 sayers. But the other mood was the more prevalent. He 
 spoke to me once with loathing of Renan's ' Vie de Jesus.' 
 I asked if he thought a true life could be written. He 
 said, 'Yes, certainly, if it were right to do it ; but it is not.' 
 
 The Exodus, nevertheless, always lay before him as a 
 thing that would have to be, if men were ever to recover 
 their spiritual stature. * The ancient mythologies and 
 religions,' he says in his Journal, ' were merely religious 
 readings of the History of Antiquit}^, genial apprehensions, 
 and genial (that is, always divine) representations of the 
 events of earthly life, such as occur yet, only that we have 
 no geniality to take them up, nothing but stupidity to take 
 them up with.' 
 
 All sorrows are included in that, the fountain of degradation for 
 the modern man, who is thereby reduced to baseness in every de- 
 partment of his existence, and remains hopelessly captive and 
 caitiff till that nightmare be lifted off him. Oh, ye Colleges of 
 Ancient Art, Modem Art, High Art ! oh, ye Priest Sanhedrims ! 
 ye Modern Colleges, Royal Academies, ye Greek Nightmares, and 
 still worse Hebrew Nightmares, that press out the soul of poor 
 England and poor Europe, when will you take flight, and let us 
 have a little breath, think you ? Exodus from Houndsditch, I bo- 
 lieve, is the firat beginning of such deliveittnce. 
 
364 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 Almost forty years have passed since these words were 
 written, and we still wait to be delivered. Nay, some 
 think that we need no deliverance — avon iroTa\iMv lepwu 
 Xoypova-L irayaL The water of life is again flowing in the 
 old fountains. It may be so. The Ark of the Church 
 has been repainted and gilded and decorated, and with 
 architecture and coloured windows, and choral services, 
 and incense, and candlesticks, and symbolic uniforms for 
 mystic officiators, seemingly the dying body has been elec- 
 trified into a semblance of animation. Is this life or merely 
 galvanism ? There are other signs not favourable to the 
 pretensions of the Church revivalists. The air has cleared. 
 It is no longer a sin to say what one thinks, and power no 
 longer weights the scale in favour of orthodoxy. Forty years 
 ago the law said to a clergyman, * You shall teach what 
 the formulas prescribe, whether you believe it or not, and 
 you shall stay at your post, even though you know that 
 you disbelieve it ; for you shall enter no other profession ; 
 you shall teach this, or you shall starve.' That is gone, 
 and nmch else is gone. Men are allowed to think and 
 speak as they will without being punished by social ostra- 
 cism. Truth must stand henceforth by its own strength, 
 and what is really incredible will cease to be believed. 
 Very much of the change in this happy direction is due to 
 Carlyle's influence; in this direction, and perhaps also in 
 the other, for every serious man, of every shade of opinion, 
 had to thank him for the loud trumpet notes which had 
 awakened the age out of its sleep. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 A.D. 1848-9. ^T. 53-54. 
 
 Revolutions of February in Paris — Thoughts on Democracy — 
 London Society — Macaulay — Sir Robert Peel — Chartist peti- 
 tion, April 10 — Articles in the ' Examiner ' — Paris battles in 
 the streets — Emerson — Visit to Stonehenge — The Reaction 
 in Europe— Death of the first Lord Ashburton, and of Charles 
 BuUer — IVlazzini at Rome — King Hudson,— Arthur Clough — 
 First introduction to Carlyle — His appearance. 
 
 One or other of the subjects for a new book on which we 
 saw Carlyle to be meditating would pi-obably have been 
 now selected, when suddenly, like a bolt out of the sky, 
 came the Revolution of February 24 at Paris. Tlie other 
 nations of Europe followed suit, the kings, as Carlyle 
 expressed it, ' running about like a gang of coiners when 
 the police had come among them.' Ireland blazed out. 
 English Chartists talked of ' physical force.' The air 
 seemed charged with lightning, threatening the founda- 
 tions of modern society. So extraordinary a phenomenon 
 surprised Carlyle less than it surprised most of his con- 
 temporaries. It confirmed what he had been saying for 
 many years. The universal dungheap had caught fire 
 again. Imposture was bankrupt once more, and 'Shams' 
 this time, it was to be hoped, would be finished off in 
 earnest. He did not believe in immediate convulsion 
 in England ; but he did believe that, unless England 
 took warning and mended her ways, her turn would 
 come. 
 
366 ' Carlyle's Life in London, 
 
 Journal. 
 
 March 4, 1848.— Third French insurrection. Louis Philippe 
 flung out ; he and his entire pack, with a kind of exquisite ig- 
 nominy, 'driving off in a street cab,' the fraternity arriving here 
 in slow detail, dribbling in for a week past, all the young men 
 without their wives. Louis Phili^jpe himself, the old scoundrel, 
 is since Saturday night safe at Claremont ; came to England in an 
 old P-jacket, like King Crispin. 
 
 March 5. — Scheme of volume : Democracy. What one might 
 have to say on it ? (1) Inevitable now in all countries : regarded 
 vulgarly as the solution. Reason why it cannot be so ; something 
 farther and ultimate. (2) Terrible disadvantage of the Talking 
 Necessity ; much to be said here. What this comes from. Prop- 
 erly an insincere character of mind. (3) Follows deducible out of 
 that ! Howardlsm. Regard every Abolition Principle man as 
 your enemy, ye reft)rmers. Let them insist not that punishment 
 be abolished, but that it fall on the right heads. (4) FictionSy 
 under which head come Cants, Phantasms, i*las ! Law, Gospel, 
 Royalty itself. (5) Labour question. Necessity of government. 
 Notion of voting to all is delirium. Only the vote of the wise is 
 called for, of advantage even to the voter himself. Raj)id and in- 
 evitable progress of anarchy. Want of bearing rule in all private 
 departments of life. Melancholy remedy : ' Change as often as 
 you like.' (6) Though men insincere, not all equally so. A great 
 choice. How to know a sincere man. Be sincere yourself. Career 
 open to talent. This actually is the conclusion of the whole 
 matter. 
 
 Six things. It would make a volume. Shall I begin it ? I am 
 sick, lazy and dispirited. 
 
 The state of Europe was too interesting and too obscure 
 to permit composure for writing. For the four months 
 of that spring, the papers each morning announced some 
 fresh convulsion, and tlie coolest thinkers could only look 
 on and watcli. When the Young Ireland deputation went 
 to Paris to ask tlie Provisional Government to give a lift 
 to the Irish Republic, war with France was at one mo- 
 ment on the cards. Ledru Rollin and the advanced sec- 
 tions, knowing that if peace continued they would have to 
 
Lojulmi in the Spring of 1848. 367 
 
 reckon with the reaction, were inclined to follow the ex- 
 ample of 179^ and go in for a repnblican propagandism. 
 Carlyle's general thoughts are expressed in an interesting 
 letter to Erskine. 
 
 To Thomas Eiskine, Linlatlieii. 
 
 Chelsea : March 24, 1848. 
 
 To ns as to you this immense explosion of democracy in France, 
 and from end to end of Europe, is very remarkable and full of in- 
 terest. Certainly never in our time was there seen such a spec- 
 tacle of history as we are now to look at and assist in. I call it 
 vei-y joyful ; yet also unutterably sad. Joyful, inasmuch as we are 
 taught again that all mortals do long towards justice and veracity ; 
 that no strongest charlatan, no cunningest fox of a Louis Philippe, 
 with his great Master to \ie\\) him, can found a habitation upon 
 lies, or establish a ' throne of iniquity ' — nay, that he cannot even 
 attempt such a problem in these times any more ; which we may 
 take to be blessed news indeed, in the pass we were come to. 
 But, on the other hand, how sad that the news ahould be so new 
 (for that is really the vital point of the mischief) ; that all the 
 world, in its protest against False Government, should find no 
 remedy but that of rushing into No Government or anarchy (king- 
 lessness), which I take this republican universal suifragism to in- 
 evitably be. Happily they are not disposed to fight, at least not 
 with swords, just yet ; but abundance oi fighting (probably enough 
 in all kinds) one does see in store for them ; and long years and 
 generations of weltering confusion, miserable to contemplate, be- 
 fore anything can be settled again. Hardly since the invasion of 
 the wild Teutons and wreck of the old Roman Empire has there 
 been so strange a Europe, all turned topsy turvy, as we now see. 
 What was at the top has come, or is rapidly coming, to the 
 bottom, where indeed, such was its intrinsic quality, it deserved 
 this long while past to be. 
 
 All over London people are loud upon the French, Hdtel de 
 Ville especially ; censure universal, or light mockery ; no recogni- 
 tion among us for what of merit those poor people have in their 
 strange and perilous position at present. Right to hurl out Louis 
 Philipi^, most of us said or thought, but there I think our ap- 
 proval ended. The what next upon which the French had been 
 thinking, none of our people will seriously ask themselves. I, in 
 vain, strive to explain that this of the ' organisation of labour ' is 
 
368 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 precisely the question of questions for all governments whatsoever; 
 that it vitally behoved the poor French Provisional to attempt a 
 solution ; that by theu' present implements and methods it seems 
 impossible they should succeed ; but that they, and what is better, 
 all governments, must actually make some advance towards suc- 
 cess and solve said question more and more, or disappear swiftly 
 from the face of the earth without successors nominated. There 
 seems to me only that alternative ; and, however it may fare with 
 the French, I calculate that we here at home shall profit inexpres- 
 sibly by such an example, if we be wise to try the inevitable prob- 
 lem while it is yet time. In fact, I have a kind of notion to write 
 a book about it, I myself ; but I am not yet grown sufficiently 
 miserable to set about it straightway. Fraternity, liberty, &c., I 
 want to explain, is not the remedy at all ; but true government by 
 the wise, true, and noble-minded of the foolish, perverse, and 
 dark, with or against their consent ; which I discern to be the 
 eternal law of the world, and a rugged and severe but most blessed 
 law, terribly forgotten in the universal twaddle, insincerity, and 
 cowardly sloth of these latter times. Peace ! peace ! when there 
 is no peace ? I have, in fact, a great many things to say, far too 
 many ; and my heart is as if half-dead, and has no wish to speak 
 any more, but to lie silent, if so might be, till it sank into the 
 Divine silence, and were then at rest. Courage, however I 
 
 London parties in an * era of revolutions ' were excited 
 and exciting. The leading men came out with their opin- 
 ions with less reserve. Carlyle had frequently met Ma- 
 caulay in drawing-rooms; but they had rather avoided 
 each other. He had been much struck, many years before, 
 with the ' Essay on Milton ; ' indeed to the last he always 
 spoke respectfully of Macaulay ; but wlien two men of 
 positive temperament hold views diametrically opposite, 
 and neither can entertain even a suspicion that the other 
 may accidentally be right, conversation between them is 
 usually disagreeable. Thus they had not sought for any 
 closer acquaintance, and common friends had not tried to 
 bring them together. It happened now and then, how- 
 ever, that they were guests at the same table. 
 
Acquaintan/^ with Ped. 360 
 
 Journal. 
 
 March 14, 1848. — Friday last at Lord Mahon's to breakfast; 
 Macaulaj, Lord and Lady Ashley there, &c. Niagara of eloquent 
 commonplace talk from Macaulay. * Very good-natured man ; ' 
 man cased in official mail of proof; stood my impatient tire- 
 explosions with much patience, merely liissing a little steam up, 
 and continued his Niagara— supply and demand ; power minous 
 to powerful himself ; mpossibility of Government doing more 
 than keep the peace ; suicidal distraction of new Frenc4i republic, 
 &.C. Essentially irremediable, commonplace nature of the man ; 
 all that was in him now gone to the tongue ; a squat, thickset, low- 
 browed, short, grizzled little man of fifty. These be thy gods, oh 
 Israel ! Ashley is very stmight between the eyes — a bad form of 
 physiognomy ; otherwise a stately aristocratic-looking man. 
 
 A far more interesting meeting was with Sir Robert 
 Peel, 'one of tlie few men in England whom Carlyle had 
 any curiosity to see.' Peel had known him by sight since 
 the present of ' Cromwell,' and had given him looks of 
 recognition when they met in the streets. The Barings 
 brought about a personal acquaintance, which increased 
 till Peel's death. It began at a dinner at Bath House. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 March 27. — ^Went to the Peel enterprise ; sate next Sir Kob- 
 ert — an evening not unpleasant to remember. Peel is a finely- 
 made man of strong, not heavy, rather of elegant, stature ; stands 
 straight, head slightly thrown back, and eyelids modestly droop- 
 ing ; every way mild and gentle, yet with less of that fixed smile 
 than the portraits give him. He is towards sixty, and, though not 
 broken at all, carries, especially in his complexion, when you are 
 near him, marks of that age : clear, strong blue eyes which kindle 
 on occasion, voice extremely good, low-toned, something of cooing 
 in it, rustic, affectionate, honest, mildly persuasive. Spoke about 
 French Revolutions new and old ; well read in all that ; had seen 
 General Dumouriez ; reserved seemingly by nature, obtrudes 
 nothing of diplomatic reserve. On the contrary, a vein of mild/un 
 in him, real sensibility to the ludicrous, which feature I liked best 
 of aU. Nothing in that slight insx)ection seemed to promise better 
 Vol. m.-^ 
 
370 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 in liim than his laugh. ' Milnes Ouvrier,' ' he said to M , with 
 
 an innocent archness, in allusion to our coming revolution. * I 
 reserves myself for the toolip ' (for the mitre on the coach panel) ; 
 so said a London rioter in the Reform Bill time, when a body of 
 the rioters had been set to howl down the Lords in their coat-of- 
 j arms coaches. ' Why don't you shout ? ' cries one. * No,' answered 
 his neighbour, ' I reserves myself for the toolip. ' They say this is 
 a common story of Peel's. He told it very well, and one likes to 
 see the grave politician taking hearty hold of such a thing. Shall 
 I see the Premier again ? I consider him by far our first puldic 
 man — which indeed is saying little — and hope that England in 
 these frightful times may still get some good of him. 
 
 N.B. — This night with Peel was the night in which Berlin city 
 executed its last terrible battle (19th of March to Sunday morning 
 the 20th, five o'clock). While we sate there the streets of Berlin 
 city were all blazing with grapeshot and the war of enraged men. 
 What is to be(3ome of all that ? I have a book to write about it. 
 Alas ! 
 
 We hear of a great Chartist petition to be presented by 200,000 
 men. People here keep up their old foolish levity in speaking of 
 these things ; but considerate persons find them to be very grave ; 
 and indeed all, even the laughers, are in considerable secret alarm. 
 
 The Chartist petition and the once famous April 10, are 
 now all but forgotten ; the main points of the Charter 
 having become law, with what advantage to those who 
 threatened to fight for them they themselves can best tell. 
 The day itself and what happened upon it are described 
 by Carlyle in a letter to his wife, who had been carried off 
 to Addiscombe again for change of air. He had been 
 trying to set some of his thoughts on paper. 
 
 The history of all Europe (he had noted on April 5) is at present 
 to me the saddest, though on the whole decisive and universal ex- 
 pulsion and ejection of the genus Sham King is less mournful, 
 than quiescent composed satisfaction with said accursed genus, 
 which used to be, and still is Z^ere, the general law. The future 
 for all countries fills me with a kind of horror. I have been scrib- 
 bling, scribble, scribble — alas ! it will be long before that makes 
 
 1 Albert Ouvrier was one of the famous ten members of the Provisional 
 Grovernment at Paris. 
 
"The Tenth of April 371 
 
 a book. Persist however. Anthony Sterling has sworn himself in 
 as anti-Chartist special constable. All the i)eoplo are swearing in, 
 he says, and in considerable alarm about Monday next and the 
 200,000 processioning petitionei-s. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlykf at Addiscombe. 
 
 CheUea : April 10, 1848. 
 
 The demon got mo last night, for I could not sleep. ... I 
 have lived all day without speaking twenty words hitherto, a most 
 shivering, dispirited, disgraceful kind of creature, and am more 
 like an ancient Egyptian mummy at present than a modem living 
 British man. 
 
 How can I tell you of the * Revolution ' in these circumstances? 
 I did go out earlier than usual to see it, or at least all buttoned up, 
 and decided to walk myself into a glow of heat — but — but the 
 venomous cold wind began unexpectedly in Cadogan Place to spit 
 rain, and I had no umbrella ! At Burlington Areade things had 
 grown so questionable in that resj^ect, I resolved to step in for a 
 few minutes, which done I found the rain had commenced pouring, 
 and I had nothing for it but to hail a Chelsea omnibus and come 
 home again. Judge then whether I can tell you of the * Revolu- 
 tion.' My sole knowledge of it is from my eyes in the above short 
 distance, and from a kind of official individual, a * Paisley lawyer 
 bodie,' to whom I put three words of question and got an answer 
 of inordinate length, indeed longer than I would take with the 
 rain just beginning to be serious. Know, however, oh Goody I 
 there is no revolution nor any like to be for some months or years 
 yet ; that the City of London is as safe and quiet as the farm of 
 Addiscombe ; and that empty i-umoui-s and 150,000 oaths of special 
 constables is hitherto the sole amount of this adventure for us. 
 Piccadilly itself, however, told us how frightened the people were. 
 Directly at Hyde Park Corner one could see that there was some- 
 thing in the wind. "Wellington had his iron blinds all accurately 
 down ; the Green Park was altogether shut, even the footpaths of 
 it ; the big gates of Constitution Hill ; and in the inside there 
 stood a score of mounted Guardsmen privately drawn up under the 
 arch — dreadfully cold, I dare say. For the rest, not a single 
 fashionable caniage was on the street ; not a private vehicle, but, 
 I think, two surgeons' broughams, all the way to Egyi>tian Hall ; 
 omnibuses ninning, a few street cabs, and even a mud cart or two ; 
 nothing else ; the flag pavements also neai'ly vacant, not a fifth of 
 
373 Carlyle's Life in London, 
 
 their nsual population there, and those also of the strictly busi- 
 ness kind ; not a gentleman to be seen, hardly one or two of the 
 sort called gents. ' Most mysterus 1 ' Happily, however, the 
 Paisley body explained it all to me. A meeting, some kind of 
 meeting, had been allowed to take place at Kennington Common ; 
 but Feargus O'Connor had there warned the said meeting that 
 there would and should be no * procession,' but that everybody, 
 tinder pain of broken crowTis, must now malte for home in a de- 
 tached capacity ; which, said the Paisley body, is at this time 
 being peaceably done, and, continued he, the people of these 
 streets are all gone to the New Road to, &c., &c., in hopes of see- 
 ing the * procession ' pass, and there is no * procession ! ' And 
 
 I started off here waving my adieus, and took shelter in Burling- 
 ton Arcade. This is all I know about the No Revolution we have 
 just sustained : and so may the Lord put an end to all cruel 
 
 The book that was to be written could not take shape. 
 He knew that lie ought to say something, he the author 
 of 'Chartism,' now that the world was turning upside 
 down, and Cliartism was actually moving. Foolish peo- 
 ple, too, came about him, pressing for his opinions. From 
 his account of the reception wliich he gave them, they 
 were not likely to come a second time. 
 
 Aprill3, 11 P.M. 
 Oh, my dear, be sorry for me ! I am nearly out of my wits. 
 From three o'clock till now I have been in a tempest of twaddle. 
 . . . Just when I was about escaping into solitude and a walk 
 
 through the lanes, enter D and P . To them R , and 
 
 a violent diatribe extorted from me about Chartisms — a most 
 wearisome, wearing walk and talk. IVIay the de\il take that 
 wretched mortal who never walks with me but for my sins ! . . . 
 
 In the evening came in poor E , and shortly after the * Ape,' 
 
 and they are but gone this minute. May the devil confound it ! 
 I feel as if I had got enough for one day. ... No wonder I 
 am surly at people. The wonder is rather I do not shoot them. 
 You wretched people ! you cannot help me, you can only hinder 
 me. Of you I must for ever petition in vain that you would sim- 
 ply not mind me at all, but fancy in your hearts I was a gray stone, 
 and so leave me. . » . E was in the car along with Fear- 
 
Chart lain. 373 
 
 gas O'Connor and tLe other Chartists. Never, he says, in the 
 world was there a more total irremediably ludicrous failure than 
 that operation ; seldom a viler cowardly scoundrel (according to 
 
 E ) than that same Feargus as E there read him ; and now 
 
 the Moral Force Chartists (Lovett, Coox)er, &c.) are to come out 
 and — in short, the world, take it how we will, is mad enough. 
 
 Not seeing his way to a book upon Democracy, Carlyle 
 wrote a good many newspaper articles this spring ; chiefly 
 in the 'Examiner' and the ' Spectator,' to deliver his sonl. 
 Www Fonblanque and Rintonl (the editors), friendly though 
 they were to him, could not allow him his full swing. 
 * There is no established journal,' he said, * that can stand 
 my articles, no single one they would not blow the bottom 
 out of.' More than ever he wished to have some period- 
 ical of his own, which would belong to no party, and where 
 he could hit out all round. 
 
 We are going to have sore times in this country (he said), and 
 the trade of governor will not long be possible as poor Lord John 
 and the like of him are used to manage it. Our streets even here 
 — what I never saw before— are getting encumbered with Irish 
 beggars ; and in the manufacturing districts, as I hear from peo- 
 ple on the spot, there hardly ever was greater misery. Something 
 does imperatively require to be done, and I want Lord John to 
 know that, or go about his business as soon as he can. 
 
 The theory that the title of governments in this world 
 is * the consent of the governed' will lead by-and-by, if it 
 lasts loniir enouMi, to verv curious conclusions. As a the- 
 ory it was held even in 1848 by speculative Liberal think- 
 ers ; but the old English temper was still dominant when- 
 ever there was necessity for action. Parliament was still 
 able and willing to pass a Treason Felony Act through its 
 three readings in one afternoon, and teach Chartists alid 
 Iri.>li rebels that these islands were not to be swept into 
 the Revolution. But that spii-it, Carlyle saw, must abate 
 with the development of Democracy. The will of the 
 people, shifting and uncertain as the weather, would make 
 
S74: Carlyles Life in London. 
 
 an end of autlioritative action. And yet such a govern- 
 ment as lie desired to see could be the product only of 
 revolution of another kind. He said often that the Ko- 
 man Republic was allowed so long a day because on emer- 
 gencies the constitution was suspended by a dictatorship. 
 Dictatorships might end as they ended at Rome, in be- 
 coming perpetual — and to this he would not have objected, 
 if the right man could be found ; but he was alone in his 
 opinion, and for the time it w^as useless to speak of such a 
 mighty transformation scene. 
 
 The spring wore on, and the early summer came, and 
 all eyes were watching, sometimes France and sometimes 
 Ireland. Events followed swiftly in Paris. The govern- 
 ment fell into the hands of the Party of Order, the mod- 
 erate Republicans; and the workmen, who had been 
 struggling for the ' organization of labour,' determined to 
 fight for it. Out of this came the three tremendous days 
 of. June, the sternest battle ever fought in a modern city. 
 
 To Margaret Carlyle, Scotshrig. 
 
 Chelsea : July 7, 1848. 
 Doubtless you have been reading of these awful explosions in 
 Paris, which interest everybody, and are indeed an alarming symp- 
 tom of the misery of this poor time. To us the most interesting 
 feature of all this is this General Cavaignac, who has had the com- 
 mand in that terrible business. He is the younger brother of the 
 Cavaignac we loved much and were very intimate with here, while 
 he lived. We often heard of him as a just and valiant and every 
 way excellent man, whom his brother much loved ; and, indeed, I 
 believe him to be really such ; which kind of character was cer- 
 tainly never more wanted than in the place he is now in. Perhaj^s 
 Ti<5 man in all the world could have had so cruel a duty laid upon 
 him as that of cannonading and 'suppressing these wretched peo- 
 ple, whom, we may say, his father and brother and all his kindred 
 had devoted themselves to stirring up ; but he saw it to be a duty^ 
 and he has bravely done it. I suppose he will get himself killed 
 in the business one day, and indeed he ai^peai-s privately to. look 
 
'" ■' Emerson. 375 
 
 for nothing else. His poor old mother still lives ; has now no 
 child but him ; has a strange history, indeed, to look back upon 
 from the days of Robespierre all the way. It is very curious to 
 me to think how the chiefs of these people, as Armand Marrast, 
 Clement Thomas (late commander of the National Guards), used 
 to sit and smoke a pipe with me in this quiet nook some veal's 
 ago ; and now Louis Philippe is out and they are in — not for ever 
 either. 'The Wheel of Fortune,' as old Aunt Babbie's dream 
 said — * the Wheel of Fortune,' * one spake up and the other spake 
 down ! * 
 
 Emerson's curiosity had taken him to Paris in May, to 
 see how Progress and Liberty were getting on. He had 
 visited Oxford also, wliere he had been entertained at 
 Oriel by my dear friend, xVrtlinr Clougli. He had break- 
 fasted in Common Room, where several of us wxre struck 
 by a likeness in his face to that of one once so familiar in 
 the same spot, who had passed now into another fold — 
 Jolin Henry Kewman. Figure and features were both 
 like Newman's. He was like a gliost of Newman born 
 into a new element. The Oxford .visit over, Emerson 
 went back to London to- finish his lectures. 1 heard the 
 last of them (at the Polytechnic, I think), and tliere first 
 saw Carlyle, whom Clough pointed out to me. We were 
 sitting close behind him, and I had no sight of his face ; 
 but I heard his loud, kindly, contemptuous laugh when the 
 lecturer ended ; for, indeed, what Emerson said was, in 
 Carlyle's words, ' rather moonshiny.' 
 
 He was to sail for Boston in the week following. Be- 
 fore lie left, he and Carlyle went on a small expedition 
 together into Wiltshire, to look at Stonehenge — they two, 
 the latest products o'f modern thought, and Stonehenge, 
 the silent monument of an age all trace of which, save that 
 one pircle of stone, has perished. Emerson has told the 
 story of this adventure in his ' English Notes.' Carlyle 
 mentions it in his Journal, with a few notes on other 
 things. 
 
376 Carlyl^s Life in London. 
 
 July 12, 1848. — Went with Emerson on Fiiday lUst vo see Stone- 
 henge. Saw it in a dim windy evening, very cold, and again on 
 the morrow— windy sunny morning ; a guide with us this last 
 time. Trilithons of huge dimensions, mostly fallen, mostly, in- 
 deed, removed altogether ; circular ditch outside, and huge stone 
 sunk on the brow of it, very visible : inside that, remains oi four 
 circles ; big one lintelled all round, then a lower one some six or 
 nine feet from the former — an ellipse, or egg-shaped, this latter 
 they say ; then the biggest of all (separate trilithes) ; lastly, a 
 small inmost circle of thin little upright stones, six or seven feet 
 high, granite these last, and from Devonshire or Kildare, the 
 others being a hard Wiltshire stone, seemingly bastard limestone. 
 Barrows lie dumb all round, the plain itself vacant except of 
 sheep, and dumb even as Stone hang itself is. Nobody in the least 
 knows what, when, or how it could have been. Sad, not to say 
 almost dismal, that night as the angry clouds heaped themselves 
 in the wind : and we, wearied, bent homewards to our dismal inn, 
 where was tea and not even milk with it, in the ancient town of 
 Amesbuiy, sunk quite silent now, the great road (Exeter and Lon- 
 don) having become a railway and left it. 
 
 Chartist concern, and Irish Repeal concern, and French Republic 
 concern have all gone a bad way since the March entry— April 10 
 (immortal day already dead), day of Chartist monster petition ; 
 200,000 special constables swore themselves in, &c., and Chartism 
 came to nothing. Riots since, but the leaders all lodged in gaol, 
 tried, imprisoned for two years, &c., and so ends Chartism for the 
 present. Irish Mitchel, poor fellow ! is now in Bermuda as a felon ; 
 letter from him, letter to him, letter to and from Lord Clarendon — 
 was really sorry for poor Mitchel. But what help ? French Re- 
 public cannonaded by General Cavaignac ; a sad outlook there. 
 The windbag of Lamartine quite burst in this manner — so many 
 windbags still bursting and to burst. Gave Emerson a ' Wood's 
 Athense ; ' parted with him in peace. A spiritual son of mine? Yes, 
 in a good degree, but gone into philanthropy and other moonshine ; 
 for the rest, a dignified, serene, and amiable man of a certain in- 
 disputable natural faculty, whose friendliness to me in this world 
 has been great. 
 
 The sun of freedom which had risen so augnstly on 
 February 24 had been swiftly clouded. Carlyle had not 
 expected definite good from it, and ought not to have been 
 
Despondency. 377 
 
 disappointed ; yet he had not looked for a collapse so swift 
 and so complete. He had thought that something would 
 have been gained for poor mankind from such a break- 
 down of sham governments. Europe had revolted against 
 them, but the earthquake, alas ! had been transient. The 
 sham powers, temporal and spiritual, had been shaken in 
 tlieir seats ; but the shock passed, and they had crept back 
 again. Cant, insincerity, imposture, and practical injus- 
 tice ruled once more in the name of order. He was not 
 entirely cast down. He was still convinced that so wild a 
 burst of passion must have meant something, and the 
 * something ' in time would be seen ; but the fog had set- 
 tled back thick as before, probably for another long interval. 
 Before two years were over, France saw Louis Napoleon 
 and the Second Empire, with the Catholic Church sup- 
 porting. French bayonets again propped up the Pope, 
 who, in the strength of them, was to declare himself 
 infallible. England rested contented with Laissez faire 
 and the ' Dismal Science.' In Ireland were famine and 
 faniine-fever ; for remedy an Encumbered Estates Act ; 
 whole villages unroofed by fire or crowbar ; two millions 
 of the miserable people flying across the Atlantic with 
 curses on the Anglo-Saxon in their mouths; the Anglo- 
 Saxons themselves blessing Providence for ridding them 
 so cheaply of the Irish difficulty. He saw clearly enough 
 that there was no cure here for the diseases of which 
 modern society was sick. Behind an order so restored 
 could grow only the elements of mischief to come, and he 
 was sickened at the self-satisfied complaisance with which 
 the upper classes in England and everywhere welcomed 
 the victory of the reaction. The day of reckoning would 
 come whether they believed it or not, and the longer judg- 
 ment was delayed the heavier it would be. They had 
 another chance allowed them, that was all. Nor was he 
 alone in such reflections. When the small German poten- 
 
378 Cariyle's Life in London, 
 
 tates were restored again, Bunsen read at his breakfast 
 table, in my presence, a letter from Professor Dahlmann, of 
 which I remember this one sentence : ' The crowned heads 
 have again the power in their hands. Let them look how 
 they use it, oi- the next generation will read the fate of 
 their dynasties on the tombstones of the last kings.' 
 
 What Carlyle could do or say it was not easy for him 
 to decide. No advice of his would find attention in the 
 existing humour. The turn which things were taking, 
 the proved impotence of English Chartism especially, 
 seem to justify the impatience with which practical politi- 
 cians had hitherto listened to him. It would be a waste 
 of words to go on denouncing 'shams 'when 'shams' 
 every where were receiving a new lease of life. He stayed 
 in London through the summer, Mrs. Carlyle with him, 
 but doing nothing. On August 10 he writes : — 
 
 May I mark this as the nadir of my sphitual course at present ? 
 Never till now was I so low — utterly dumb this long while, barren, 
 undecided, wretched in mind. My right hand has altogether lost 
 its cunning. Alas ! and I have nothing other wherewith to de- 
 fend myself against the world without, and keep it from over- 
 whelming me, as it often threatens to do. Many things close at 
 hand are other than happy for me just now ; but that is no excuse. 
 If my own energy desert me, I am indeed deserted. . . . The 
 most popular character a man can have is that which he acquires 
 by being offensive to nobody, soft and agreeable to everybody. 
 All men will cordially praise him, and even in some measure love 
 him if so. A fact worth some reflection : a fact which puts the 
 popular judgment out of court, in individual moral matters. Peo- 
 ple praise or blame according as they themselves have fared softly 
 or fared hardly in their intercourse with a man. And now who 
 are ' they ' ? Cowardly egoists, greedy slaves ; servants of the 
 Devil, for most part. Woe unto you if you treat them softly, if 
 they fare well with you ! Oliver Cromwell, for doing more of 
 God's will than any man, has to lie under the curses of all men for 
 200 years. Consider and remember. 
 
 In all humours, light or heavy, lie could count on the 
 unshaken affection of his friends the Barings. A change 
 
Thi Grange, 379 
 
 in this last year had passed over their worldly sitnation. 
 The old Lord had died in May, and Mr. Baring was now 
 Lord Asli burton. 
 
 He is a very worthy man (Carlyle wrote when the event hap- 
 pened), a very worthy man, as his father was, and I hope will do 
 good in his day and generation, as at least he has a real desire to 
 do. He is now immensely rich, but having no children, and for 
 himself no silly vanity, I believe does not in the least rejoice at 
 such a lot. Poor fellow ! He looked miserably ill the day I 
 called on him after his return from the sad scene ; and though we 
 did not si^eak of that, I found him thin and pale, and the picture 
 of a sorrow which well became him. One could not but ask one- 
 self again, thinking of 60,000/. a year, 'Alas! what is the use of 
 it?' 
 
 In September there was to be a great gathering of dis- 
 tinguished persons at the Grange under its new ownership, 
 and the Carlyles, as this year he had not gone to Scotland, 
 were invited for a long autumn visit. He hesitated to 
 join the brilliant circle, lie had ' proved by experience 
 that Marquises and Ministers did not differ from little 
 people, except in the clothing and mounting.' He went, 
 however, and his wife went with him. As usual, he kept 
 his mother well informed of his condition. 
 
 To Margaret Carlyle^ Scotsbrig. 
 
 The Grange : September 3, 1848. 
 The first night I did not sleep. It was a strange thing to lie 
 thinking of you all in the deep night here, and have Scotsbrig and 
 the ever dear ones there all present in a place so foreign to them. 
 Last night, however, I made a fair sleep, and to-day feel wonder- 
 fully well. I look out of my two big windows here (which are 
 generally flung up) northward into deep masses of wood witli 
 avenues and greensward, all in beautiful sunshine and solitude ; 
 and silent, except for the twittering of some birds, and, occasion- 
 ally, the caw of some distant rooks not yet quite fallen dumb. I 
 could sit whole hours, if they would let me alone, and converse 
 only with my own confused thoughts, and tiy to let them settle a 
 little within me. . . . Chaiies Buller is here— a very cheerful 
 
380 Carlyles Life in London. 
 
 man to have beside one. The Lady's mother (the widow Lady 
 Sandwich) is the only woman visitor except Jane. Lady Sandwich 
 used to live always in Paris, till she was driven home by the late 
 revolution; a brisk, talking, friendly, and rather entertaining 
 character ; has been very beautiful at one time. She has no other 
 daughters left but this, and no son but one ; plenty of money, and 
 fair health ; but, alas ! Nothing to do. That is not a very easy life 
 after all. For the present, too, we have a store of other Lords — • 
 Lansdowne, Auckland, Granville, with one or two official com- 
 moners. Alas ! as Stephenson the engineer said, and as I often say, 
 * if it were not for the clothes, there would be little difference.' 
 To say truth, I wish we were well home again ; and yet I suppose 
 it is useful to come abroad into such foreign circles now and then. 
 Persons so very kind to us are not lightly to be refused. 
 
 To bis brother he wrote also. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 The Grange : September 11, 1848. 
 
 As for one's life in this grand mansion, it is one of total idleness, 
 and has in it scarcely anything one can call an event, even for a 
 penny letter. It is a sumptuous elaborate representation^ which 
 has to be transacted seemingly for its own sake : no result attained 
 by it, or hardly any, except the representation itself. To one like 
 me, it would be frightful to live on such terms. We rise about 
 eight. A valet, who waits here, is charged not to disturb me till 
 half-past eight ; but he comes whenever I ring, and that is almost 
 always before the ultimate limit of time. Shaving, bathing, dress- 
 ing, all deliberately done, last three-quarters of an hour. I have 
 an excellent and aiiy room, two rooms, if I needed, with three win- 
 dows looking out into the woods and lawns, which are very pretty ; 
 a large old-fashioned bed with curtains, which latter is a rare bless- 
 ing ; and a degree of quietness which cannot be surpassed. Were 
 it not for the unwholesome diet, which I try to mend and manage, 
 one might sleep to perfection here. Sleep, in fact, is one's best 
 employment at present. Before nine we are out, most of us, I 
 eastward into a big portico that looks over lake and hillside to- 
 wards the rising sun, where among the bushes I have a pipe lodged, 
 which I light and smoke, sauntering up and down, joined by Jane 
 if she can manage it, much to my satisfaction. Jane lodges some 
 doors from me, also in two pretty rooms. Breakfast is at half -past 
 nine, where are infinite flunkeys, cates, condiments — very super- 
 
The Orange 381 
 
 fluons to me, with much ' making of wits,' and not always a very 
 great allowance of gmve reason. That ends in about an hour. 
 From that till two, I continue trying to keep private to my own 
 room, but do not always succeed. To go down into the drawing- 
 room is to get into the general whirl. After luncheon, all go for 
 exercise, the women to drive, the men to ride. 
 
 The tide of guests ebbed and flowed and ebbed again ; 
 occasionally even the host and hostess were absent for a 
 day or two, and the Carlyles were left alone Mn the vast 
 establishment,' as *in some Hall of the Past,' with horses, 
 carriages, and all at their disposal. ' Strange quarters for 
 the like of them ! ' he observed. He would not waste his 
 time entirely, and used it to study the habits of the Hamp- 
 shire peasantry, to amuse his mother with an account of 
 them. 
 
 To Margaret Carlyle, Scotshrig. 
 
 The Grange : September 29, 1848. 
 
 The people here seem to me much less hardworked than in the 
 North. They are very ill off, I believe, if their landlords did not 
 help them ; but seem to require much more to make them icell off 
 than Scotch people do. Their cottages are mostly very clean, with 
 trees about them, flower-bushes into the very windows, and a 
 trim road, paved with bricks, leading out from them to the puhlic 
 way. The ploughmen, or farm-servants generally, go about girt 
 in buckskin leggings from toe to midthigh, * gey firm about the 
 feet ; ' rags are seen nowhere ; nor, I suppose, does want anywhere 
 do other than come upon the parish and have itself supplied. The 
 gentry, I imagine, take a great deal more pains with their depend- 
 ents than ours do. For the rest, the tillage is all more or less 
 sluttish, thistles abounding, turnips sown broadcast, bad fences, 
 abimdance of waste ground, and, in particular, such a quantity of 
 roads and foot and bridle paths as fills a Scotchman with astonish- 
 ment. I do believe there is something like ten times as much 
 ground occupied that way as there is with us. Nay, it seems vir- 
 tually the rule, which I now act upon like the others, that you can 
 r'tde in any direction whatsoever at your own pleasure, and nobody 
 dreams of finding fault with you. There are walks and rides, 
 green and red, I think twenty miles long, in the paik, and solitary 
 as if yoQ were in the heart of America. 
 
382 Carlyle-s Life in London. 
 
 The motive which tempted Carljle to linger so long in 
 these scenes and return so often to them, is not very easy 
 to find. It vi^as certainly not tlie honour of the thing. 
 He had a genuine regard for the Barings, and was in- 
 debted to them for a good deal of kindness ; but neither 
 regard nor gratitude required so constant a sacrifice. It 
 was not pleasure, as is shown by the notes which were en- 
 tered in his Journal. 
 
 October 16. — Eeturned Thursday gone a week from a long visit 
 (five weeks all but a day) to the Grange. Plenty of high company 
 there, coming and going ; friendliness of all and sundry to us ex- 
 treme. Feelings, nevertheless, altogether unfortunate, generally 
 painful, and requiring to be kept silent. Idle I throughout as a 
 dry bone ; never spent five lonelier, idler weeks. If not in their 
 loneliness, there was no good in them at all. But it was notable 
 what strange old reminiscences and secret elegiac thoughts of vari- 
 ous kinds went on within me ; wild and wondrous ; from my ear- 
 liest days even till then, in that new foreign element I had got 
 into. Nor is there any ivork yet. Ah ! no ! none ! What will be- 
 come of me ? I am growing old ; I am grown old. My next 
 book must be that of an old man, and I am not yet got into that 
 dialect. Again and again I ask myself : Wilt thou never work 
 more then ? and the answer is a mere groan of misery, and also 
 of cowardliness and laziness. Heaven help me ! But how can it 
 when I do not help myself ? 
 
 He was trying to write something. He says in a letter 
 at this time ' that he was doing a little every day, tliough 
 to small purpose.' In the way of visible occupation I find 
 oidy that he was reading Fichte, with small satisfaction, 
 the ' Ich ' and ' Niclit Icli ' ' proving shadowy concerns.' 
 John Carlyle amused him with a story of his mother, 
 whose mode of treating impertinence seems to have been 
 not unlike her son's. 
 
 Jack made us merry last night (he wrote to her in November) 
 with that flat-soled hero -worshipper and your reception of him. 
 * The mother of Thomas Carlyle ? ' 'Yes.' 'Born where?' ' Ec- 
 clefechan.' He said no fastidious duchess could have done the 
 
Death of Charles Buller. 383 
 
 poor blockhead better than you by the simple force of nature and 
 practical desire to get rid of idle babble. Such people often 
 enough come staggering about in here, and require to be managed 
 in somewhat the same way. 
 
 Charles Buller had been at tlie party at the Grange, 
 brilliant as usual. In this winter he suddenly died through 
 the blundering of an unskilful surgeon. Buller was one 
 of the few real friends that Carlyle had left in the world, 
 and was cut off in this sudden way just when the liighest 
 political distinctions were coming within his reach. His 
 witty Iiumour had for a time made his prospects doubtful. 
 The House of Commons likes to be amused, but does not 
 raise its jesters into Cabinets. Buller said he owed his 
 success to Peel. He had been going on in his usual way 
 one night when Peel said, *If the honourable member for 
 Liskeard will cease for a moment from making a buffoon 
 of himself, I will, &c.' For these sharp words Buller was 
 for ever grateful to Peel. He achieved afterwards the 
 highest kind of Parliamentary reputation. A great career 
 had opened before liim, and now it was ended. Carlyle 
 felt his loss deeply. He wrote a most beautiful elegy, 
 which was published in the ' Examiner ' in time for Bul- 
 ler's poor mother to read it. Then she died, too, of pure 
 grief. Her husband had gone before, and the family with 
 whom Carlyle had once been so intimately connected came 
 to an end together. It was a sad season altogether. 
 
 JouTYiah 
 
 December 14, 1848. — Surely a time will come for me once more! 
 I understand this long while what the old romancers meant by a 
 knight being enchanted. That is precisely my own condition — 
 unable to stir myself, writhing with hand and foot glued together, 
 under a load of contemptible miseries. Often, very often, I think, 
 * Would the human species universally be but so kind as to leave 
 me altogether alone ! ' I mean to hurt nobody, I ; and the hurt 
 that others (involuntarily for most part) do me is incalculable. But 
 these are shallow impatiences. The thought is froword and an- 
 
884 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 just. The good souls that still love me, even while they hurt and 
 distress me, can I wish them deliberately away from me ? No, 
 never ! The fault, I discern, always will at length be found my 
 own. 
 
 In certain conditions of bodily health the daintiest food 
 is nauseous. It is the same, or nearly so, with the mind ; 
 and tliis perhaps may explain the impatient passage which 
 follows. Yet he must have read again what he had writ- 
 ten, and had not erased the words, which must be sup- 
 posed therefore to represent his real opinion. 
 
 December 29, 1848. — It seems as if all things were combining 
 against me to hinder any book or free deliverance of myself I 
 might have in view at present. We shall see. Milnes has written 
 this year a book on Keats. This remark to make on it: 'An at- 
 tempt to make us eat dead dog by exquisite currying and cooking.' 
 Won't eat it. A truly unwise little book. The kind of man that 
 Keats was gets ever more horrible to me. Force of hunger for 
 pleasure of every kind, and want of all other force — that is a com- 
 bination ! Such a structure of soul, it would once have been very 
 evident, was a chosen ' Vessel of Hell ; ' and truly, for ever there is 
 justice in that feeling. At present we try to love and pity, and 
 even worship, such a soul, and find the task rather easy, in our 
 own souls there being enough of similarity. Away with it ! There 
 is perhaps no clearer evidence of our universal immorality and 
 cowardly untruth than even in such sympathies. 
 
 The winter went by with no work accomplished or be- 
 gun, beyond the revising ' Cromwell ' for a third edition, 
 as it was still selling rapidly. ' I find the book is well 
 liked,' he could say, ' and silently making its way into the 
 heart of the country, which is a result I am very thankful 
 for.' 
 
 The book had been too well liked, indeed ; for it had 
 created a set of enthusiastic admirers who wanted now to 
 have a statue of the great Protector, or, at least, some pub- 
 lic memorial of him. Carlyle was of Cato's opinion in that 
 matter. He preferred that men should rather ask where 
 Oliver's statue was than see it as one of the anomalous 
 
CromwelVs Statue, 385 
 
 images which are scattered over the metropolis. He was 
 asked to give liis sanction. 
 
 The people (he wi'ote to his mother) having subscribed 25,000/. 
 for a memorial to an ugly bullock of a Hudson, who did not even 
 pretend to have any merit except that of being suddenly rich, and 
 who is now discovered to be little other than at heart a horse- 
 coper and dishonest fellow, I think they ought to leave Cromwell 
 alone of their memorials, and try to honour him in some more 
 profitable way — by learning to be honest men like him, for ex- 
 ample. But we shall see what comes of all this Cromwell work — 
 a thing not without value either. 
 
 When he was least occupied his I^otebook is fullest, 
 tlirowhig light into the inmost parts of him. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 April 26, 1849. — Little done hitherto — nothing definite done at 
 all. What other book will follow ? That is ever the question, 
 and hitherto the unanswered one. Silent hitherto, not from hav- 
 ing nothing to say, but from having aW— a whole world to say at 
 once. I am weak too — forlorn, bewildered, and nigh lost — too 
 weak for my place, I too. Article in the ' Spectator ' about Peel 
 and Ireland; veiy cruel upon Russell, commanding him to get 
 about his business for ever. Was written very ill, but really to 
 satisfy my conscience in some measure. . . . My voice sounds 
 to me like a One Voice in the world, too frightful to me, with a 
 heart so sick and a head growing grey ! I say often Was thuCs ? 
 Be silent then ! all which I know is very weak. Louis Blanc was 
 twice here — a pretty little miniature of a man, well shaped, long 
 black head, brown skin ; every way French aspect : quick, twink- 
 ling, earnest black eyes ; a smallish, melodious voice, whicli 
 rather quavers in its tones ; free, lively, ingenious utterance, full 
 of friendliness, transparency, logical definiteness, and seeming 
 good faith ; not mucli vanity either ; a good little creature, to 
 whom, deeply as I dissented from him, I could not help wishing 
 heartily well. ' Literary world ' (bless the mark !) much occupied 
 of late with * Macau lay's History,' the most popular history book 
 ever wiitten. Fourth edition already, within, perhaps, four 
 months. Book to which four hundred editions could not lend any 
 permanent value, there being no depth of sense in it at all, and a 
 Vol. hi.— 25 
 
3S6 Cadyle's Life in London. 
 
 very great quantity of rhetorical wind and other temporary ingredi- 
 ents, which are the reverse of sense. 
 
 Pio Norio was not yet upon his throne again. Rome 
 was held by the Triumvirs — Mazzini in brief triumph, and 
 unable to believe that the glories of 1848 were absolutely 
 to disappear. In Kome and Hungary the revolution was 
 still struggling, though to most eyes the inevitable end 
 liad long been apparent. Carlyle had loved Mazzini well, 
 but had never believed in him. He was now watching his 
 fortunes with anxious interest. His mother, he knew, 
 would be pleased to hear of any brave man in death- 
 grapple with the old Antichrist. 
 
 To Margai-et Carlyle, Scotshrig. 
 
 Chelsea : May, 1849. 
 Yesterday there came a certain Italian political character, one 
 Marioni, who has come hither from Kome to negotiate about the 
 poor Eoman Eepublic and its many troubles. Mazzini had given 
 him a card for Jane. I talked a long time with him ; found him a 
 rational, sincere-looking man. All people, he says, are clear 
 against readmitting the Pope to temporal rule at Rome, and will 
 fight violently before they be constrained to it. Nobody knows 
 which way the French and others will settle that beggarly bank- 
 ruptcy of impotence. To settle it well will exceed the power of all 
 of them united, I believe. Mazzini, an old friend of ours, and 
 one of the most zealous, pious-minded men I know, is one of the 
 three Kings of Rome just now, and I suppose is the most resolute 
 of them all. He lives in the Pope's palace at present. The other 
 day he was in a x:)Oor house somewhere here, which seems a change 
 when one reflects on it. Louis Napoleon, too, I have often seen 
 in these streets driving his cabriolet ; once I dined where he was, 
 and talked a good deal to him — no great promotion for a man at 
 that time. Alas ! it is conjectured, too, that such a time may very 
 easily return ; that Louis Napoleon is veiy likely to drive cabrio- 
 lets here again, x^oor fellow ! The world is grown a much madder 
 place than it ever was before. In fact, ruin has come upon all 
 manner of supremely deceptive persons. The day of trouble for 
 supreme quacks everywhere has arrived ; for which should we not 
 ^11 thank the Righteous Judge ? 
 
Mazzini in Rome. 38T 
 
 Journal. 
 May 17, 1849. — Mazzini busy at Rome resisting the French, re- 
 sisting all i)eople that attack his * Kepubblica Romana,' standing 
 on his guard against all the world. Poor Mazzini ! If he could 
 stand there in Rome, in sight of all Italy, and practically defy the 
 whole world for a while, and fight till Rome was ashes and ruin, 
 and end by blowing himself and his assailants up in the last strong 
 post, and so yielding only with life, he might rouse the whole 
 Italian nation into such a rage as it has not known for many cen- 
 turies ; and this might be the means of shaking out of the Italian 
 mind a very foul precipitate indeed. Perhaps that is really what 
 he was worth in this world. Sti-ange, providential-looking, and 
 leading to many thoughts — how, of all the immense nonsense that 
 lay in this brave man, the one element of noble perennial truth 
 that pervaded him wholly withal is at length laid hold of by the 
 upper powers of this universe, and tui'ned to the use that was in it. 
 Whatsoever good we have, the gods know it well, and will know 
 what to make of it in due season. Mazzini came much about us 
 here for many years, patronised by my wife ; to me veiy weari- 
 some, with his incoherent Jacobinisms, George-Sandisms, in sjDite 
 of all my love and regard for him ; a beautiful little man, full of 
 sensibilities, of melodies, of clear intelligence, and noble virtues. 
 He had found Volney, «fec., in a drawer in his father's librarj^ while 
 a boy, and had read and read, recognising a whole new promised 
 land illuminated with suns and volcanoes. Father was a physician 
 in Genoa. He, forced to be a lawyer, turned himself into Young 
 Italy, and, after many sad adventures, is there. What -w'lU become 
 of him ? we ask daily with a real interest. A small, square-headed, 
 bright-eyed, swift, yet still, Ligurian figure ; beautiful, and mer- 
 ciful, and fierce ; as pretty a little man when I first saw him, eight 
 or nine years ago, as had ever come before me. Time as steel, the 
 word the thought of him pure and limpid as water ; by nature a 
 little lyrical poet ; plenty of quiet fun in him, too, and wild emo- 
 tion, rising to the shrill key, with all that lies between these two 
 extremes. His trade, however, was not to write verses. Shall we 
 ever see him more ? 
 
 Under the same date in the Journal also is a notice of a 
 contrasting figure — one of whom, as long as he had been 
 successful, the English world had thought as well as it 
 had thought ill of poor Mazzini. 
 
388 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 King Hudson flung utterly prostrate, detected ' cooking ac- 
 counts ; ' everybody kicking him through the mire. To me and 
 to quiet onlookers he has not changed at all. He is merely de- 
 tected to me what we always understood he was. The rage of fel- 
 low-gamblers, now when he has merely lost the game for them, 
 and ceased to swindle with impunity, seems to us a very baseless 
 thing. One sordid, hungry canaille are they all. Why should this, 
 the chief terrier among them, be set upon by all the dog frater- 
 nity ? One feels a real human pity for the ugly Hudson. T. Sped- 
 ding the other night was describing to us the late figure of H. 's 
 private life, as S. himself and others had observed it. Over- 
 whelmed with business, yet superadding to it ostentatious and 
 high-flown amusements, balls at great country houses fifty miles 
 ofi", &c. , &c. With early morning he was gone from Newby Park, 
 and his guests off by express trains over all the island ; returned 
 weary on the edge of dinner, then first met his guests, drank 
 largely of champagne, with other wines ; * ate nothing at all, 
 hardly an ounce of solid food ; ' then tumbled into bed, worn out 
 with business and madness. That was the late daily history of the 
 man. Oh, Mammon ! art thou not a hard god ? It is now doubt- 
 ful whether poor Hudson will even have any money left. Perhaps 
 that would be a real benefit to him. His brother-in-law has 
 drowned himself at York. What a world this ever is ! full of Ne- 
 mesis, ruled by the Supernal, rebelled in by the Infernal, with 
 prophetic tragedies as of old. Murderer Eush, Jermy's natural 
 brother ! To pious men, he too might have seemed one of the 
 fated. No son of Atreus had more authentically a doom of the 
 gods. The old laws are still alive. Even railway scrip is subject 
 to them. 
 
 Ireland, of all the topics on which he had meditated 
 writing, remained painfully fascinating. He had looked 
 at the beggarly scene, he had seen the blighted fields, the 
 ragged misery of the wretched race who were suffering for 
 others' sins as well as for their own. Since that brief visit 
 of his the famine had been followed by the famine-fever, 
 and the flight of millions from a land which was smitten 
 with a curse. Those ardent young men with whom he 
 had dined at Dun drum were working as felons in the docks 
 at Bermuda. Ga van Duffy, after a near escape from the 
 
Ireland. 389 
 
 same fate, had been a guest in Clieyne Row ; and the 
 story which he had to tell of cabins torn down by crow- 
 bars, and shivering families, turned out of their miserable 
 homes, dying in tlie ditches by the roadside, had touched 
 Carlyle to the very heart. He was furious at the econom- 
 ical commonplaces with wJiich England was consoling 
 itself. He regarded Ireland as ' the breaking-point of the 
 huge suppuration which all British and all European 
 society then was.' He determined to see it again, look at 
 it further and more fully, ^ that ragged body of a diseased 
 soul,' and then write something about it which might move 
 his country into a better sense of its obligations. So earn- 
 est he was that he struggled seriously to find some plainer 
 form of speech, better suited to the world's comprehen- 
 sion, which they might read, not to wonder at, but to take 
 to their hearts for practical guidance. 
 
 Often in my sleep (he says) I have made long passages and 
 screeds of composition in the most excellent approved common- 
 place style. I wish I could do it awake ; I could then write many 
 things — fill all newspapers with my writing. The di-eam seems to 
 say the talent is in me, as I suppose it sure enough to be ; but the 
 hnack is wanting, and will perhaps for ever be. All talents, spe- 
 cific aptitudes of a handicraft — nay, worse, all outlines of learning 
 (so called), which I once had are gradually melting into the vague, 
 and threatening to leave me — a wild sea surely, and a lonesome 
 voyage surely I 'ware ahead ! 
 
 To Margaret CarlyUy Scotsbrig. 
 
 Chelsea : May 26, 1849. 
 We have beautiful wann weather now ; we are tolerably well in 
 health, too, all of us. Both Jane and I go grumbling on as usual, 
 not worse than usual. I am thinking mther seriously of getting 
 out into the country as soon as the weather grows too hot. A 
 tour of a week or two in Ireland has often been in my head of late ; 
 some kind of tour which would take me away from the noise of 
 this Babylon while the pavements are so hot and so crowded. 
 . . . I do not expect to find much new knowledge in Ireland 
 if I go ; but much that I have lying in me to say might perhaps 
 
390 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 get nearer to some way of utterance if I were looking face to face 
 upon the niin and wretchedness that is prevalent there ; for that 
 seems to me the spot in our dominions where the bottomless gulf 
 has broken out, and all the lies and delusions that lie hidden and 
 open in us have come to this definite and practical issue there. 
 ' They that sow the wind, they shall reap the whirlwind ; ' that 
 was from of old the law. 
 
 It was while Carlyle was preparing for this Irish tour 
 that I myself became first personally acquainted with him. 
 lie had heard of me from Arthur Clough, who left Oxford 
 when I left it. We had felt, both of us, that, thinking as 
 we did, we were out of place in an Article-signing Uni- 
 versity, and we had resigned our Fellowships. Of Clough 
 Carlyle had formed the very highest opinion, as no one 
 who knew him could fail to do. His pure beautiful char- 
 acter, his genial humour, his perfect truthfulness, alike of 
 heart and intellect — an integrity which had led him to 
 sacrifice a distinguished position and brilliant prospects, 
 and had brought him to London to gather a living as he 
 could from under the hoofs of the horses in the streets — 
 these together had recommended Clough to Carlyle as a 
 diamond sifted out of the general rubbish-heap. Of me, 
 with good reason, he was inclined to think far less favour- 
 ably. I had written something, not wisely, in which 
 heterodoxy was flavoured with the sentimentalism which 
 he so intensely detested. He had said of me that I ought 
 to burn my own smoke, and not trouble other people's 
 nostrils with it. ^Nevertheless, he was willing to see what 
 I was like. James Spedding took me down to Cheyne 
 Row one evening in the middle of June. We found him 
 sitting after dinner, with his pipe, in the small flagged 
 court between the house and the garden. He was study- 
 ing without much satisfaction the Life of St. Patrick by 
 Jocelyn of Ferns in the ' Acta Sanctorum.' He was try- 
 ing to form a notion of what Ireland had been like before 
 
Irvbroduction to Carlyle. 391 
 
 Danes or Saxons had meddled with it, when it was said to 
 have been the chosen home of learning and piety, and had 
 sent out ipissionaries to convert Northern Europe. His 
 author was not assisting hhn. The life of St. Patrick as 
 given by Jocelyn is as much a biography of a real man as 
 the story of Jack the Giant-killer. When we arrived 
 Carlyle had just been reading how an Irish marauder had 
 stolen a goat and eaten it, and the Saint had convicted 
 him by making the goat bleat in his stomach. He spoke 
 of it with rough disgust ; and then we talked of Ireland 
 generally, of which I had some local knowledge. 
 
 He was then fifty-four years old ; tall (about five feet 
 eleven), thin, but at that time upright, with no signs of 
 the later stoop. His body was angular, his face beardless, 
 such as it is represented in Woolner's medallion, which is 
 by far the best likeness of him in the days of his strength. 
 His head was extremely long, with the chin thrust for- 
 ward ; the neck w^as thin ; the mouth firmly closed, the 
 under lip slightly projecting; the hair grizzled and thick 
 and bushy. His eyes, which grew lighter with age, were 
 then of a deep violet, with fire burning at the bottom of 
 them, which flashed out at the least excitement. The 
 face was altogether more striking, most impressive every 
 way. And I did not admire him the less because he 
 treated me — I cannot say unkindly, but shortly and sternly. 
 I saw then what I saw ever after — that no one need look 
 for conventional politeness from Carlyle — he would hear 
 the exact truth from him, and nothing else. 
 
 AVe went afterwards into the dining-room, where Mrs. 
 Carlyle gave us tea. Her features were not regular, but 
 I thought I had never seen a more interesting-looking 
 woman. Her hair was raven black, her eyes dark, soft, 
 sad, with dangerous light in them. Carlyle's talk was 
 rich, full, and scornful ; hers delicately mocking. She 
 was fond of Spedding, and kept up a quick, sparkling con- 
 
392 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 versation with him, telling stories at her husband's ex- 
 pense, at which he laughed himself as heartily as we did. 
 
 It struck me then, and I found always afterwards, that 
 false sentiment, insincerity, cant of any kind would find 
 no quarter, either from wife or husband ; and that one 
 must speak truth only, and, if possible, think truth only, 
 if one wished to be admitted into that house on terms of 
 friendship. They told me that I might come again. I 
 did not then live in London, and had few opportunities ; 
 but if tlie chance offered, I never missed it. 
 
THOMAS OARLYLE 
 
 VOL. IL 
 
THOMAS C A R L Y L E 
 
 A HISTORY OF HIS LIFE IN LONDON 
 
 1834-1881 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, M.A. 
 
 HONORABY FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 TWO VOLUMES IN ONE 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBNEFS SONS 
 
 1884 
 
 [All rights reserved} 
 
TROWS 
 
 PftlNTINQ AND eOOKBINDINQ OOMPANV, 
 
 NKW YORK, 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 OP 
 
 THE SECOND VOLUME. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 A.D. 1849-50. ^T. 54-55. 
 
 PAoa 
 Tour in Ireland — The Irish problem — Impressions in the 
 
 West — Gweedore — Address at Deny — Return to Scotland 
 
 — the Highlands — A shooting paradise — Reflections on it 
 
 — Liberty — Radicalism — Impatience with cant — Article on 
 
 the Nigger question — * Latter-day Pamphlets,' , , 1 
 
 CHAPTER XVIIL 
 
 A,D. 1850. ^T. 55-56. 
 
 Reaction from 'Latter-day Pami^hlets' — Acquaintance vriih. 
 Sir Robert Peel— Dinner in Whitehall Place— Ball at 
 Bath House — Peel's death — Estimate of Peel's character 
 — Visit to South Wales — Savage Landor — Mei'thyr Tydvil 
 — Scotsbrig — Despondency — Visits to Keswick and Con- 
 iston— The Grange — Return to London, .... 33 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 A.D. 1851-2. MT, 56-57. 
 
 Reviews of the Pamphlets— Cheyne Row— Pai'ty at the 
 Grange — * Life of Sterling '—Reception of it — Coleridge 
 and his disciples— Spiritual optics— Hyde Park Exhibi- 
 tion — A month at Malvern— Scotland — Trip to Paris with 
 Lord Ashburton, 54 
 
 I 
 
vx 
 
 Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 A.D. 1851-2. MT. 56-57. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Purpose formed to write on Frederick the Great— The author 
 of the * Handbook of Spain ' — Afflicting visitors — Studies 
 for * Frederick ' — Visit to Linlathen — Proposed tour in 
 Germany — Rotterdam — The Rhine — Bonn — Homburg — 
 Frankfurt — Wartburg — Luther reminiscences — Weimar — 
 Berlin — Return to England, 72 
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 A.D. 1852-3. ^T. 57-58. 
 
 The Grange — Cheyne Row — The Cock torment — Reflections 
 — An improved house — Funeral of the Duke of Welling- 
 ton—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, 103 
 
 CHAPTER XXIL 
 
 A.D.' 1854. ^T. 59. 
 
 Crimean war — Louis Napoleon — The sound-proof room — 
 Dreams — Death of John Wilson — Character of Wilson — 
 A journal of a day — The economies of Cheyne Row — Car- 
 lyle finances — ' Budget of a Femme Incompriset^ . . 128 
 
 CHAPTER XXm. 
 
 A.D. 1854-7. Ml. 59-62. 
 
 Difficulties over ' Frederick ' — Crimean war — Louis Napoleon 
 in England — Edward Fitzgerald — Farlingay — Three 
 weeks at Addiscombe — Mrs. Carlyle and Lady Ashburton 
 — Scotsbrig — Kinloch Luichart — Lady Ashburton's death 
 — Effect on Carlyle — Solitude in Cheyne Row — Riding 
 costume — Fritz— Completion of the first two volumes of 
 - * Frederick ' — Carlyle as a historian, . , . . 146 
 
Contents. vii 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 A.D. 1858- . MT. -63. 
 
 ■ ' _ FAGS 
 
 Night in a Railway Train — Annandale — Meditations — A new 
 Wardrobe —Visit to Craigenputtock— Second time in Ger- 
 many — The Isle of Rugin— Putbus — Berlin — Selesia 
 Prag— Weimar — Aix— Frederich Catterfield's and Car- 
 lyle's descriptions by turns — Returns to England — Second 
 Marriage of Lord Ashburton 175 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 A.D. 1859^2. iET. 64-67. 
 
 Effects of a Literary Life upon the Character — Evenings in 
 Cheyne Row— Summers in Fife — Visit to Sir George Sin- 
 clair, Thurso Castle — Mrs. Carlyle's^ Health — Death of 
 Arthur Clough — Intimacy with Mr. Ruskin— Party at the 
 Grange — I>escrii)tion of John Keble — ' Unto this Last,' . 196 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 AD. 1864. ^T. 69. 
 
 Personal intercoui*se — Daily habits — Chanties — Conversation 
 — Modem science and its tendencies — Faith withoiit 
 sight — Bishop Colenso — The Broad Church School — 
 Literature — Misfortunes of Fritz — Serious accident to 
 Mrs. Carlyle— Her stmnge illness — Folkestone — Death of 
 Lord Ashburton — Mrs. Carlyle in Scotland — Her slow re- 
 covery — ' Frederick ' finished, 215 
 
 CHAPTER XXVn. 
 
 A.D. 1865-6. iET. 70-71. 
 
 ' Frederick ' completed— Summer in Annandale— Mrs. Carlyle 
 in Nithsdale — Visit to Linlathen — Thomas Erskine — The 
 Edinburgh Rectorship — Feelings in Cheyne Row about 
 it— Buskin's ' Ethics of the Dust,' 243 
 
yiii Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 A.D. 1866. ^T. 71. 
 
 PA6B 
 
 Preparations for the Kectorsliip— Journey to Edinburgh — 
 Tyndall — The Installation — Carlyle's speech — Character 
 of it — Effect upon the world — Cartoon in ' Punch ' — Car- 
 lyle stays at Scotsbrig to recover — Intended tea-party in 
 Cheyne Eow — Sudden death of Mrs. Carlyle — John Fors- 
 ter — Funeral at Haddington — Letters from Erskine — 
 Carlyle's answers, 254 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 A.D. 1866. MT. 71. 
 
 Message of sympathy from the Queen — John Carlyle — Eetro- 
 spects — A future life — Attemj)ts at occupation — Miss 
 Davenport Bromley — The Eyre Committee — Memories — 
 Mentone — Stay there with Lady Ashburton — Entries in 
 Journal, 272 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 A.D. 1867. iET. 72. 
 
 Beturn to England — Intruders in Cheyne Eow — Want of em- 
 ployment — Settlement of the Craigenputtock estate — 
 Charities— Public affairs — Tory Eeform Bill — ' Shooting 
 Niagara ' — A new horse — Visits in country houses — Medi- 
 • tation in Journal — A beautiful recollection, . . . 290 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 A.D. 1868. ^T. 73. 
 
 The Eyre Committee— Disestablishment of the Irish Church 
 —A lecture by Tyndall —Visit to Stratton— S. G. O.— 
 Last sight of the Grange — ' Letters and Memorials of 
 Mrs. Carlyle ' — Meditations in Journal— Modern Athe- 
 ism — Democracy and popular orators — Scotland — Inter- 
 view with the Queen — Portraits — Modern Atheism — 
 Strange applications — Loss of use of the right hand — 
 Uses of anarchy, 310 
 
Contents, ix 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 A.D. 1870. ^T. 76. 
 
 Anne Boleyn— * Ginx's Baby'— The Franco-German war- 
 English sympathy with France — Letter to the * Times ' — 
 Effect of it — Inability to write — ' Letters and Memorials 
 of Mi-s. Carlyle ' — Disposition made of them, . . . 337 
 
 CHAPTER XXXin. 
 A.D. 1872. iET. 77. 
 
 Weariness of life — History of the Noi-se Kings — Portrait of 
 John Knox — Death of John Mill and the Bishop of Win- 
 chester—Mill and Carlyle— Irish iwlicy of Mr. Gladstone 
 — Tlie Prussian Order of Merit — Offer of the Grand Cmss 
 of the Bath — Why refused— Lord Beaconsfield and the 
 Russo-Tiu'kish war — Letter to the ' Times,* . , . 355 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIY. 
 
 A.D. 1877-81. JET. 82-85. 
 
 Conversation and habits of life — Estimate of leading politi- 
 cians — Visit from Lord Wolseley — Lord Beaconsfield and 
 Mr.. Gladstone — Dislike of Jews — The English Liturgy — 
 An afternoon in Westminster Abbey — Progress — Democ- 
 racy — Religion — The Bible — Characteristics, . , . 379 
 
 CHAPTER XXXY. 
 
 A.D. 1877-81. MT. 82-85. 
 
 Statues — ^Portraits — Millais's picture — Study of the Bible — 
 Illness and death of John Carlyle — Preparation of Me- 
 moirs — Last words about it — Longing for death — The end 
 — Offer of a tomb in Westminster Abbey — Why declined — 
 Ecclefechan churchyard — Conclusion, .... 394 
 
CABLYLE'S 
 LIFE IN LONDON. 
 
 CHAPTER XYII. 
 
 A.D. 1849-50. MT. 54-55. 
 
 Tour in Ireland — The Iiish problem — Impressions in the West — 
 Gweedore— Address at Deny — Retum to Scotland— the High- 
 lands — A shooting paradise — Reflections on it — Libei-ty — 
 Radicalism— Impatience with cant — Article on the Nigger 
 question — * Latter-day Pamphlets.' 
 
 Carlyle's purpose of writing a book on Ireland was not 
 to be fulfilled. He went thither. He travelled through 
 the four provinces. After his return he jotted down a 
 hurried account of his experiences; but that was all the 
 contribution which he was able to make for the solution 
 of a problem which he found at once too easy and too 
 hopeless. Ireland is an enchanted countrj^ There is a 
 land ready, as any land ever w^as, to answer to cultivation. 
 There is a people ready to cultivate it, to thrive, and cover 
 the surface of it with happy, prosperous homes, if ruled, 
 like other nations, by methods which suit their tempera- 
 ment. If the Anglo-Saxons liad set about governing Ire- 
 land with the singleness of aim with which they govern 
 India or build their own railways, a few seasons at any 
 Vol. IV.— 1 
 
2 Carlyle's Life in London, 
 
 time would have seen the end of its misery and discon- 
 tent. But the Anglo-Saxons have never approached Ire- 
 land in any such spirit. They have had the welfare of 
 Ireland on their lips. In their hearts tliey have thought 
 only of England's welfare, or of what in some narrow 
 prejudice they deemed to be such, of England's religious 
 interests, commercial interests, political interests. So it 
 was wheti Henry II. set up Popery tliere. So it was 
 when Elizabeth set up the Protestant Establishment there. 
 So it is now when tlie leaders of the English Liberals 
 again destroy that Establishment to secure the Irish votes 
 to their party in Parliament. 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 may not 
 use it as the plaything of their own selfishness or their 
 own factions. For seven hundred years they have fol- 
 lowed on the same lines : the principle the same, however 
 opposite the action. As it was in the days of Strongbow, 
 so it is to-day ; and ' healing measures,' ushered in no 
 matter with what pomp 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 remedy could be 
 found there, while the poisonous fountain still flowed at 
 Westminster unpurified, would be labour vain as spinning 
 ropes of moonshine. He noted down what he had seen, 
 and then dismissed the unhappy subject from his mind ; 
 giving his manuscript to a friend as something of which 
 he desired to hear no more for ever. It was published 
 after his death, and the briefest summary of what to him- 
 self had no value is all that need concern us here. He 
 left London on the 30th of June in a Dublin steamboat. 
 He could sleep, sound at sea, and therefore pi-eferred ' long 
 «ea' to land when the choice was offered him. Punning 
 past the Isle of Wight, he saw in the distance Sterling's 
 
Iri^h I'our, 3 
 
 house at Ventnor ; he saw Plymouth, Fahnouth, the Land's 
 End. Then, crossing St. George's Channel, lie came on 
 the Irish coast at Wexford, where the chief scenes of the 
 Rebellion 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 met Gavan DufFy again ; stayed several 
 days; saw various notabilities — Petrie, the antiquarian, 
 among others, whose high merit he at once recognised ; 
 declined an invitation from the Viceroy, and on the 8th 
 (a Sunday), Dublin and the neighbourhood being done 
 with, he started 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 saw, and full of ragged beggars : 
 exotic, altogether like 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 men- 
 dicants — men, women, children ; a village winged, as if a flight of 
 harpies had alighted on it. Here for the first time was Irish beg- 
 gary itself. 
 
 In the railway ^ a big blockhead sate with his dirty feet 
 on seat opposite, not stirring them for Carlyle, who wanted 
 to sit there.' * One thing we're all agreed on,' said he. 
 * We're very ill governed — Whig, Tory, Radical, Repealer, 
 all admit we're very ill governed.' Carlyle thought to 
 liimself, * Yes, indeed. You govern yourself. lie that 
 would govern you well would probably surprise you much, 
 my fi'iend, laying a hearty horsewhip on that back of 
 yours.' 
 
 Owing to the magic companionship of Mr. DufFy, he 
 met and talked freely with priests and patriots. Loixl 
 
4 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 Monteagle's introductions secured him attention from the 
 Anglo-Irish gentry. He was entertained at the Castle at 
 Lismore, saw Waterford, Youghal, Castlemartyr, and then 
 Cork, where he encountered ' one of the two sons of Adam 
 who, sixteen years before, had encouraged Fraser, the 
 bookseller, to go on with " Teufelsdrockh," ' a priest, a 
 Father O'Shea, to whom for this at least he was grateful. 
 Killarney was the next stage ; beauty and squalor tliere, 
 as everywhere, sadly linked to one another. Kear Killar- 
 ney he stayed wdth Sir and his interesting wife ; 
 
 good people, but strong upholders of the Anglo-Irish 
 Church, which, however great its merits otherwise, had 
 made little of missionary work among the Catholic Celts. 
 He wished well to all English institutions in Ireland, 
 but he had a fixed conviction that the Anglo-Catholic 
 Church at least, both there and 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 Hke to assemble here once a week 
 and remind themselves of English purities and decencies and Gos- 
 jDel ordinances, in the midst of a black, howling Babel of super- 
 stitious savagery, like Hebrews sitting by the streams of Babylon. 
 But I felt more clearly than ever how impossible it was that an 
 extraneous son of Adam, 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 ! Weep 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 Babylonian or any other mortal to con- 
 cern himself with that affair of yours. ... No sadder truth 
 presses itself upon me than the necessity there will soon be, and 
 the call there everywhere 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. 
 
Irish Tour. 5 
 
 Limerick, Clare, Lough Derg on the Shannon, Galway, 
 Castlebar, Westport — these were the successive points of 
 the journey. At Westport was a workhouse and ' human 
 swinery at its acme ; ' 30,000 paupers out of a population 
 of 60,000 ; ' an abomination of desolation.' Thence, 
 through the dreariest parts of Mayo, he drove on to Bul- 
 lina, where he found Forster, of Ilawdon, waiting for 
 him — W. E. Forster, then young and earnest, and eager 
 to master in C'arlyle's company the enigma which he took 
 in hand as Chief Secretary three years ago (1881, «fec.), 
 with what success the w^orld by this time knows. Carlyle, 
 at least, is not responsible for the failure, certain as 
 mathematics, of the Irish Land Act. Forster perhaps 
 discovered at the time that he would find little to suit him 
 in Carlyle's views of the matter. They soon parted. 
 Carlyle hastened on to Donegal to see a remarkable ex- 
 periment which was then being attempted there. Lord 
 Geoi-ge 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 t»ut 
 of its misery even under the existing conditions of En- 
 glish administration. 
 
 His distinct conclusion was that this too, like all else of 
 the kind, was building a house out of sand, lie went to 
 Gweedore ; he stayed with Lord George ; he saw all that 
 he w^as doing or trying to do, and he perceived, with a 
 clearness which the event has justified, that the persuasive 
 charitable method of raising lost men out of the dirt and 
 leading them of their own accord into the ways that they 
 should go, was, in Ireland at least, doomed to fail from 
 the beginning. 
 
 I liad to rci^eat often to Lord George (he says), to which he 
 could not refuse essential consent, Ins is the largest attempt at 
 benevolence and beneficence on the modern system (the emanci- 
 pation, all for liberty, abolition of capital punishment, roast gooso 
 
C Cadyle^s Life in London. 
 
 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 be interesting to compare Carljle's tour, or 
 any modern tour, in Ireland, with Arthur Young's, some- 
 thing over a hundred years ago — before Grattan's consti- 
 tution, the Yolunteers, the glorious liberties of 1782, 
 Catholic emancipation, and the rest that has followed. 
 Carlyle found but one Lord George Hill hopelessly 
 struggling with impossibilities ; Arthur Young found not 
 one, but many peers and gentlemen working effectively^ in 
 the face of English discouragement : draining, planting, 
 building, making large districts, now all ' gone back to 
 bog ' again, habitable by human beings, and successfully 
 accomplishing at least a part of the work which they were 
 set to do. All that is not waste and wilderness in Ireland 
 is really the work of these poor men. 
 
 From Gweedore to Derry was an easy journey. There 
 his travels were to end ; he was to find a steamer which 
 would take him to Scotland. Five weeks had passed 
 since he landed. On August 6 he met at breakfast a 
 company of Derry citizens, who had come to hear the im- 
 pression which these weeks had left upon him. 
 
 Emphatic talk to them, far too emphatic : human nerves being 
 worn out with exasperation. Eemedy for Ireland? To cease gen- 
 erally 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 bankrupt. This universe, my worthy brothers, 
 has its laws, terrible as death and judgment if we ' cant ' ourselves 
 away from following them. Land tenure ? What is a landlord at 
 this moment in any country if Khadamanthus looked at him ? What 
 is an Archbishop ? Alas ! what is a Queen ? Wliat is a British 
 specimen of the genus homo in these generations ? A bundle of 
 hearsays and authentic appetites— a. canaille whom the gods are 
 about to chastise and to extinguish if he cannot alter himself, &c. 
 
John CarlyU. 7 
 
 Derrj^ aristocrats behaved very well under all this. Not a pleas- 
 ant breakfast ; but, oh I it is the last. 
 
 This was Monday, August 6. On the 7th, Carlyle was 
 in his own land again, having left the ' huge suppuration ' 
 to suppurate more and more till it burst, he feeling that 
 an}' 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 hu- 
 man fi-uits fi-om 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. 
 
 Ilis wife had meanwhile gone to Scotland on her own 
 account. She had spent three singularly interesting days 
 at Haddington (which she has herself described 'j, where 
 she wandered like a returned spirit about the home of her 
 childhood. She had gone thence to her relations at Auch- 
 tertool, in Fife, and was there staying when her husband 
 was at Gweedore. A characteristic letter of hers survives, 
 written thence, whicli must have been omitted by accident 
 in Carlyle's collection. 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 family were busy reading 
 it and talking about it. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Auchtertool Manse : July 27, 1849. 
 
 We had been talking about you, and had sunk silent. Suddenly 
 my uncle turned his head to me and said, shaking it gravely, * Ho 
 has made an awesome plooster o' that place.* * Who ? what place, 
 uncle ? ' ' Whew ! the place ye'll maybe gang to if ye dinna tak' 
 care.* I really believe he considers all those circles of your in- 
 vention. 
 
 Walter ' performed the marriage service over a couple of colliers 
 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-look- 
 ing man enough, dreadfully agitated, partly with the business 
 
 « Letters and JfemoriaU^ vol. ii., p. 55. » A cousin just ordained. 
 
8 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 lie \yas 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 com- 
 posed, while the large eye stared wildly and had a tear in it. 
 Walter married them very well indeed ; and his affecting words, 
 together with the bridegroom's j^ale, excited face, and the bride's 
 ugliness, and the j^overty, penury, and want imprinted on the 
 v.'liole business, and above all fellow-feeling with the poor wretches 
 then rushing on their fate — all that so overcame me that I fell 
 crying as desperately as if I had been getting married to the col- 
 lier 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 snujEf-box 
 which I happened to have in my hand, being just about j^resent- 
 ing it to Walter when the creatures came in. This unexpected 
 Himmelsendung 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 * Oh, Miss ! Oh, Liddy ! may ye 
 hae mair comfort and pleasure in your life than ever you have had 
 yet ! ' which might easily be. 
 
 Carljle stayed quiet at Scotsbrig, meditating on tlie 
 break-down of the proposed Irish book, and uncertain 
 what lie should turn to instead. He had promised to join 
 the Ashburtons in the course of the autumn at a Highland 
 shooting-box. Shooting parties were out of his line alto- 
 gether, but perhaps he did not object to seeing for once 
 what such a thing was like. Scotsbrig, too, was not 
 agreeing with him. 
 
 Last night (he says in a letter thence) I awoke at three, and 
 made nothing more of it, owing to cocks and other 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 particularities in mere sleep, not to speak of any others, 
 is he not a creature to be prayed for? 
 
 He remained there till the end of August, and then 
 started on his expedition. Glen Truim, to which he was 
 
Glen Tndm. 9 
 
 bound, was in the far North, in Macpherson of Clunie's 
 country. The railroad was yet unfinished, and the jour- 
 ney — long and tedious — had to be transacted by coach, 
 lie was going against the grain. Perhaps his wife thought 
 that he would have done more wisely to decline. He 
 stopped on the way at Auchtertool to see her; *had,' he 
 says, ' a miserable enough hugger-mugger time ; my own 
 blame — none others so much ; ' ' saw that always.' Cer- 
 tainly, as the event proved, he would have been better off 
 out of the way of the ' guimer bodies.' If he was miser- 
 able in Fife, he was far from happy with his grand friends 
 in Glen Truim. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Glen Truim : September 2, 1849. 
 
 Wliat can I do but write to you, even if I were not bound by 
 the law of the wayfarer ? It is my course whenever 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. 
 Well do I know that, in spite of prepossessions, she will have some 
 pity of me. . . . 
 
 You may fancy what the route was. . . . The fat old land- 
 lord at Bunkeld, grown grey and much broader, was the only known 
 li\'ing creature.' A still, olive-coloured mist hung over all the 
 country. Elinnaird and the old house which was my sleeping-place 
 when I used to write to you were greyly discernible across the river 
 amid their trees. I thought of the waterhen you have heard me 
 menfeion, of the ix)ny 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 
 Michael Angolo's * Last Judgment,' and deserve their place from 
 time to time. 
 
 ' Remembered from the time whcu he had been the Bullers' tutor, twenty - 
 ■even years before. 
 
10 Carlyleh Life in London. 
 
 The journej to Invernessshire is detailed with copious 
 iniiiuteness. His eye always cauglit small details when 
 they had meaiiiDg in them. The coach dropped him 
 finally at the roadside, in sight of Glen TiTiim — ' the house, 
 a rather foolish-looking, tnrretted, diminutive, pretentious, 
 grey granite sort of a place, half a mile off ; ' the country 
 an undulated plain — a very broad valley with no high hill 
 but one near by, ' bare for the i-est, and by no means a Gar- 
 den of Eden in any respect.' lie continues : — 
 
 The gillie that was to wait for us was by no means waiting. He 
 ' mistook the time.' Nothing but solitary, bare moor was waiting. I 
 took the next cottage, left my goods there, walked ; found nobody, 
 as usual. In brief, oh, Goody, Goody ! it was four o'clock before 
 I actually found landlord ; four and a half landlady ; I walking all 
 the while, with no refection but cigars : five before I could get 
 hold of my luggage, and eight, after vain attempts at sleep 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 hospi- 
 talities of the great world, even when kindly affected to us, good 
 Lord deliver liooz ! . . . 
 
 In fact, when I think of the Grange, and Bath House, and Ad- 
 discombe, and consider this wretched establishment, and 500/. for 
 two months of it, I am lost in amazement. The house is not actually 
 much beyond Craigenputtock — say two Craigenputtocks ill con- 
 trived and ill managed. Nor is the prospect in a higher ratio ; and 
 for society, really Corson, ' except that he was not called Lord, and 
 had occasionally ' his forehead all elevated into inequalities,' Cor- 
 son, 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 area 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 polite, 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 remembrance. Young Lord N. you 
 
 ^ A farmer who lived near Craigenputtock. 
 
A Shooting Paradise, 11 
 
 know. Merchant B., really one of the sensiblest figures here, he 
 and Miss Emily Baring make up the lot, and we are crammed like 
 herrings in a barrel. The two lads are in one room. This apart- 
 ment 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 Peei*s of the Realm snored audibly 
 to me. • ... In fact, it is rather clear I shall do no good here 
 unless things alter exceedingly. I mean to petition to be oflf to 
 tlie bothy ' to-morrow, where at least will be some kind of silence. 
 I must go, and will if I 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 soul ! 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 hence- 
 forth. But enough of all these sad niaiserles, which indeed I my- 
 self 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 Highland moors before me worth looking at for once. 
 And we shall get out of this adventure handsomely enough, if I 
 miscalculate not, by-and-by. Milnes is to be here in a day or two, 
 and these Lords of Parliament with their gunboxes and retinue 
 are to go. We shall know shooting-boxes for the time to come. 
 
 The Ashburtons were as attentive to Cai-lyle's peculiari- 
 ties as it was possible to be. ]S'o prince's confessor, in the 
 ages of faith, could have more consideration shown him 
 than he in this restricted mansion. The best apartment 
 was made over to him as soon as it was vacant. A special 
 dinner was arranged for him at his own hour. But ho 
 was out of his element. 
 
 September T, 
 
 I have got a big waste room, and in spite of noises and turmoils 
 
 contrive to get nightly in instalments some six hours of sleep. 
 
 But on the whole my visit prospers as ill as could be wished. 
 
 Double, double, toil and trouble !— that and nothing else at all. 
 
 * A lodge some miles distant. 
 
12 Carlyl(^s Life in London. 
 
 No reasonable word is heard, or hardly one, in the twenty-four 
 hours. I cannot even get a washing-tub. My last attempt at 
 washing was in a foot-j^ail, as unfit for it as a teacup would have 
 been, and it brought on the lumbago. Patientia! I have known 
 now what Highland shooting paradises are, and one experiment, I 
 think, will be quite 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 primum. 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 purpose it 
 was intended for. Work, even to the aristocracy, is ex- 
 acting in these days. Pleasure is even more exacting ; 
 and unless tliey could rough it now and then in primitive 
 fashion and artificial plainness of living, they would sink 
 under the burden of their splendours and the w^eariness of 
 their duties. Carlyle had no bushiess in such a scene. 
 He never fired off a gun in his life. lie never lived in 
 liabitual luxury, and therefore could not enjoy the absence 
 of common conveniences, lie was out of humour with 
 what he saw. lie was out of humour with himself for 
 being a part of it. Three weeks of solitude at Scotsbrig, 
 to which he hastened to retreat, scarcely repaired his suf- 
 ferings at Glen Truim. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Scotsbrig: September 17, 1849. 
 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 angiy at me. People 
 ought to let me alone. Perhaps they would if they rightly under- 
 stood 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 billows and cross Avinds 
 shall not beat us yet ; not at this stage of the voyage, and harbour 
 
Scolshroj. 13 
 
 almost within sight. Tho fact is that just now I am very weary, 
 and the more sleep I get 1 seem to grow the wearier. Yesterday 
 I took a ride ; tho lanes all silent, fields full of stocks, and Burns- 
 waik 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. « 
 
 ' 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 'uu,' and much modified the * Gummidge ' 
 view of affairs. Sickness and distraction of nerves is a good ex- 
 cuse for almost any degree of despondency. . . . But we can 
 by no means permit ourselves a philosophy a la 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 
 duties to do ; and not till after they are done can we talk of retir- 
 ing 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 are utterly 
 worn out ; and I hope a little, though I have no right properly, 
 to get a letterkin to-morrow with a cheerioj' report of matters. 
 Furthermore, I am coming home myself in some two days, and I 
 reasonably calculate, not wnreasonably according to all the light I 
 have, that our life may be much more comfortable together than 
 it has been for some yeara past. In me, if I can help it, there 
 shall not be anything wanting for an issue so desirable, so indis- 
 l)Gnsable in fact. If you ^vill open your own eyes and shut your 
 evil demon's imaginings and dreamings, I firmly believe all will 
 soon be well. God grant it. Amen, amen ! I love thee always, 
 little as thou wilt believe it. 
 
 September 25. 
 
 For two nights past I have got into the bad habit of dividing 
 my sleep in two ; waking a couple of hours by way of interlude, 
 and then sleeping till ton 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 
 
 ' In anuwer to a melancholy letter. 
 
14 Ca7'lyle's Life in London. 
 
 nnprofitably 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 traly and for ever of 
 imj^ortance to me^ . . . Oh my dear 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. My 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. Caelyle. 
 
 The three months of holiday were thus spent — -strange 
 holidays. But a man carries liis shadow clinging to hhii, 
 and cannot part with it, except in a novel. lie was now 
 driven by accumulation of discontent to disburden his 
 heart of its secretions. During the last two revolutionary 
 years he had covered many 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 him tlie highest of all human 
 duties. Therefoi-e he detested cant with a perfect hatred. 
 Cant was organised hypocrisy, the art of making things 
 seem what they were not ; an art so deadly that it killed 
 the very souls of those who practised it, carrying them 
 beyond the stage of conscious falsehood into a belief in 
 their own illusions, and reducing them to the wretchedest 
 of possible conditions, that of being sincerely insincere. 
 With cant of this kind he saw all Europe, all America, 
 overrun ; but beyond all, his own England appeared to 
 him to be drenched in cant — cant religious, cant political, 
 cant moral, cant artistic, cant everywhere and in every- 
 
Letter to Erakine. 15 
 
 thing. A letter to Mr. Erskine, written before the Fiench 
 Revolution, shows what he was then thinking about it ; 
 and all that had happened since had wrought his convic- 
 tion to whiter heat. 
 
 To Tftomas Erskine, Linlatlien. 
 
 June 12, 1847. 
 One is warned by Nature herself not to * sit down by the side of 
 sad thoughts,' as my friend Oliver has it, and dwell voluntarily 
 with what is sorrowful and painful. Yet at the same time one has 
 to say for oneself— at least I have— that all the good I ever got 
 came to me rather in the shape of sorrow : that there is nothmg 
 noble or godlike in this world but has in it something of ' infinite 
 sadness,* very different indeed from what the cuiTent moral phi- 
 losophies represent it to us ; and surely in a time like oui-s, if in 
 any time, it is good for a man to be driven, were it by never such 
 harsh methods, into looking at this great universe with his own 
 eyes, for himself and not for another, and trying to adjust himself 
 truly there. By the helps and traditions of othera he never will 
 adjust himself : others are but offering him their miserable spy- 
 glasses ; Puseyite, Presbyterian, Free Kirk, old Jew, old Greek, 
 middle-age Italian, imperfect, not to say distorted, 8emi-oi)a(]ue, 
 wholly opaque and altogether melancholy and rejectable spy- 
 glasses, one and all, if one has eyes left. On me, too, the pressui'e 
 of these things falls veiy heavy : indeed I often feel the loneliest 
 of all the sons of Adam; and, in the jargon of poor gi-imacing 
 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 having infinitely too much, to say: out of 
 which pei-plexity I know no road except that of getting more and 
 more miserable in it, till one is foixed to say something, and so 
 carry on the work a little, I must not complain. I must tiy 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 uni- 
 verse and all its felicities been freely offered me to take my share 
 from ? The great soul of this world is Just. With a voice soft as 
 the harmony of 8f)heres, yet stronger, sterner, than all thunders, 
 this message does now and then reach us through tlie hollow jar- 
 gon of things. This great fact we live in, and were made by. It 
 is *a noble Spartan Mother' to all of us that^dare be sons to it. 
 
16 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 Courage ! we must not quit our shields ; we must return home 
 upon our shields, having fought in the battle till we died. That 
 is verily the law. Many a time I remember that of Dante, the in- 
 scription 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 perhaps — for they are white men, and their century is the 
 nineteenth — than that of Mumbo Jumbo itself ! This, you per- 
 ceive, is strong talking. This I have got to say yet, or try what I 
 can do toward saying if I live. From Dan to Beersheba 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 being. . . . It is every way 
 very strange to consider what 'Christianity,' so called, has grown 
 to within these two centuries, 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 faces from God, and set up idols, temporary phantasms, 
 instead of the Eternal One — alas ! the consequences are from of 
 old well known. 
 
 Religion, a religion that was true, meant a rule of con- 
 duct according to the law of God. Religion, as it existed 
 in England, had become a thing of opinion, of emotion 
 flowing over into benevolence as an imagined substitute 
 for justice. Over* the conduct of men in their ordinary 
 business it had ceased to operate at all, and therefore, to 
 Carlyle, it was a hollow appearance, a word without force 
 or controlling power in it. Religion was obligation, a 
 command which bound men to duty, as something which 
 they were compelled to do under tremendous penalties. 
 The modern world, even the religious part of it, had sup- 
 posed that the grand aim was to abolish compulsion, to 
 establish universal f j-eedom, leaving each man to the light 
 of his own conscience or his own will. Freedom — that 
 was the word — tKe glorious birthright which, once realised, 
 
Meaning of Religion. 17 
 
 was to turn earth into paradise. And this was cant ; and 
 those who were loudest about it could not themselves be- 
 lieve it, but could only pretend to believe it. In a con- 
 ditioned existence like ours, freedom was impossible. To 
 the race as a race, the alternative was work or starvation 
 — all were bound to work in their several ways ; some 
 nuist work or all would die ; and the result of the boasted 
 political liberty was an arrangement where the cunning or 
 the strong appropriated the lion's share of the harvest 
 without working, while the multitude lived on by toil, 
 and toiled to get the means 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 anywhere was 
 freedom possible in the popular sense of the word. Each 
 one of us was compassed round with restrictions on his 
 personal will, and the wills even of the strongest were 
 slaves to inclination. The serf whose visible fetters were 
 struck off was a serf still under the law of nature, lie 
 might change his master, but a master he must have of 
 some kind, or die ; and to speak of * emancipation ' in and 
 by itself, as any mighty gain or step in progress, was the 
 wildest of illusions. No * progress ' would or could be 
 made on the lines of Eadicals or philanthropists. The 
 * liberty,' the only liberty, attainable by the multitude of 
 ignorant mortals, was in being guided or else compelled 
 by some one wiser than themselves. They gained nothing 
 if they exchanged the bondage to man for bondage to the 
 devil. It was assumed in the talk of the day that ' eman- 
 cipation' created manliness, self respect, improvement of 
 character.' To Carlyle, who looked at facts, all this was 
 
 * Mr. Gladstone somewhere quotes Homer in support of this argument 
 
 riik^w yap t aptry)^ areoaiwrat. evpvoira Ztvf 
 
 avipof, efr' ay fiiv xara SovXiov Jiftap «A}j(ri»'. 
 
 '.Tove strips a man of half his virtue on the day whtMi slavery lays hold on 
 
 him.' Homer, be it observed, places thesie words in the mouth of Eumoius, 
 
 who was himself a slave. Eumaius and another slave were alono found faith- 
 
 VoL. IV.— 2 
 
18 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 wind. Those ' grinders,' for instance, whom he had seen in 
 that Manchestei- cellar, earning high wages, that they 
 might live merrily for a year or two, and die at the end of 
 them — were they improved ? Was freedom to kill them- 
 selves for drink such a blessed thing ? Were they reall}^ 
 better oif than slaves who were at least as well cared for 
 as their master's cattle ? The cant on this subject enraged 
 him. lie, starting from the other ]yole^ believing not in 
 the rights of man, but in the duties of man, could see 
 nothing in it but detestable selfishness disguised in the 
 plumage of angels — a shameful substitute for the neglect of 
 the human ties by which man was bound to man. ' Facit 
 indignatio versimi? Wrath with the things which he saw 
 around him inspired the Roman poet ; wrath drove Car- 
 lyle into writing the ^ Latter-day Pamphlets.' 
 
 Journal. 
 November 1\, 1849. — Went to Ireland — wandered about there 
 all through July, have half forcibly recalled all my remembrances, 
 and thrown them down on a paper since my return. Ugly spec- 
 tacle, 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. Went afterwards from An- 
 nandale to the Highlands as far as 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 cold, from 
 which she is not yet quite entirely recovered. The last glimpses 
 of her at the door, whither she had followed me, contrary to bar- 
 gain ; these are things that lie beyond speech. How lonely I am 
 now gi'own in the world ; how hard, many 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 by contra- 
 dictions, it has, as it were, lain down in a kind of iron sleep. The 
 general history of man? Somewhat, I suppose, and yet not 
 
 ful to their king when the free citizens of Tthaca had forgotten him, 
 Eumaeus 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 superior to them. 
 
*• Latter day ramphltU? 19 
 
 wholly. Woi*ds cannot express the love and sorrow of my old 
 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 wisdom, for silent capability to manage this huge haggard 
 world — at once a Hades and an Elysium, a celestial and infei-nal 
 as I see, which has been given me to inhabit for a time and to 
 nile over as I can. No lonelier soul, I do believe, lies under the 
 sky at this moment than myself. Masses 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 tuni 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. Might serve as newspaper or 
 pamphletary introduction, overture, or accompaniment to the un- 
 nanieable book I have to write. In dissent from all the world ; 
 in black contradiction, deep as the bases of my life, to all the phil- 
 anthropic, emancipatory, constitutional, and other anarchic revo- 
 lutionary 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, and bid it wholly set to the work fit for 
 it in this hour. Oh, let me persist, pei-sist— may the heavens 
 grant mo power to persist in that till I do succeed in it ! 
 
 November 16, 1849. — A sad feature in employments like mine, 
 that you cannot cairy them on continuously. My 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 coUapse, 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 Kegro or digger question, properly the 
 first of the ' Latter-day Pamplilets,' was Carlyle's declara- 
 tion of war against modern Radicalism. Hitherto, though 
 
20 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 his orthodoxy was questionable, the Radicals had been 
 glad to claim him as belonging to them ; and if Eadical- 
 ism meant an opinion that modern society required to be 
 reconstituted from the root, he had been, was, and re- 
 mained the most thoroughgoing of them all. His objec- 
 tion was to the cant of Radicalism ; the philosophy of it, 
 '• bred of philanthropy and the Dismal Science,' the pur- 
 port of which was to cast the atoms of human society 
 adrift, mocked with the name of liberty, to sink or swim 
 as they could, ^^egro emancipation had been the special 
 boast and glory of the new theory of universal happiness. 
 The twenty millions of indemnity and the free West In- 
 dies had been chanted and celebrated for a quarter of a 
 century from press and platform. Weekly, almost daily, 
 the English newspapers were crowing over the Americans, 
 flinging in their teeth the Declaration of Independence, 
 blowing up in America itself a flame which was ripening 
 towards a furious war, while the result of the experiment 
 so far had been the material ruin of colonies once the 
 most precious that we had, and the moral ruin of the 
 blacks themselves, who were rotting away in sensuous idle- 
 ness amidst the wrecks of the plantations. He was touch- 
 ing the shield with the point of his lance when he chose 
 this sacredly sensitive subject for his first onslaught. He 
 did not mean that the ' Niggers ' should have been kept 
 as cattle, and sold as cattle at their owners' pleasure. 
 He did mean that they ought to have been treated as 
 human beings, for whose souls and bodies the whites were 
 responsible; that they should have been placed in a posi- 
 tion suited to their capacity, like that of the English serf 
 under the Plantagenets ; protected against ill-usage by 
 law ; attached to the soil ; not allowed to be idle, but 
 cared for themselves, their wives and their children, in 
 health, in sickness, and in old age. 
 
 He said all this ; but he said it fiercely, scornfully, in 
 
'' Latter day Pa7ii;phlets.^ 21 
 
 tlie tone which could least conciliate attention. Black 
 Quashee and his friends were spattered with ridicule which 
 stmig the more from the justice of it. The following pas- 
 sage could least he pardoned because the truth which it 
 contained could least be denied : — 
 
 Dead corpses, the rotting botly of a brother man, whom fate or 
 unjust men have killed, this is not a pleasant spectacle. 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 gen- 
 tleman 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 hemngs and rum in Demerara), no 
 breeches on his body, pumpkin at discretion, and the fi-uitfullest 
 region of the earth going back to jungle round him ? Such things 
 the sun looks down upon in oui* fine times, and I for one would 
 rather have no hand in them. . . . Yes — this is the eternal 
 law of nature for a man, my beneficent Exeter Hall fiicnds ; this, 
 that he shall be permitted, encouraged, and, if need be, comj^elled 
 to do what work the Maker of him has intended for this world. 
 Not that he should eat pumpkin with never such felicity in the 
 West 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 been bestowed on him for that. And his own happi- 
 ness and that of others round him will alone be possible by his 
 and their getting into such a relation that this can be pei-mitted 
 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 forgotten it ; 
 and there lie a thousand influences in it not quite useless for 
 Exeter Hall at present. The idle black man in the "West Indies 
 had not long since the right, and will again, under better form, if 
 it please Heaven, have the right— actually the first * right of man ' 
 for an indolent peraon — to be compelled to work as he was fit, and 
 to do the Maker's will who had constmcted him with such and 
 such capabilities and prefigurements of capabihty. And I inces- 
 santly 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 
 answer) to do what work they are api)ointed for, and not to go 
 idle another minute in a life which is so short, and where idleness 
 80 soon runs to putrescence. Alas ! we had then a perfect world, 
 
22 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 and the Millennium, and tlie ' 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 is very far from having got done. 
 
 I once asked Carlyle if he liad ever thought of going 
 into Parliament, for I knew that the opportunity must 
 liave been offered him. ^ Well,' he said, ' I did think of 
 it at the time of the '' Latter-day Pamphlets." I felt that 
 nothing could prevent me from getting 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 volume of conventional electricity with which the 
 collective wisdom of the nation was, and remains, charged. 
 It is better that his thoughts should have been committed 
 to enduring print, where they remain to be reviewed here- 
 after by the light of fact. 
 
 The article on the ' Nigger question ' gave, as might 
 have been expected, universal offence. Many of his old 
 admirers drew back after this, and * walked no more with 
 him.' John Mill replied fiercely in the same magazine. 
 They had long ceased to be intimate ; they were hence- 
 forth ' rent asunder,' not to be again united. Each w^ent 
 his own course ; but neither Mill nor Carlyle forgot that 
 they had once been friends, and each to the last spoke of 
 the other with affectionate regret. 
 
 The Pamphlets commenced at the beginning of 1850, 
 and went on month after month, each separately published, 
 no magazine daring to become responsible for them. The 
 first was on ' The Present Time,' on the advent and pros- 
 pects of Democracy. The revolutions of 1848 had been 
 the bankruptcy of falsehood, ' the tumbling out of impos- 
 tures into the street.' The problem left before the world 
 was how nations were hereafter to be governed. The 
 English people imagined that it could be done by ' suf- 
 frages ' and the ballot-box ; a system under which St. Paul 
 
'^ Latter-day FampfdeU.^ 23 
 
 and Judas Iscariot would each have an equal vote, and one 
 would have as much power as the other. This was like 
 saying that when a ship was going on a voyage round the 
 world the crew were to be brought 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 may be 
 very nnanimous, which doubtless for the time being will be veiy 
 comfortable for the ship's crew, and to their phantasm captain, if 
 they have one. But if' the tack they imanimously 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 re- 
 ject the phantasm species of captains. One wishes much some 
 other entities, since all entities lie undei' 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. 
 
 The words in italics contain tlie 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, men 
 fittest by capacity and experience to read those laws must 
 be placed in command, and the ballot-box never will and 
 never can select the fittest ; it will select the sham fittest, 
 or the U7i^ttest The suffrage, the right of every man to 
 a voice in the selection of his rulers, was, and is, the first 
 article of the Radical Magna Charta, the a7'ticulu8 stantls 
 vel cadeQith lieipuhlwce, and is so accepted by every 
 modern Liberal statesman. Carlyle met it with a denial 
 as complete and scornful as Luther flung at Tetzel and his 
 Indulgences — not, however, with the same approval from 
 those whom he addressed. Luther found the grass dry 
 and ready to kindle. Tlie belief which Carlyle assailed 
 was alive and green with hope and vigour. 
 
 Journal, 
 Fehruaiy 7, 1850. — Trying to write my * Latter-day Pamphlets.* 
 Such foi-m, after infinite haggling, has the thing now assumed. 
 Some twelve pamphlets, if I can but get them written at all ; 
 
24 Ccvdyle's Life hi London. 
 
 then leave the matter lying. No. 1 came out a week ago ; yields 
 nio a most confused response. 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 philanthroiDists 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 
 X3roceeded from John Mill. . . . He has neither told me nor 
 reminded me of anything that I did not very well know before- 
 hand. No use in writing that kind of criticism. For some years 
 back Mill, who once volunteered a close constant intimacy for a 
 long time, has volunteered a complete withdrawal of himself ; and 
 now, instead of reverent discipleship, which he asj^ired to, seems to 
 have taken the function of getting up to contradict whatever I say. 
 Curious enough. But poor Mill'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 M'ord of quarrel), appeals to my 
 pity if any anger was rising. . . . The Pamphlets are all as 
 bad as need be. If I could but get my meaning exi^laiued at all, 
 I should care little in what style it Avas. 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 suffer- 
 ing, feel as if I could sit down in it and say, ' Well, 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 pamphlet, on ' Model Prisons,' was as savage 
 as the first. Society, conscious at heart that it was itself 
 unjust, and did not mean to mend itself, was developing 
 out of its uneasiness a universal ' Scoundrel Protection ' 
 sentiment. Society was concluding that inequalities of 
 condition were inevitable ; that those who suffered under 
 them, and rebelled, could not fairly be punished, but were 
 to be looked upon as misguided brethren suffering under 
 mental disorders, to be cured in moral hospitals, called by 
 euphemism Houses of Correction. ' Pity for human 
 calamity,' the pamphlet said, ' was very beautiful, but the 
 deep oblivion of the law of right and wrong, the indiscrim- 
 
* Latter-day Pampldets? 25 
 
 inate mashing up of riglit and wrong into a patent treacle, 
 was not beautiful at all.' 
 
 Wishing to see the system at work with his own eyes, 
 Carlyle had visited the Millbank Penitentiary. He found 
 1,200 prisoners, ' notable murderesses among them,' in 
 airy apartments of perfect cleanliness, comfortably warmed 
 and clothed, quietly, and not too severely, picking oakum ; 
 their diet, bread, soup, meat, all superlatively excellent. 
 He saw a literary Chartist rebel in a private court, master 
 of his own time and spiritual resources ; and he felt that 
 ' he himself, so left with paper, ink, and all taxes and 
 botherations shut out from him, could have written such a 
 book as no reader w^ould ever get from him.' Pie looked 
 at felon after felon. He saw ' ape faces, imp faces, angry 
 dog faces, heavy sullen ox faces, degraded underfoot per- 
 verse creatures, sons of greedy mutinous darkness.' ' To 
 give the owners of such faces their ' due ' could be at- 
 tempted only where there was an effort to give every one 
 his due, and to be fair all round ; and as this was not to 
 be thought of, ' they were to be reclaimed by the method 
 of love.' * Hopeless for evermore such a project.' And 
 these fine hospitals were maintained by rates levied on 
 the honest outside, who were struggling to support them- 
 selves without becoming felons — 'rates on the poor ser- 
 vants of God and Her Majesty, who were still trying to serve 
 both, to boil right soup for the Devil's declared elect.' 
 
 He did not expect that his protests would be attended 
 to then, but in twenty years he thought there might be 
 more agreement with him. This, like many other proph- 
 ecies of his, has proved true. We hang and flog now with 
 small outcry and small compunction. But the ferocity 
 with which he struck right and left at honoured names, 
 the contempt which he heaped on an amiable, if not a 
 wise experiment, gave an impression of his own character 
 as false as it was unpleasant. He was really the most ten- 
 
26 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 der-hearted of men. His savageness was but affection 
 turned sour, and what lie said was the opposite of what he 
 did. Many a time I have remonstrated wlien I saw him 
 give a shilling to some wretch with ' Devil's elect ' on his 
 forehead. 'No doubt he is a son of Gehenna/ Carljle 
 would say ; ' but you can see it is very low water with him. 
 This modern life hardens our hearts more than it should.' 
 On the Pamphlets rushed. The third was on ' Down- 
 ing Street and Modern Government.' Lord John Russell, 
 I remember, plaintively spoke of it in the House of Com- 
 mons. The fourth was on a ' New Downing Street, such 
 as it might and ought to become.' The fifth, on ' Stump 
 Oratory,' was perhaps the most important of the set, for it 
 touched a problem of moment then, and now every day 
 becoming of greater moment ; for the necessary tendency 
 of Democracy is to throw the power of the State into the 
 hands of eloquent speakers, and eloquent speakers have 
 never since the world began been wise statesmen. Car- 
 lyle had not read Aristotle's ' Politics,' but he had arrived 
 in his own road at Aristotle's conclusions. All forms of 
 government, Aristotle says, are ruined by parasites and 
 flatterers. The parasite of the monarch is the favourite 
 who flatters his vanity and hides the truth from him. 
 The parasite of a democracy is tlie orator ; the people are 
 his masters, and he rules by pleasing them. He dares not 
 tell them 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 him. To the 
 end of his life Carlyle thouglit with extreme anxiety on 
 this subject, and, as will be seen, had more to say about it. 
 • I need not follow the Pamphlets in detail. There were 
 to have been twelve originally ; one, I think, on the ' Ex- 
 odus from Houndsditch,' for he occasionally reproached 
 himself afterwards for over-reticence on that subject. He 
 
' Latter -'f't;/ Pamphlets.'' 27 
 
 was not likely to liave hwn deterred by fear of giviiiij^ 
 offence. But the arguments against speaking out about it 
 were always as present with him as the arguments for 
 openness. Perhaps he concluded, on the whole, that the 
 good which he might do would not outbalance the pain he 
 wonld inllict. The series, at any rate, ended with the 
 eighth — upon ' Jesuitism,' a word to which he gave a 
 wider significance than technically belongs to it. England 
 supposed that it had repudiated sufficiently Ignatius Loyola 
 and the Company of Jesus; but, little as England knew 
 it, Ignatius's peculiar doctrines had gone into its heart, 
 and were pouring through all its veins and arteries. Jesu- 
 itism to Carlyle was the deliberate shutting of the eyes to 
 truth ; the deliberate insincerity which, if persisted in, 
 becomes itself sincere. You choose to tell a lie because, 
 for various reasons, it is convenient ; you defend it with 
 argument — till at length yon are given over to believe it 
 — and the religious side of your mind being thus penally 
 paralysed ; morality becomes talk and conscience becomes 
 emotion ; and your actual life has no authoritative guide 
 left but personal selfishness. Thus, by the side of a pro- 
 fession of Christianity, England had adopted for a work- 
 ing creed Political Economy, 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 economy is concerned with nothing 
 else. Christianity says that the desire to make money is 
 tlie root of all evil. Political economy says that the more 
 < ach man struggles to 'make money' the better for the 
 commonwealth. Christianity says that it is the business 
 of the magistrate to execute justice and maintain truth. 
 Political economy (or the system of government founded 
 upon it) limits 'justice' to the keeping of the peace, de- 
 clares that the magistrate has nothing to do with main- 
 taining truth, and that every man must be left free to 
 
28 CarlyWe Life in London. 
 
 hold Ills own opinions and advance liis own interests in 
 any way that he pleases, short of fraud and violence. 
 
 Jesuitism, or the art of finding reasons for w^iatever we 
 wish to believe, had enabled Englishmen to persuade 
 themselves that both these theories of life could be true at 
 the same time. They kept one for Sundays, the other for 
 tlie working days ; and the practical moral code thus 
 evolved, Carlyle throws out in a w^ld freak of humour, 
 comparable only to the memorable epitaph on the famous 
 Baron in ' Sartor Resartus.' It is placed in the mouth of 
 his imaginary friend, Sauerteig, who is generally responsi- 
 ble for every extravagant utterance. 
 
 Pig Pldlosophy. 
 
 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 oxen could communicate 
 to us on paper what they thought of the universe, then might 
 curious results, not uninstructive to some of us, ensue. Suppos- 
 ing 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 dis- 
 cerning public, perhaps in unexpected ways, and give a stimulus 
 to the languishing book trade ? The votes of all creatures, it is 
 understood at present, ought to be had, that you may legislate 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, and even something 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 sane conjecture can go, is an immeas- 
 urable swine's trough, consisting of solid and liquid and of other 
 contrasts and kinds ; especially consisting of attainable and unat- 
 tainable, the latter in immensely greater quantities for most pigs. 
 
 2. Moral evil is unattainability of pig's wash ; moral good, at- 
 tainability of ditto. 
 
''Latter-day PanvpJdeta.^ 29 
 
 3. What is Paradise or the State of Innocence? Paradiso, 
 called also State of Innocence, Age of Gold, and other names, was 
 (according to i)igs of weak judgment) unlimited attainability of 
 pig's wash ; perfect fullilment of one's wishes, so that pigs' 
 imagination could not outrun reality : a fable and an imijossi- 
 bility, as pigs of sense now see. 
 
 4. Define the whole duty of pigs. It is the mission of universal 
 pighood to diminish the quantity of unattainable, and increase 
 that of attainable. All knowledge and desii-e and 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 
 excellence of pig's wash and ground barley, and the felicity of 
 pigs whose trough is in order, and who have had enough. 
 Hrumph ! 
 
 6. The pig knows the weather. Ho ought to look out what 
 kind of weather it will be. 
 
 7. Who made the pig ? Unknown. Perhaps the pork-butcher. 
 
 8. Have you law and justice in Pigdom ? Pigs of observation 
 have discerned that there is, or was once supposed to be, a thing 
 called justice. Undeniably, at least there is a sentiment in pig 
 nature called indignation, revenge, <fec., <S:c.,. which, if one pig 
 provoke another, comes out in a more or less destructive manner ; 
 hence laws are necessaiy — amazing quantities of laws. For quar- 
 relling is attended with loss of blood, of life — at any rate, with 
 frightful effusion of the general stock of hog's wash, and ruin, 
 temporary ruin, to large sections of the universal swine's trough. 
 Wherefore let justice be observed, so tliat quarrelling be avoided. 
 
 9. What is justice? Your own sliare of the general swine's 
 trough ; not any j^ortion of my share. 
 
 10. But what is * my share ' ? Ah ! there, in fact, lies the gi-and 
 difficulty, upon which pig science, meditating this long while, can 
 settle aV)solutely nothing. My share ! Hnimph ! my share is, on 
 the whole, whatever I can contiive to get without being hanged 
 or sent to the hulks. For there are gibbets, treadmills, I need 
 not tell you, and rules which lawyers have prescribed. 
 
 11. Who are lawyers? Servants of God, appointed revealers 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. Where do they find that written ? In Coke upon Littleton. 
 
30 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 13. Who made Coke ? Unknown. The maker of Coke's wig is 
 discoverable. 
 
 What became of Coke? Died. And then? Went to the 
 
 undertakers. Went to the But we must pull up. Sauer- 
 
 teig'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 Eape of the Wigs, which, in a person of his character, 
 looks ominous and dangerous. Here, for example, is his 51st prop- 
 osition, as he calls it : — 
 
 51. What are Bishops? Overseers of souls. 
 
 What is a soul ? The thing that keeps the body alive. 
 
 How do they oversee that ? They tie on a kind of aprons, pub- 
 lish 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 ? ' Yes, surely. 
 
 * What is it ? ' Heaven, so called. 
 
 ' To everybody ? ' I understand so — hope so. 
 ' What is it thought to be ? ' Hrumph ! 
 ' No 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 power has changed, the 
 science has changed along with it. Statesmen have dis- 
 covered that laissez-faire^ though doubtless true in a 
 better state of existence, is inapplicable to our imperfect 
 planet. They have attempted, with Irish Land Bills, 
 (fee, to regulate in some degree the distribution of the 
 hog's wash, and will doubtless, as democracy extends, do 
 more in that direction. But when the Pamphlets ap- 
 peared, this and the other doctrines enunciated in them 
 were received with astonished indignation. ' Carlyle 
 taken to whisky ' was the popular impression ; or perhaps 
 he had gone mad. * Punch,' the most friendly to him of 
 all the London periodicals, protested affectionately. The 
 
^iMtterday Pamphlets? 31 
 
 delinquent was brought up for trial before him, I think 
 for injuring his reputation. He was admonished, but 
 stood impenitent, and even ^called the worthy magistrate 
 a windbag and a sham.' I suppose it was Thackeray who 
 wrote this, or some other kind friend, who feared, like 
 Emerson, * that the world would turn its back on him.' 
 lie was under no illusion himself as to the effect which ho 
 was producing. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 April 29, 1&50. 
 
 The barking babble of the world continues in regard to these 
 
 Pamphlets, hardly any wise word at all reaching me iu reference 
 
 to them ; but I must say out 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 human word, or hardly any, once 
 
 in the month, is uttered to me by any fellow-mortal — a state of 
 
 things I have long bewailed, but learn ever better to endure, and 
 
 silently draw inferences from. 
 
 The prettiest personal feature during the appearance of 
 the Pamphlets was a small excursion for *a day in the 
 country,' which Carlyle and his wife made together, when 
 the seventh, on Hudson's statue, was off his hands. They 
 went by rail to Richmond on a bright May morning, and 
 thence by omnibus to Ham Common, where they strolled 
 about among 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 match-box. It was like the old days at 
 Craigenputtock, when, after an article was finished, they 
 used to drive off 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 all mortals — nan Jlocci facio, comparatively speaking. 
 Had a letter from Emerson explaining that I was quite wrong to 
 
32 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 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, liad no effect on the sale of 
 Carlyle's* works. He had a certain public, slowly grow- 
 ing, which bought everything that he published. The 
 praise of the newspapers never, he told me, sensibly in- 
 creased the circulation ; their blanie never sensibly dimin- 
 ished it. His unknown disciples believed in him as a 
 teacher whom they were to learn f j'om, not to criticise. 
 There were then about three thousand who bought his 
 books. Now, who can say how many there are ? He, for 
 himself, had delivered his soul, and was comparatively at 
 rest. 
 
 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 might be expected, was not of very long; 
 continuance. 
 
CHAPTER XVIIL 
 
 A.D. 1850. ^T. 55-56. 
 
 Reaction from 'Latter-day Pamphlets' — Acquaintance with Sir 
 Robert Peel— Dinner in Whitehall Place— Ball at Bath House 
 — Peel's death — Estimate of Peel's character — Visit to South 
 Wales — Savage Landor — Merthyr Tydvil — Scotsbrig — De- 
 spondency — Visits to Keswick and Coniston — The Gmnge — 
 Return to London. 
 
 In the intervals between Carlyle's larger works, a dis- 
 charge of spiritual bile was always necessary. Modern 
 English life, and the opinions popularly ciirrent anjong 
 men, were a constant provocation to him. The one object 
 of everyone (a very few chosen souls excepted) seemed to 
 be to make money, and with money increase his own idle 
 luxury. The talk of people, whether written or spoken, 
 was an extravagant and never-ceasing laudation of an age 
 which was content to be so employed, as if the like of it 
 had never been seen upon earth before. The thinkers in 
 their closets, the politicians on platform or in Parliament, 
 reviews and magazines, weekly newspapers and dailies, 
 sang all the same note, that there had never since the 
 world began been a time when the English part of man- 
 kind had been happier or better than they were then. 
 They had only to be let alone, to have more and more 
 liberty, and fix their eyes steadily on ' increasing the quan- 
 tity of attainable hog's wash,' and there would be such a 
 world as no philosophy had ever dreamt of. Something 
 of this kind really was the prevalent creed thirty years 
 ago, under tlie sudden increase of wealth which set iu with 
 Vol. IV— 3 
 
34 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 railways and free trade ; and to Carlyle it appeared a false 
 creed tliroiigliont, from principle to inference. In his 
 judgment the common weal of men and nations depended 
 on their characters ; and the road which we had to travel, 
 if we were to make a good end, was the same as the Chris- 
 tian pilgrim had travelled on his way to the Celestial City, 
 no primrose path thither having been yet made by God 
 or man. The austerer virtues — manliness, thrift, simplicity, 
 self-denial — were dispensed with in the boasted progress. 
 There was no demand for these, no need of them. The 
 heaven aspired after was enjo^mient, and the passport 
 thither was only money. Let there be only money enough, 
 and the gate lay open. He could not believe this doctrine. 
 He abhorred it from the bottom of his soul. Such a heaven 
 was no heaven for a man. The boasted prosperity would 
 sooner or later be overtaken by ' God's judgment.' Espe- 
 cially he was angry w^lien he saw men to whom nature had 
 given talents lending themselves to this accursed per- 
 suasion ; statesmen, theologians, philosophers composedly 
 swimming with the stream, careless of truth, or with no 
 longer any measure of truth except their own advantage. 
 Some who had eyes were afraid to open them ; others, 
 and the most, had deliberately extinguished their eyes. 
 They used their faculties only to dress the popular theories 
 in plausible language, and were carried away by their own 
 eloquence, till they actually believed what they were say- 
 ing. Respect for fact they liad none. Fact to them was 
 the view of things conventionally received, or what the 
 w^orld and they together agreed to admit. 
 
 That the facts either of religion or politics were not such 
 as bishops and statesmen represented them to be, was 
 f]-ightfully evident to Carlyle, and he could not be silent 
 if he wished. Thus, after he had written the ' French 
 devolution,' ' Chartism ' had to come out of him, and 
 ' Fast and Present,' before he could settle to ' Cromwell.' 
 
Habits of Declamation. 35 
 
 'Cromwell ' done, the fierce acid had accnmnlated again 
 and liad been di8char«^ed in the * Latter-day Pamphlets ' — 
 discharged, however, still impei-fectly, for his whole soul 
 was loaded with bilious indignation. Many an evening, 
 about this time, I heard him flinging off the matter in- 
 tended for the rest of the series which had been left un- 
 written, pouring out, for hours together, a torrent of 
 sulphurous denunciation. !No one could check him. If 
 anyone tried contradiction, the cataract rose against the 
 obstacle till it rushed over it and drowned it. But, in 
 general, his listeners sate silent. The imagery, his wild 
 play of humour, the immense knowledge always evident in 
 the grotesque forms which it assumed, were in themselves 
 so dazzling and so entertaining, that we lost the use of our 
 own faculties till it was over. He did not like making 
 these displays, and avoided them when he could ; but he 
 was easily provoked, and when excited could not restrain 
 liimself. "Whether he expected to make converts by the 
 Pamphlets, I cannot say. His sentences, perhaps, fell hei-e 
 and there like seeds, and grew to something in minds that 
 could receive them. In the general hostility, he was ex- 
 periencing the invariable fate of all men who see what is 
 coming before those who are about them see it ; and he 
 lived to see most of the unpalatable doctrines which the 
 Pamphlets contained verified by painful experience and 
 practically acted on. 
 
 In the midst 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 met 
 him at Lord Ashburton's. Peel, who had read his books, 
 had been struck equally with him, and wished to know 
 more of him. The dinner was in the second week of 
 May. The ostensible object w^as to bring about a meeting 
 between Carlyle and Prescott. The account of it is in his 
 Journal. 
 
36 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 There was a great party, Prescott, Milman, Barry {architect), 
 Lord Mahon, Shell, Gibson (sculptor), Cubitt (builder), &c., &c. 
 About Prescott I cared little, and indeed, there or elsewhere, did 
 not speak 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 galleiy as well, which looks out over the Thames (White- 
 hall Gardens, second house to the eastward of Montague House), 
 commands Westminster Bridge too, with its wrecked parapets (old 
 Westminster Bridge), and the new Parliament Houses, being, I 
 fancy, of semicircular figure in that part and projecting into the 
 shore of the river. Old Cubitt, a hoary, modest, sensible-looking 
 man, was alone with Peel when I entered. My reception was 
 abundantly cordial. Talk went on about the New Houses of Par- 
 liament, and the impossibility or difficulty of hearing in them — 
 others entering, Milman &c., joined in it as I had done. Sir Kobert, 
 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 
 audible (witness his own experience at Glasgow in the College 
 Eector's time, which he briefly mentioned to us), sometimes it had 
 been managed by hanging up cloth curtains &c. Joseph Hume, 
 reporting from certain Edinburgh mathematicians, 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. 
 
 People now came in thick and rapid. I went about the gallery 
 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 some of our most distin- 
 guished men : allow me to introduce,' &c. Barry had been 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 con- 
 trary, a broad solid man with much ingenuity and even delicacy 
 of expression, who had well employed his 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 Sci'ibe, came to the dinner, no ladies 
 there ; nothing but two sons of Peel, one at each end, he himself 
 in the middle about opposite to where I sate ; Mahon on his left 
 
Sir RoheH Ped, 37 
 
 hand, on his right Van cle Weyer (Belgian ambassador) ; not a 
 creature there for whom I cared one penny, except Peel himself. 
 Dinner sumptuous and excellently served, but I should think 
 mther wearisome to everybody, as it certainly was to me. After 
 all the servants but the butler were gone, we began to hear a lit- 
 tle of Peel's quiet talk across the table, unimportant, distinguished 
 by its sense of the ludicrous shining through a strong official ra- 
 tionality and even seriousness of temper. Distracted address of a 
 letter from somebody to Queen Victoria : * The most noble George 
 Victoria, Queen of England, Knight and Baronet,' or something 
 like that. A man had once written to Peel himself, while secre- 
 tary, * that he was weaiy of life, that if any gentleman wanted for 
 his park-woods a hermit, he, &c.,' all which was very pretty and 
 human as Peel gave it us. In rising we had some question about 
 the pictures in his dining-room, which are Wilkie'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 ; Reynolds himself by his own pencil, and two, or per- 
 haps three, other pictures. Doubts rising about who some lady 
 jwrtrait was, I went to the window and asked Sir Robei-t himself, 
 who turned with alacrity and talked to us about that and the rest. 
 The hayid in Johnson's portrait brought an anecdote from him 
 about Wilkie 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 remember to have seen, strong, delicate, and scnipulously 
 clean. Upstairs, most of the people having soon gone, he showed 
 us his volumes of autographs — Mirabeau, Johnson, Byron, Scott, 
 and many English kings and officialities : excellent cheerful talk 
 and description ; human, but official in all things. Then, with a 
 cordial shake of the hand, dismissal ; and the Bishop of Oxford 
 (mirum /), insisting on it, took me home in his carriage. 
 
 Carljle had probably encountered the Bishop of Oxford 
 before, at the Ashburtons' ; but this meeting at Sir Rob- 
 ert Peel's was tlie beginning of an intimacy which grew 
 up between these singularly opposite men, who,, in spite 
 of diiferences, discovered that they thouglit, at bottom, on 
 serious subjects, very nnich alike. The Bishop once told 
 me lie considered Carlyle a most eminently religious man. 
 ^Ah, Sam!' said Carlyle to me one day, 'he is a very 
 
38 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 clever fellow ; I do not hate him near as much as I fear I 
 ought to do.' 
 
 Once again, a few days later, Carlyle met Peel at a din- 
 ner at Bath House — ' a real statesman ' as he now dis- 
 cerned him to be. ' He was fresh and hearty, with 
 delicate, gentle, yet frank manners ; a kindly man. His 
 reserve as to all great or public matters sits him quite 
 naturally and enhances your ]*espect — a warm sense of 
 fun, really of genuine broad drollery, looks through him ; 
 the hopef ullest feature I could clearly see in this last in- 
 terview or the other. At tea he talked to us readily, on 
 slight hint from me, about Byron (Birron he called him) 
 and their old school-days : kindly reminiscences, agreeable 
 to hear at first hand, though nothing new in them to us.' 
 
 At Bath House also, this season, Carlyle was to meet 
 (though without an introduction) a man whom he regarded 
 with'freer admiration than he had learnt to feel even for 
 Peel. He was tempted to a ball there, the first and last 
 occasion on which he was ever present at such a scene. 
 He was anxious to see the thing for once, and he saw 
 along with it the hero of Waterloo. 
 
 Journal. 
 June 25, 1850. — Last night at a grand ball at Bath House, the 
 only ball of any description I ever saw. From five to seven hun- 
 dred select aristocracy ; the lights, decorations, houseroom and 
 arrangements perfect (I suppose) ; the whole thing worth havino- 
 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 the elderly peeresses came into the room and there- 
 after lounged about. A Miss L (a general's daughter) was the 
 
 prettiest I remember of the schimen Kindern. Lord Londonderry 
 looked sad, foolish, and surly. His Marchioness, once a beauty 
 you could see, had the finest diamonds of the party, Jane tells me. 
 Lord and Lady Lovelace, Marquis of Breadalbane, thickset farmer- 
 looking man, round steel-grey head with bald crown. Hat NicJits 
 zu hedeuten. Anglesea, fine-looking old man trailing his cork leg, 
 shows better on horseback. American Lawrence (minister here). 
 
Carhjle at a Ball. 39 
 
 broad, burly, energetically sagacions-looking, a man of sixty with 
 long grey hair swirled round the bald parts of his big head ; 
 frightful American lady, his wife, d la Cushman ; chin like a 
 powder-horn, sallow, parchment complexion, very tall, very lean, 
 expression thrift — in all senses of the word. * Thrift, Hoi-atio.' 
 Prescott, and the other Americans there, not beautiful any of them. 
 By far the most interesting figure present was the old Duke of 
 Wellington, 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 de- 
 ceived 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 musi- 
 cal, but essentially tenor or almost treble voice — eighty-two, I un- 
 derstand. 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 Had leal days, Carlyle had spoken scornfully, 
 as usual, of Peel and Wellington, not distinguishing them 
 from the lierd of average politicians. He was learning to 
 know them better, to recognise better, perhaps, how great 
 a man must essentially be who can accomplish anything 
 good under the existing limitations. But the knowledge 
 came too late to ripen into practical acquaintance. Wel- 
 lington's sun was setting, Peel was actually gone in a few 
 weeks from the dinner at Bath House, and Wellington 
 had passed that singular eulogy upon him in the House of 
 Lords — singular, but most instructive commentary on the 
 political life of our days, as if Peel was the only public 
 
40 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 man of whom such a character could be given. ' He had 
 never known him tell a deliberate falsehood.' In the in- 
 terval, Carlyle met Feel 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 things, his own strict conservatism 
 and even officiality of view^ and still more the coliue 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 smallest hope in ; and what he would do, which seemed 
 now soon to be tried, was always an interesting feature of the 
 coming time for me. 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 consti- 
 tutional statesman perhaps that England will ever have — 
 died through a fall from his horse in the middle of this 
 summer, 1850. 
 
 From Journal, 
 On a Saturday evening, bright sunny weather, Jane being out 
 at Addiscombe and I to go next day, 29th of June it must have 
 been, I had gone up Piccadilly between four and five p.m., and 
 was returning ; half-past six when I got to Hyde Park Corner. 
 Old Marquis of Anglesey was riding a brisk skittish horse, a good 
 way down Piccadilly, just ahead of me ; he entered the park as I 
 jjassed, his horse capering 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 exagger- 
 ated, 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 
 
Death of Fed. 41 
 
 \vitness. He came down, it upon him, collar-bone broken. It 
 tiu-ned 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 
 Monday I walked up to some club to get the bulletin, which pre- 
 tended to be favourable. We went then to the house itself, saw 
 carriages, a scattered crowd simmering about, leanit nothing fur- 
 tlier, but came home in hope. Tuesday morning, 2nd of July, 
 • Postman ' reported * a bad night ; ' uncei-tain rumoui-s of good 
 and evil through the day. (Ruskin <fcc. here in the evening ; good 
 re^jort from Aubrey do Vere, about 11 p.m.) I had still an obsti- 
 nate hope. Wednesday morning * Postman * reported Sir Robert 
 Peel died last night, I think about nine. Eheu ! eJieu ! Great ex- 
 pressions 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 improve- 
 ment 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 sud- 
 denly snatched away from us. What will become of it ? God 
 knows. K peaceable result I now hardly expect for this huge wen 
 of corniptions and diseases and miseries ; and in the mean- 
 while the wrigglings and strugglings in Parliament, how they 
 now do, or what they now do there, have become mere zero to me, 
 tedious as a tale that has been told. Dr. Foucart, who was pres- 
 ent, told Farre, Sir Robert was frequently insensible ; wandered, 
 talking about his watch, about getting to bed. ' Let us light the 
 candles and go to bed.' * Have you wound up that watch ? ' &c. 
 Never 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. T«Xof. 
 
 Great men die, like little men ; ' there is no difference,' 
 and the world goes its way without them. Parliament 
 was to * wriggle on ' with no longer any Feel to guide ; 
 ' the wen,' as Cobbett called London, was to double its al- 
 ready overgrown, monstrous bulk, and Carlyle had still 
 thirty years before liim to watch and shudder at its ex- 
 
42 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 tending. But from this time lie cared little about con- 
 temporary politics, which he regarded as beating the 
 wind. What he himself was next to do was a problem to 
 him which he did not see his way through. Some time 
 or other he meant to write a ' Life of Sterling,' but as 
 yet he had not sufficient composure. Up to this time ho 
 had perhaps some hope or purpose of being employed ac- 
 tively 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 make his mark on 
 his generation, but what book was to be written next was 
 entirely vague to him. The house in Chelsea required 
 paint and whitewash again — a process which, for every- 
 one's sake, it was desirable that he should not be present 
 to witness. His friend, Mr. Kedwood, again invited him 
 to South Wales. He had been dreadfully ' bored ' there ; 
 but he was affected, too, by Redwood's loyal attachment. 
 He agreed to go to him for a w^eek or two, and intended 
 afterwards to make his way into Scotland. 
 
 On the way to Cardiff, he spent a night with Savage 
 Landor, who w^as then living apart from his family in 
 Bath. 
 
 Landor (he wrote) was in liis house, in a fine quiet street like a 
 New Town Edinburgh one, waiting for me, attended only by a 
 nice Bologna dog. Dinner not far from 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 generous, 
 veracious, and very dignified old man ; quite a ducal or royal man 
 in the temper of him ; reminded me something of old Sterling, ex- 
 cept that for Irish blarney you must substitute a fund of Welsh 
 choler. He left me to go smoking along the streets about ten at 
 night, he himself retiring then, having walked me through the 
 Orescent, Park, &c., in the dusk before. Bath is decidedly the 
 
Visit to South Wales. 48 
 
 prettiest town in all England. Nay, Edinburgh itself, except for 
 the sea and the Grau.piuus, does not equal it. Regular, but hy 
 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 liill, with large outlook to the 
 opposite side of the valley ; and fine, decent, clean people saunter- 
 ing about it, mostly small count]:y gentry, I was told ; ' live here 
 for 1,200/. a year,' said Landor. 
 
 Mr. Redwood was no longer at Llandougli, but load 
 moved to Boverton, a place at no great distance. Bover- 
 ton was nearer to the sea, and the daily bathe could be 
 effected without difficulty. Tlie cocks, cuddies, &c., were 
 as troublesome as usual, though perhaps less so than Car- 
 lyle's vivid anathemas on the poor creatures wonld lead 
 one to suppose. His host entertained him with more 
 honour tliat he would have paid to a prince or an arch- 
 bishop, and Carlyle could not but be grateful. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Ckirlyle. 
 
 Boverton : Aug. 13, l&W. 
 Redwood is friendliness itself, poor fellow ; discloses a great 
 quantity of passive intelligence amid his great profundity of dul- 
 ness : nay, a kind of humour at times, and ceitainly excels in gooil 
 temper all the human creatures I have been neai* lately. Several 
 times his fussiness and^ery have brought angry growlings out of 
 me, and spurts of fierce impatience which he has taken more like 
 «& angel than a Welshman. Perfection of temi)er ! And his pony 
 is very swift and good, and his household is hospitably furnished, 
 and all that he has is at my disposal. On the whole I shall hand- 
 somely make out my three weeks, and hope to get profit from it 
 after all. 
 
 Carlyle would have been tlie most perfect of guide-book 
 writers. Nothing escaped his observation ; and he never 
 rested till he liad learnt all that could be known about any 
 place which he visited : first and foremost, the meaning 
 of the name of it, if it was uncommon or suggestive. His 
 daily letters to Chelsea were full of descriptions of the 
 
44 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 neighbourhood, all singularly vivid. Here, for instance, 
 is an account of Merthyr Tydvil, to which his friend car- 
 ried him : — 
 
 In 1755 Merthyr Tydvil was a mountain hamlet of five or six 
 houses, stagnant and silent as it had been ever since Tydvil, the 
 king's or laird's daughter, was martyred here, say 1,300 years be- 
 fore. About that time a certain Mr. Bacon, a cunning Yorkshire- 
 man, passing that way, discovered that there was iron in the ground 
 — iron and coal. He took a 99 years' lease in consequence, and 
 
 in brief, there are now about 50,000 grimy mortals, black and 
 
 clammy with soot and sweat, screwing out a livelihood for them- 
 selves in that spot of the Taff 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, all in sweat and 
 dirt, amid their furnaces, pits, and rolling mills. For here is ab- 
 solutely ' 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, squal- 
 idest, and ugliest : all cinders and dust-mounds and soot. Their 
 very greens they bring from Bristol, though the ground is excel- 
 lent 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. Mrs. Carlyle was struggling in 
 the midst of it all, happy that her husband was away, but 
 wishing perhaps that he would show himself a little more 
 appreciative of what she was undergoing. No one ever 
 laid himself more open to being misunderstood 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 what- 
 ever was done for him as a matter of course, and to growl 
 if anything was not to his mind. It was only in his let- 
 ters that he showed what was really in his heart. 
 
Visit to Smith Wales. 45 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Boverton : Aug. 19, laW. 
 Keep yonreelf qniet. Do not let that scandalous randy of a girl 
 disturb you a moment more ; and be as patient with your poor, 
 soft dumpling of an apprentice as you can, in hopes of better by- 
 and-by. * Servants ' are at a strange pass in these times. I con- 
 tinually foresee that before vei-y long there will be on all hands a 
 necessity and determination on the part of wise people to do with- 
 out servants. That is actually a stage of progress that is ahead of 
 us. How I feel at this moment the blessedness of such a possi- 
 bility, had one been trained to do a little ordinary work, and were 
 the due preliminaiies well arranged ! ' Sonants,' on the present 
 principle, are a mere deceptive imagination. Command is no- 
 where ; 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 ; how you have lain 
 between me and these annoyances, and wrapt me like a cloak 
 against them ! I know this well, whether I speak of it or not. 
 
 Aug. 21. 
 Thanks to thee ! Oli ! know that I have thanked thee some- 
 times in my silent hours as no words could. For indeed I am 
 sometimes terribly di'iven into comers in this my life pilgrimage, 
 of late especially ; and the thing that is in my heart is known, or 
 can be kno^vTi, to the Almighty Maker alone. 
 
 He stayed three weeks at Boverton, and then gratefully 
 took leave. 'The good Redwood,' as he called his host, 
 died the year following, and he never saw him again. 
 Ilis route to Scotsbrig was, as usual, by the Liverpool 
 and Annan steamer. The discomforts of his journey were 
 not different from other people's in similar circumstances. 
 It was the traveller who was different ; and his miseries, 
 comical as they sound, were real enough to so sensitive a 
 sufferer. He sent a history of them to Chelsea on his ar- 
 rival. ' I am,' he said, * a very unthankful, iH-conditioned, 
 bilious, wayward, and heartworn son of Adam, I do sus- 
 pect. Well, you shall liear my com])laint8. To whom 
 can we complain, if not to one anotlier, after all ? ' He 
 
46 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 had reached Liverpool without misadventure. He had 
 gone on board hite in the evening. The night, as the ves- 
 sel ran down the Mersey, was soft and beautiful. He 
 walked and smoked for an hour on deck, and then went 
 in search of his sleeping-place. 
 
 * This way the gents' cabin, 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 x)ile 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 steamer in wet and darkness is not 
 delightful, even in August. When the vessel reached An- 
 nan, and ' he was flung into the street,' the unfortunate 
 ' Jonah ' could but address a silent word of thanks to the 
 Merciful Power, and ' appeal to Goody and posterity.' At 
 Scotsbrig he could do as he liked — be silent from morning 
 till night, wander about alone among 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. The 
 reaction after the Pamphlets was now telling upon him. 
 Yery strange, very characteristic, is the account which he 
 writes of his condition. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Scotsbrig : September 4, 1850. 
 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 
 
Heat at Scotahrig, 4T 
 
 and do their very worst Many things tend towards settlement in 
 that way, aud silently beginnings uf ai'rangenient and deteimina- 
 tion show themselves. AVhy, oh ! why, should a living man com- 
 plain after all ? "We get, each one of ns, the common fortune, with 
 superficial variations. A man ought to know that he is not 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 myself by 
 having them. Well, then, by doing without them I can train my- 
 self. It is there that 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 two days at poor Scotsbrig are. Let 
 me be thankful for them. They were very necessaiy to me. They 
 will ojien my heart to sad and affectionate thoughts, which the in- 
 tolerable 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 1 One should 
 
 be content to admit that one is Nothing : a poor, vainly struggling 
 soul, yet seen with pity by the Eternal Powei-s, I do believe, and 
 whose struggles at woi-st are bending towai'ds their close. Tlus 
 imts one to peace when nothing else can ; and the beggarly miser- 
 ies of the mere body abating a little, as with me they sensibly do, it 
 is strange what dark curtains drop off of their own accord, and how 
 the promise of clearer skies again visits one. Tliese last three 
 days have been of surpassing beauty— clear, calm September days, 
 the sky bright and blue, with fluctuating masses of bright clouds. 
 The hills are all spotted with pure light and pure shade ; every- 
 thing of the liveliest yellow on the liveliest 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 old Annandale, after all ! ... A note 
 to Lady Ashburton, after I arrived here, brought this answer yes- 
 terday. Great Gaudeavius at the Grange, it would seem. Between 
 life thei-e and life hei'e^ as I now have it, it must be admitted there 
 is a conti-ast. We are about the two extremes of decent human 
 lodging, and I know which answei-s the best for me. Bemember 
 me generally to all friends. Good souls ! I like them all better 
 
 * Sentence apparently unoompleted. 
 
48 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 than i^erhaps they would suspect from my grim 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 liis future occupations 
 which appears in these letters, taken with what he told nie 
 of his thoughts of public life at the time of his Pamphlets, 
 confirms me in my impression that he had nourished some 
 practical hopes from those Pamphlets, and had imagined 
 that he miglit perliaps be himself invited to assist in carry- 
 ing out some of the changes Avliich he had there insisted 
 on. Sucli hopes, if he had formed them, lie must have 
 seen by this time were utterly groundless. Whatever im- 
 provements might be attempted, no statesman would ever 
 call on him to take part in the process. To this, which 
 was now a certainty, he had to endeavour to adjust him- 
 self ; but he was in low spirits — unusually low, even for 
 him. He filled his letters with anecdotes of misfortunes, 
 miseries, tragedies, among his Annandale neighbours, 
 mocking at the idea that this world was made for happi- 
 ness. He went to stay with his sister at Dumfries. 
 
 The kindness of these friends (he said), their very kindness, 
 works me misery of which they have no idea. In the gloom of 
 my own imagination I seem to myself a pitiable man. Last night 
 I had, in spite of noises and confusions many, a tolerable sleep, 
 most welcome to me, for on the Monday night here I did not sleep 
 at all. Yesterday was accordingly a day ! My poor mother, too, 
 is very weak, and there are clothes a-buying, and confusions very 
 many ; and 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 had 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 notliing. I am really 
 ashamed of the figure I cut among creatures in the ordinary 
 human situation. One couldn't do without human creatures alto- 
 
^Alf<y?i Locke: 49 
 
 getlier. .Oh ! no. But at present, in snch moods as I am now in, 
 it were such an inexpressible saving of fret and botheration and 
 futile distress if they would but let me alone. Woe's me ! "Woe 
 is me ! 
 
 It was in this hninoiir that Carlyle read * Alton Locke,' 
 which Ivingsley sent him. I well remember the gratifica- 
 tion with which Kingsley showed me his approving criti- 
 cism ; and it speaks volumes for the merit of that book 
 that at such a time Carlyle could take pleasure in it. Littlo 
 did either of us then guess in what a depth of depression 
 it had found him. The cloud lifted after a while ; but 
 these fits when they came were entirely disabling. "Robust 
 constitutional strength, which is half of it insensibility, 
 was not among the gifts which Nature had bestowed on 
 Carlyle. His strength w^as moral ; it lay in an unalterable 
 resolution to do wliat was I'ight and to speak what was 
 true — a strength nobly sufficient for the broad direction of 
 his life and intellect, but leaving him a helpless victim of 
 the small vexations which prey like mosquitoes on the 
 nerves of unfortunate men of genius. Sometimes, indeed, 
 by the help of Providence, his irritations neuti-alised one 
 another. In his steady thrift, he had his clothes made for 
 him in Annandale, the cloth bought at Dumfries and 
 made up by an Ecclefechan tailor. His wardrobe required 
 refitting before his return to London, and the need of at- 
 tending to it proved an antidote to his present miseries. 
 After relating his exertions in the tailor department, 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 Wrtue is. We a^e 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, undoubtedly. But Chapman's account for the 
 Pamphlets ' might teach us moderation if we were forgetting oor- 
 
 * The outcry stopped ^he •^\e of them for xavxj month* and even yean. 
 Vol. IV. --4 
 
50 Carlyls'S Life in London. 
 
 selves. Such a return of money for so nmch 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 ac- 
 count 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 little that a just man hath is more and better 
 far, &c.,' said the old Psalmist, a most true and comfortable saying. 
 
 Witli the end of September London and Cliejne Row 
 came in sight again. The repairs were finished. At 
 Scotsbrig, when the clothes had come in, he fonnd him- 
 self ^a distempered human sonl that had slept ill, and 
 was terribly d added abont : a phenomenon not qnite nn- 
 familiar to his wife's observation.' lie had thought of a 
 trip to lona before going home, but the season was too far 
 advanced. A short visit was to be managed to his friends 
 in Cumberland. Tlien he would liasten back, and be as 
 amiable as he could when he arrived. Mrs. Carlyle, in 
 one of the saddest of her sad letters, had regretted that 
 her company had become 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, will mend if 
 it pleases God.' 
 
 On the 27th of September he parted sorrowfully from 
 his mother at Scotsbrig, after a wild midnight walk in 
 wind and rain the evening before. Three days were given 
 to the Speddings at Keswick, and thence, on pressing in- 
 vitation, he went to the Marshalls at Coniston, where he 
 met the Tennysons, then lately married. I^either of these 
 visits brought much comfort. Mr. Spedding had gone 
 with the rest of the w^orld in disapproving the ' Latter- 
 day Pamphlets.' At the Marshalls' he was prevented 
 from sleeping by ' poultry, children, and flunkeys.' 
 
 * Letters and Memorials^ vol. ii., p. 104. 
 
The Marshalh at Coiiiston. 61 
 
 Love of the picturesque iB here (he ^Tote from Coniston). Gorge- 
 ous magnificence minus quiet or any sort of comfort which to me, 
 in my exceptional thin-skinned thrice morbid condition, were 
 human. I had to run away abiuptly from a sui-vey of certain 
 sublime rock-passes and pikes, never t j be forgotten, lest the post 
 should go without my writing. Here, avoiding lunch, too, and 
 taking a solitary pipe instead, I end for this day, feeling myself to 
 be, of all men, by far the most miserable, like that old Greek, yet 
 knowing well privately tliat it is not so, and begging pity and 
 pardon from poor Goody, whom God bless. 
 
 He announced that lie conld not stay, that he must 
 leave the next day, <S:c. Every attention was paid him. 
 His room was changed. Kot a sound was allowed to 
 disturb liiui. lie had a sound sleep, woke ' to find a 
 wonderful alteration in himself, with the sun shining over 
 lakes and mountains ; ' and then he thought he would 
 stay ' another day and still other days ' if he were asked. 
 But he had been so peremptory that his host thought it 
 imcourteous to press him further, and then he discovered 
 that he was not wanted, 'nothing but the name of him, 
 which was already got.' Mr. Marshall himself accom- 
 panied him to the Windermere station, 'forcing him to 
 talk, which was small favour;' and the express train 
 swept him back to London. Men of genius are ' kittle ' 
 guests, and, of all such, Carlyle was the ' kittlest.' 
 
 His wife was at the Grange when he reached Cheyne 
 Row. There was no one to receive him but her dog 
 Nero, who after a moment's doubt 'barked enthusiastic 
 reception,' and the cat, ' who sat reflective, without sign 
 of the smallest emotion, more or less.' He was obliged to 
 Nero, he forgave the cat. He was delighted to be at 
 home again. The improvements in the house called out 
 his enthusiastic approbation. ' Oh Goody ! ' he exclaimed, 
 'incomparable artist Goody! It is really a series of glad 
 surprises; and the noble grate upstairs ! all good and best. 
 My bonny little artistikin. Keally it is clever and wise to 
 
52 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 a degree, and I admit it is pity that jou were not liere to 
 sliow it me yourself. But I shall find it all out too. 
 Thank you, thank you a thousand times ! ' The tossing 
 and whirling seemed even more unattractive in the com- 
 parison. 
 
 But I have done with it (he said), and with the astonishingly 
 admirable lights and shadows and valleys and Langdale pikes and 
 worship of the picturesque in all its branches, from all and every 
 of which for the future ' Good Lord deliver huz.' Oh my poor 
 Goody ! It is a great blessing to be born a person of sense, even 
 with the temper of a rat-trap. One must put up with the temper ; 
 the other is not to be put up with. Alfred looks really improved, 
 I should say ; cheerful in what he talks, and looking forward to a 
 future less detached than the past has been. A good soul, find him 
 where or how situated you may. Mrs. Tennyson lights up bright 
 glittering blue eyes when you speak to her ; has wit, has sense ; 
 and were it not that she seems so very delicate in health, I should 
 augur really well of Tennyson's adventure. 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle was distracted at his return in her own ab- 
 sence. She insisted that she must go to him at once ; but 
 she had been gaining strength at the Grange, and the 
 Ashburtons begged her to stay on. Carlyle urged it too. 
 With pretty delicacy he said, as if learning a lesson from 
 her being away, ' I shall know better than ever I did what 
 the comfort to me is, of being received by you when I ar- 
 rive worn out, and you welcome me with your old smiles 
 and the light of a human fire and a human home.' As 
 she persisted that she must go back, he accepted Lady 
 Ashbur ton's proposal that he should himself join his wife 
 for a week or two before finally settling in for the winter ; 
 and it was not till the middle of October that they were 
 together again in their own home, when he summed up 
 in his Journal the experiences of his wanderings. Savage 
 Landor, whom he calls "' a proud, indignant, and remarka- 
 ble old man,' had pleased him from sympathy of discon- 
 tent with the existing order of things. His visit to poor 
 
Summary of the Year, 53 
 
 Mr. Redwood he describes as * dulness and the inanity of 
 worse than solitude.' He had left Boverton *in a hu- 
 mour strangely forlorn, sad, and sickly even for him.' Ho 
 goes on : — 
 
 Four weeks at Scotsbrig : my dear old mother, much broken 
 since I had last seen her, was a perpetual source of sad and, as it 
 were, sacred emotion to me. Sorrowful mostly and disgusting, 
 and even degrading, were my other emotions. God help me ! 
 Much physical suffering. Morality sunk down with me almost 
 to zero so far as cftusciousness went. Surely there should be a 
 hospital for poor creatures in such a condition as mine. But let 
 us not speak. In the end of September I went over to Cumber- 
 land. T. Spedding limited and dull. Off to Coniston for two 
 days. Scenery, &c. Obliged to steer for Chelsea by express ti-ain, 
 and see whether in my home was any rest for me. Alas ! not there 
 either. Aiiive about midnight : my wife gone down to the 
 Grange. Nothing for it but stoicism, of such sort as one had, 
 once more. In about a week go to the Grange to join my wife 
 there. Spend ten days amid miscellaneous company in the com- 
 mon dyspeptic, utterly isolated, and contemptible condition. 
 Home again on Saturday gone a week ; and here ever since at 
 least in a silent state. I have still hopes of writing another book, 
 better perhaps than any I have yet done ; but in all other respects 
 this seems really the Nadir of my fortunes ; and in hope, desire, 
 or outlook, so far as common mortals reckon such, I never was 
 more banknipt. Lonely, shut up within my contemptible and 
 yet not deliberately ignoble self, perhaps there never was, in mod- 
 ern literaiy or other history, a more solitaiy soul, capable of any 
 friendship or honest relation to others. For the rest I do in some 
 measure silently defy destiny, and tiy to look with steady eye into 
 it, not hoping from it (except that I might get some work well 
 done), nor fearing it for the remnant of my time here. Latent 
 pieties, I do believe, still lie in me ; deep wells of sorrow, rever- 
 ence, and affection ; but alas ! that is not the humour at present, 
 and my utmost prayer is that I might deal wisely with that too, 
 since it is the lot of me. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 A.D. 1851-2. Ml. 56-57. 
 
 Beviews of the Pamphlets — Cheyne Eow — Parly at the Grange — 
 * Life of Sterling ' — Reception of it — Coleridge and his dis- 
 ciples — Spiritual optics — Hyde Park Exhibition — ^A month at 
 Malvern — Scotland — Trip to Paris with Lord Ashburton. 
 
 There is a condition familiar to men of letters, and I sup- 
 pose to artists of all descriptions, which may be called a 
 moulting state. The imagination, exhausted by long efforts, 
 sheds its feathers, and mind and body remain sick and 
 dispirited till they grow again. Carlyle was thus moult- 
 ing after the ' Latter-day Pamphlets.' He was eager to 
 write, but his ideas were shapeless. His wings would not 
 lift him. He was chained to the ground. Unable to pro- 
 duce anything, he began to read voraciously ; he bought a 
 copy of the ' Annual Register ; ' he worked entirely through 
 it, finding there ' a great quantity of agreeable and not 
 quite useless information.' He read Sophocles with pro- 
 found admiration. His friends came about Cheyne Row, 
 eager to see him after his absence. They were welcome 
 in a sense, but 'alas ! ' he confessed, ' nobody comes whose 
 talk is half so good to me as silence. I fly out of the way 
 of everybody, and would much rather smoke a pipe of 
 wholesome tobacco than talk to anyone in London just 
 now. ^ay, their talk is often rather an offence to me, and 
 I murmur to myself, Why open one's lips for such a pur- 
 pose ? ' The autumn quarterlies were busy upon the 
 Pauiplilets, and the shrieking tone was considerably modi- 
 
Reviews of the Pamjpldets. 55 
 
 fied. A review of them by Masson, in the * Xorth British,' 
 distinctly pleased Carlyle. A review in the * Dublin ' he 
 found * excellently serious,' and conjectured that it came 
 from some Anglican pervert or convert. It was written, I 
 believe, by Dr. Ward. The Catholics naturally found 
 points of sympathy in so scornful a denunciation of modern 
 notions about liberty, far asunder as they were, lie and 
 they believed alike in the Divine right of wisdom to gov- 
 ern folly. ' The wise man's eyes were in his head, but the 
 fool walked in darkness.' This article provided him ' with 
 interesting reflections for a day or two.' But books were 
 his chief resource in these months. A paper in the ' An- 
 nual Register ' set him reading Wycherley's comedies, not 
 with satisfaction. He calls them a combination of 'hu- 
 man platitude and pravity ' seldom equalled. ' Faugh ! ' 
 lie said, 'I shut up the book last night, having actually 
 worked through the greater part of it with real abomina- 
 tion.' ' Scaligerana' was far better. From this he made 
 many extracts. He calls it the most curious daguerreotype 
 likeness of a great man's loose talk that he had ever seen, 
 
 alternating between French and Latin, between high and low, be- 
 tween thick and thin, the most free and easy shovelling out of 
 whatever came readiest in a human soul, a strange draggly-wick'd 
 tallow candle lighted in the belly of a dark dead past, a sorcerer'3 
 dance of extinct human beings and things. 
 
 At intervals he thought of writing something. ' Ireland ' 
 came back upon him occasionally as still a possibility. A 
 theory of education on the plan in Goethe's ' Wanderjahre ' 
 would give him scope to say something not wholly useless. 
 These were the two subjects which looked least contempt- 
 ible. There was English history too: * The Conqueror,' 
 ' Sir Simon de Montfort,' ' The Battle of Towton.' ' But 
 what,' he asked himself, ' can be done with a British 
 Museum under fat pedants, with a world so sunk as ours, 
 and alas! with a soul so sunk and subdued to its ele- 
 
56 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 ments as mine seems to be ? Vot/ons, voyons ! au moins 
 taisons nous.^ 
 
 To Margaret Carlyle, Scotshrig. 
 
 Chelsea : December 14, 1850. 
 Jane has taken no cold yet ; goes out in some omnibus when- 
 ever the day is not quite wretched. I hear nothing of her hurt,' 
 and I believe it is getting well, though she does not seem to like 
 any speech about it. I am myself decidedly better than when I 
 wrote last — have, in fact, nothing wrong about me except an in- 
 curably squeamish liver and stomach. I generally go out for an 
 hour's walking before bed-time ; the little snaffle of a messin called 
 Nero commonly goes with me, runs snuffling into every hole, or 
 pirrs about at my side like a little glassy rat, and returns home 
 the joyfullest and dirtiest little dog one need wish to see. . . . 
 * No Popery ' is still loud enough in these parts, and it is con- 
 fidently expected these pasteboard Cardinals and their rotten gar- 
 ments will be packed out of this island in some way. Ultimus 
 crepitus DiaboH, as Beza said of the Jesuits. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 December 30, 1850. —The year is wearing out ; life is wearing 
 out ; and I can get to no work. Me miserwn ! Of course the thing 
 is difflcult, most things are, but I continually fly from it too, and 
 my poor days pass in the shabbiest, wastefullest manner. Ballan- 
 tyne, Maccall, and John Welsh were with us on Christmas Day to 
 dinner. Last night Kingsley and Darwin. Good is to be got out 
 of no creature. Lady Bulwer Lytton — a most melancholy inter- 
 view of her seeking. How the Furies do still walk this earth, and 
 shake their * dusky glowing torches ' on men and women ! Can 
 do nothing with the poor lady's novel, I fear. Yesterday I was 
 clearing myself of a tangle of extraneous letters, &c., with which 
 /had properly nothing to do. How much 'love,' 'respect,' 'ad- 
 miration,' &c., is there in this world which resembles the 'love' 
 of dogs for a dead horse. ' Fie on't ! 'tis an unweeded garden ; * 
 laid then the sluggard of a gardener. Awake ! Wilt thou never 
 aw ake, then ? 
 
 Notwithstanding the hopes and resolutions which Car- 
 lyle had brought back with him from Scotland, the do- 
 
 1 Letters and Memorials^ vol. i., p. 397. 
 
Life of Sterling, 67 
 
 mestio atmosphere was not clear in Cheyne Row, and liad 
 not l)een clear since his return. Nothing need be said 
 about this. It added to his other discomforts, that was 
 all. In the Journal of January 20, there is this curious 
 observation : — 
 
 It is man's pai*t to deal with Destiny, who is knowti to be inexo- 
 rable. It is the woman's more to deal with the man, whom, even 
 in impossible cases, she always thinks capable of being moved by 
 human means ; in this respect a harder, at least a less dignified, lot 
 for her. 
 
 At the end of January he went off again to the Grange, 
 alone this time, to meet an interesting party there. Thirl- 
 wall, Milnes, the Stanleys, Sir John Simeon, Trench, then 
 Dean of Westminster, and several others. He might have 
 enjoyed himself if his spirits had been in better order, 
 * for, thanks to the Bishop, the conversation was a thought 
 more solid than was usual.' One evening it took a re- 
 markable form, and as he more than once described the 
 scene to me, I quote what he says about it in a letter. 
 
 Last night there was a dreadful onslaught made on — what shall 
 I say ? properly the Church — in presence of Trench and the Bishop. 
 Trench affected to be very busy reading, and managed extremely 
 well. The Bishop was also grand and rationally manful, intrin- 
 sically agreeing with almost everything I said. Poor Simeon, a 
 gentleman in search of a religion, sate stupent in the whirlpool of 
 heterodox hail, and seemed to feel if his head were on his shoul- 
 ders. This is an extraordinary epoch of the world with a witness. 
 
 It was perhaps as an effect of this singular piece of talk, 
 at any rate in discharge of a long- recognised duty, that 
 Carlyle, on returning home, set at once about his long- 
 meditated life of John Sterling. To leave Sterling any 
 longer as an anatomical subject for the religious newspa- 
 pers was treason to his friend's memorv. lie had waited, 
 partly from want of composure, partly that the dust might 
 settle a little ; and now, having leisure on his hands, and 
 being otherwise in the right mood, he re-read Sterling's 
 
58 CarlyWs Life in London, 
 
 letters, collected information from surviving relatives, and 
 without difficulty — indeed, with entire ease and rapidity — 
 lie produced in three months what is perhaps the most 
 beautiful biography in the English language. His own 
 mind for the past year had been restless and agitated, but 
 no restlessness can be traced in the ' Life of Sterling.' 
 The scorn, the pride, the indignation of the Pamphlets 
 lies hushed down under a stream of quiet affection. The 
 tone is calm and tender. Here, more than in any other 
 of the rest of his writings, he could give play, without a 
 jarring note, to the gentlest qualities of his heart and in- 
 tellect. It was necessary for him to express himself more 
 plainly than he had hitherto done on the received religious 
 creeds ; but he wrote without mockery, without exaspera- 
 tion, as if his angry emotions w^ere subdued to the element 
 in which he was w^orking. A friend's grave was 'no place 
 for theological controversy, and though he allowed his 
 humour free play, it was real play, nowhere savagely con- 
 temptuous. Sterling's life had been a short one. His 
 history was rather that of the foi'mation of a beautiful 
 character than of accomplished achievement ; at once the 
 most difficult to delineate, yet the most instructive if de- 
 lineated successfully. The aim of the biographer ^as to 
 lift the subject beyond the sordid element of religious ex- 
 asperations ; yet it w^as on Sterling's ' religion,' in the no- 
 ble meaning of the w^ord, that the entire interest turned. 
 Growing to manhood in an atmosphere of Radicalism, po- 
 litical and speculative. Sterling had come hi contact with 
 the enthusiasts of European revolution. He had involved 
 himself in a movement in wdiich accident only prevented 
 him from being personally engaged, and which ended in 
 the destruction of his friends. In the depression vrhicli 
 foUo^ved he had fallen under the influence of Coleridge. 
 He had learnt from Coleridge that the key of the mystery 
 of the universe lay after all with the Church creed rightly 
 
Life of Sterling, SO 
 
 understood, and that, bj- an intellectual legerdemain, un- 
 certainties could be converted into certainties. The pro- 
 cess bv which the wonderful transformation was to be 
 effected, Carlyle himself had heard from the prophet's own 
 lips, and had heard without conviction when Irving long 
 before had taken him to Highgate to worship. 
 
 To the young and aident mind, instinct with pious nobleness, 
 yet driven to the grim deserts of Kadicalism for a faith, Coleridge's 
 speculations had a charm much more than liteiury, a charm almost 
 religious and prophetic. The constant gist of his discoui-se was 
 lamentation over the sunk condition of the world, which he rec- 
 ognised to be given up to atheism and materialism : full of mere 
 sordid mis-beliefs, mis-pursuits, and mis-results. All science had 
 become mechanical, the science not of men, but of a kind of 
 human beavers. Churches themselves had died away into a god- 
 less mechanical condition, and stood there as mere cases of articles, 
 mere forms of Churches, like the dried carcases of once swift camels 
 which you find left withering in the thii*st of the universal desert — 
 ghastly portents for the present, beneficent ships of the desert no 
 more. Men's souls were blinded, hebetated, and sunk under the 
 influence of atheism and materialism, and Hume and Voltaii-e. 
 The world for the present was an extinct world, deserted of God 
 and incapable of well-doing till it changed its heart and spirit. 
 This, I think, expressed with less of indignation and with more of 
 long-drawn quenilousness, was always recognisable as the ground 
 tone, which truly a pioiis young heart, driven into Radicalism and 
 the opposition party, could not but recognise as a too sorrowful 
 tnith, and ask the oracle with all earnestness, 'What remedy, 
 then ? ' The remedy, though Coleridge himself professed to see it 
 as in sunbeams, could not, except by processes unspeakably diffi- 
 cult, be described to you at all. On the whole, these dead 
 Churches, this dead English Church especially, must be brought 
 to life again. Why not ? It was not dead. The soul of it in this 
 parched-up l)ody was tragically asleep only. Atheistic philosophy 
 was true on its side ; and Hume and Voltaire could on their o\nx 
 ground speak inefragably for themselves against any Church. But 
 lift the Church and them into a higher sphere of argument, they 
 died into inanition. The Church revivified itself into pristine 
 florid vigour, became once more a living ship of the desert, and 
 invincibly bore you over stock and stone. But how ? but how ? 
 
60 CarlyUs Life in London. 
 
 Bj attending to the 'reason' of man, said Coleridge, and duly 
 chaining up the 'understanding' of man. The Ve^munft (reason) 
 and Versiand (understanding) of the Germans — it all turned upon 
 these if you could well understand them, which you couldn't. 
 For the rest, Coleridge had on the anvil various books, especially 
 was about to write one grand book on the Logos, which would help 
 to bridge the chasm for us. So much appeared, however : 
 Churches, though proved false as you had imagined, were still 
 true as you were to imagine. Here was an artist who would burn 
 you up an old Chui-ch, root and branch, and then, as the alchemist 
 professed to do with organic substances in general, distil you an 
 
 * Astral Spirit ' from the ashes, which was the veiy image of the 
 old burnt article, its airdrawn counteri3art. This you had, or might 
 get, and draw uses from if you could. Wait till the book on the 
 Logos was done ; alas ! till your own terrene eyes, blind with 
 conceit and the dust of logic, were purged, subtilized, and 
 spiritualized into the sharpness of vision requisite for discerning 
 such an ' O-m-m-m ject, ' The ingenuous young English head of 
 those days stood strangely puzzled by such revelations, uncertain 
 whether it was getting inspired or getting infatuated into flat 
 imbecility ; and strange effulgence of new day, or else of deeper 
 meteoric night, coloured the horizon of the future for it. 
 
 Carljle for himself had refused to follow Coleridge 
 into these airy speculations. He for one dared not play 
 with trnth, and he regarded this metaphysical conjuring 
 as cowardly unmanliness, fatal to honesty of heart, and 
 useful only to enable cravens, who in their souls knew 
 better, to close their eyes to fact. 
 
 What the light of your mind (he says), which is the direct in- 
 spiration of the Almighty, pronounces incredible, that, in God's 
 name, leave uncredited. At your peril do not try believing that. 
 No subtlest hocus pocus of ' reason ' versus ' understanding ' will 
 avail for that feat. . . . Only in the world's last lethargy can 
 such things be done and accounted safe and pious. ... * Do 
 you think the living God is a buzzard idol, sternly asks Milton, 
 
 * that you dare address him in this manner ? ' It is not now known, 
 what never needed proof or statement before, that religion is not 
 a doubt — that it is a certainty, or else a mockeiy and hon-our ; 
 that none of all the many things we are in doubt about can by any 
 
Life of Sterling, 61 
 
 alchemy bo made a * religion ' for ns, but are, and mtist continue, 
 a baleful quiet or unquiet hypocrisy for us, and bring — salvation, 
 do we fancy ? I think it is another thing they will bring, and are 
 on all hands visibly bringing this long while. 
 
 He held sternly to what his conscience told him, and 
 would not listen to the Coleridgean siren. But many did 
 listen, and ran upon the fatal shore. Intellectual clei-gy- 
 nien especially, who had been troubled in their minds, 
 imagined that they found help and comfort there. If, as 
 they had been told, it was a sin to disbelieve the Church's 
 creed, then the creed itself must rest on something beyond 
 probability and the balance of evidence. Why not, then, 
 on Coleridge's * reason ' ? It was a serious thing besides 
 to have a profession to which they were committed for the 
 means of living, and which the law forbade them to change. 
 Thus, at the time when Carlyle was writing this book, a 
 whole flight of clergy, with Frederick Maurice at their 
 head and Kingsley for lieutenant, were preaching regenera- 
 tion on Coleridge's principles, and pei'suading themselves 
 that ' the sacred river could run backwards after all.' 
 Sterling, before them, had been carried away by the same 
 illusion. In his enthusiasm, he took orders ; a few months' 
 experience sufficed to show so true an intelligence that the 
 Iligligate philosophy was ' bottled moonshine;' and Car- 
 lyle draws the picture of him, not like Julius Hare, as of 
 ' a vanquished doubter,' but as * a victorious believer,' reso- 
 lutely shaking himself clear of artificial spider-webs — 
 holding fast with all his powers to what he knew to be 
 true and good, and living for that, and that only. 
 
 In Sterling's writings and actions (says Carlyle), were they capa- 
 »le of being well read, we consider that there is for all true 
 beai-ts, and especially for young noble seekers and strivers towards 
 what is highest, a mirror, in which some shadow of themselves 
 and of their immeasurably complex arena will profitably present 
 itself. Here, also, is one encompassed and struggling even as 
 they now are. This man also had said to himself, not in mere 
 
62 Carlylcs Life in London. 
 
 catechism words, but with all his instincts, and the question 
 thrilled in every nerve of him and pulsed in every drop of his 
 blood, ' What is the chief end of man ? Behold ! I, too, would 
 live and work as beseems a. denizen of this universe — a child of 
 the Highest God ! By what means is a noble life still possible 
 for me here ? Ye heavens, and thou, earth, oh how ? ' The his- 
 tory of this long-continued prayer and endeavour, lasting in vari- 
 ous figures for near forty years, may now, and for some time com- 
 ing, have something to say to men. Nay, what of men of the 
 world ? Here, visible to myself for some while, was a brilliant 
 human presence, distinguishable, honourable, and loveable amid 
 the dim common populations, among the million little beautiful 
 once more a beautiful human soul, whom I among others recog- 
 nised and lovingly walked with while the years and the hours were. 
 Sitting now by his tomb in thoughtful mood, the new times bring 
 a new duty to me. Why write the life of Sterling ? I imagine I 
 had a commission higher than the world's — the dictate of Nature 
 herself to do what is now done. Sic prosit.^ 
 
 1 Among the many evidences of Carlyle's interest in young men who applied 
 to him for advice and guidance, I find the following letter, written at the time 
 jat which he was engaged on the ' Life of Sterling,' and showing that no occu- 
 pation, however absorbing, could lead him to neglect a duty which, when the 
 occasion offered, he always regarded as sacred : — 
 
 ' Chelsea : March 9, 1850. 
 
 'My good young friend, — I am much obliged by the regard which you en- 
 tertain for me, and do not blame your enthusiasm, which well enough becomes 
 your young years. If my books teach you anything, don't mind in the least 
 whether other people believe it or not ; but do you, for your own behoof, lay 
 it to heart as a real acquisition you have made — more properlj% as a real mes- 
 sage left with you, which you must set about fulfilling, whatever others do. 
 This is really all the counsel I can give you about what you read in my books 
 or those of others : practise what you learn there ; instantly, and in all ways, 
 begin turning the belief into a fact, and continue at that till you get more and 
 even more belief, with which also do the like. It is idle work otherwise to 
 write books or to read them. And be not surprised that " people have no 
 sympathy with you." That is an accompaniment that will attend you all 
 your days if you mean to lead an earnest life. The " people " could not save 
 you with their '' sympathy," if they had never so much of it to give. A man 
 can and must save himself, with or without their sympathy, as it may chance. 
 And may all good be with you, my kind young friend, 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 to whom they were addressed as their most precious pos- 
 Bession. 
 
Life of Sterling, 6^ 
 
 Sometliing of tlie high purpose whicli Carlyle assigns 
 to Sterling was perliaps reflected froin himself, as with a 
 lover's portrait of his mistress ; yet his account of him is 
 essentially as true as it is affectionate. He did not give 
 his esteem easily, and when it was given it was nobly de- 
 served. I well remember the effect wliich the book pro- 
 duced when it appeared. He himself valued it little, and 
 even doubted whether it was worth publishing. As a 
 piece of literary work it was more admired than anything 
 which he had yet written. The calmness was a general 
 surprise. He had a tranquil command of his subject, and 
 liis treatment of it was exquisitely delicate. He was no 
 longer censuring the world as a prophet, but deh'ghting it 
 as an artist. The secular part of society pardoned the 
 fierceness with which he had trampled on them for so 
 beautiful an evidence of the tendei'ness of his real heart. 
 The religious world was not so well satisfied. Anglicans, 
 Protestants, Catholics had hoped from ' Cromwell,' and 
 even from the Pamphlets, that, as against spiritual Radi- 
 calism, he would be on their side. They found themselves 
 entirely mistaken. ' Does not believe in us either, then ? ' 
 was the cry. ' Kot one of the religiones licatoe will this 
 man acknowledge.' Frederick Maurice's friends were the 
 most displeased of all. The irreverence with which he 
 had treated Coleridge was not to be forgiven. From all 
 that section of Illuminati who had hitherto believed them- 
 selves his admirers, he had cut himself off for ever, and, as 
 a teacher, he was left without disciples, save a poor hand- 
 ful who had longed for such an utterance from him. He 
 himself gathered no conscious pleasure from what he had 
 done. * A poor tatter of a thing,' he called it, valuable 
 onh^ 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 intention that when completed it seemed to be 
 worth nothing. 
 
64: Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 To Margaret Carlyle, Scotshrig. 
 
 Chelsea : AprU 5, 1851. 
 I told the Doctor about 'John Sterling's Life,' a small, insig- 
 nificant 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 
 whether or not. It 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 wi-ite — 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 wher- 
 ever I go, or, at least, set to work, like James Aitkins' half-mad 
 friend, * ay maistly in a place hy himseV.* 
 
 Among the ' irritations ' was a portrait which had been 
 taken of him in Annandale, and of which an engraving 
 was now sent to him. No painter ever succeeded with 
 Carlyle. One had made liim ' like a flayed horse ; ' of the 
 present one he says : — 
 
 Three months ago solicited me to sit for this thing. I re- 
 fused ; 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 portrait 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 over Uhe 
 immense masses of things ' on which he wanted to write, 
 and project after project rose and faded before he conld 
 see his way. The ' Exodus from Houndsditch ' was still 
 one of them ; ought he, or ought he not, to be explicit in 
 
spiritual Optics, 65 
 
 that great matter, and sketch tlie outlines of a creed which 
 might hereafter be sincerely believed ? 
 
 * Birth of a cherry ' in the spring of the year (he writes) ; birth 
 of a planet in the spring of the fcons. The All produces them 
 alike, builds them together out of its floating atoms, out of its in- 
 finite opulences. The germ of an idea lies behind tliat. Another 
 * spiritual world, ' its blaze of splendour as yet all veiled, hangs 
 struggling behind those wrecks and dust-clouds — Hebrew, Greek, 
 &c. When will it be born into clearness ? 
 
 Again, April, 1851 ; — 
 
 In the spiritual world, as in the astronomical, it is the earth 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 attend- 
 ant on learing 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? Most 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 seems to say that something of 
 the sort was expected of him, and even obligatory upon 
 him. But either he felt that the age was not ripe, or ho 
 could not develop the idea satisfactorily, and he left what 
 he had written to mature in some other mind. ' Few men,' 
 he says at this time, ' were ever more puzzled to find their 
 road than I am just now. Be silent! Look and seek!' 
 His test of progress — of the moral worth of his own or 
 any other age — was the men that it produced. He ad- 
 mired most of all things in this world single-minded 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 depict- 
 ing such ages and persons. The ' Cid,' as he was looking 
 about him for subjects, tempted him for a few weeks. The 
 story of the Cid is the roughest, truest, most genial of the 
 epics of modern Europe, and some picture, he thought. 
 Vol. IV.-5 
 
^6 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 might be drawn out of it of the stru2:gle of Spanish chiv- 
 ahy with the Moslem. He read various books — Miiller's, 
 Southey's, &c. — with this view, but he found, as everj^one 
 else has found, that although Ruj Diaz in the poem is as 
 real as Achilles, nothing can be made of him in the shape 
 of history. Miiller he found ' stilting and affected, walk- 
 ing as if he were \\2i\i-shati71g / ' other learned writers osten- 
 ^tatious and windy. 'On the whole,' he said, 'I can make 
 less of the Cid than I expected, and, in fact, cannot get any 
 'clear face view of him at all.' Should he try William the 
 Conqueror and the Norsemen ? This seemed more feasible, 
 and his own sympathies — his own heart itself was Scandi- 
 navian ; all the virtues we possessed he believed to have 
 come to lis out of our ^N^orse ancestry. But this, too, faded, 
 and his mind wandered from 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 1 mark anywhere the absurd state of our injinitwe of verbs used as a 
 substantive ? Building is good. Batir est bo?i. ^^dljicare honnm est. Baucn 
 ist gut. In all languages, and by the nature of speech itself, it is the injini- 
 tive that we use in such cases. How, in the name of wonder, does English 
 aione seem to give us the present participle ? Many years ago I perceived the 
 reason to be this : Build (the verb) was antiently Builden. All infinitives, as 
 they still do in German, ended in en ; our beautiful Lmdley Murray, alarmed 
 at a mispronunciation like " Buildin'," stuck a "g '' to the end of it, and so 
 here we are with one of the most perfect solecisms daily in our mouths — a par- 
 ticiple 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 barbarous tongues now spoken by civilized creatures ; a language chiefly 
 adapted for invoices., drill-sergeant words of command, and such like. The 
 dropping of the " g " (" ge " in German) from our preterite participles, so that 
 participle and aorist, except by position, are indistinguishable, is an immense 
 loss of resource ; your sentence is thus foot-shackled to an amazing extent. 
 Other losses, virtual loss of declension (all but one case), of inflexion (almost 
 altogether) ; these also, though a gain of speed for invoices, «frc., are a sad loss 
 for speech or writing, and shackle you very sore. Yet Shakespeare wro^e in 
 English. Honour the Shakespeare who subdued the most obstinate material, 
 and made it melt before him. What will become of English ? I can by no 
 means predict eternity for our present hidebound dialect of English ; but there 
 is such a solid note of worth in this language, and it is spoken by such a multi- 
 
Crystal Palace. 67 
 
 A new cant came up at this epoch to put Lira out of 
 patience — Prince Albert's Grand Industrial Exhibition 
 and* Palace of Aladdin in Hyde Park, a temple for the 
 consecration of commerce, &c., with the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury for fugleman, a contrivance which was to 
 bring in a new era, and do for mankind what Christianity 
 had tried and failed to do. For such a thing as this Car- 
 lyle could have no feeling but contempt. 
 
 JournaL 
 
 April 21, 1851. — Crystal Palace — bless the mark ! — is fast getting 
 ready, and bearded figures already grow frequent on the streets ; 
 * all nations ' crowding to us with their so-called industry or osten- 
 tatious frothery. All the loose population of London poui*s itself 
 eveiy holiday into Hyde Park round this strange edifice. Over in 
 Surrey there is a strange agreeable solitude in the walks one has. 
 My mad humour is urging me to flight from this monstrous place 
 — flight 'over to Denmark to learn Norse,' for example. Eveiy 
 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 unwholesome than this same. Not to 
 be helped at present, it would seem. Heigho ! old age is stem and 
 sad, but not unbeautiful if we could guide it wisely. Try to keep 
 a little piety in thy heart ; in spite of all mad contradictions, 
 enough to drive oneself utterly mad if one had no patience, try to 
 maintain a small altar-flame burning there. Eheu ! eheu ! 
 
 May 3. —Cold gray weather. All the world busy with their In- 
 dustrial Exhibition. I am sick, very sad, and, as usual for a long 
 time back, not able to get on with anything. My silence and 
 isolation, my utter loneliness in this world, is complete. Never in 
 my life did I feel so utterly windbound, lame, bewildered, inca- 
 pable of Stirling from the spot in any good direction whatever. Da 
 war gute Raih iheuer ; and not even an attempt towards it can be 
 
 tude of important human creatures just now, that it has evidently a great part 
 to play yet, and will enter largely into the speech of the future, when all 
 Europe shall gradually have, if not one speech, say three : — 1. Teutonic— Elng- 
 lish for the heart of it, with Danish, German, Dutch, die. ; 2, Roman— French 
 the head element ; and S, Sclavonic — Russian the ditto. Those will be grand 
 times, Mrs. Rigmarole— oh, jaan satis ! 
 
68 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 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 can- 
 not 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 else- 
 where. 
 
 Poor ' human beings that came round liim.' How could 
 they help, how could they offer to help ? They came to 
 worship. It was not for them to advise or encourage. 
 He was their teacher. They came to learn of him and re- 
 ceive humbly what lie might please to give them — and he 
 himself was sick and moulting. His feverishly active in- 
 tellect had no fixed employment, and the mental juices 
 were preying upon themselves. When summer came, and 
 the Exhibition opened, London grew intolerable. The 
 enthusiasm for this nesY patent invention to regenerate the 
 human race was altogether too much for him. He fled to 
 Malvern for the water-cure, and became, with his wife, 
 for a few weeks the guest of Dr. Gullj, who, long years 
 afterwards, was brought back so terribly to his remem- 
 brance. After long wavering he was beginning seriously to 
 think of Frederick the Great as his next subject ; if not a 
 hero to his mind, yet at heart a man who had played a 
 lofty part in Europe without stooping to conventional 
 cant. With Frederick looming before him he went to 
 cool his fever in the Malvern waters. The disease was not 
 in his body, loudly as he complained of it. The bathing, 
 packing, drinking proved useless — worse, in his opinion, 
 than useless. ' He found by degrees that water, taken as I 
 medicine, was the most 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, and was grateful for his hospitality. He 
 stayed a month in all. His wife went to her friends in 
 
Scotsbrig. 69 
 
 Manchester ; he hastened to hide himself in Scotsbrig, 
 full of gloom and heaviness, and totally out of health. 
 
 In a letter which Mrs. Carljle wrote to him after they 
 separated, she reprimanded him somewhat sharply for 
 having come to her, as she sup]>osed, for a parting kiss, 
 with a lighted cigar in his mouth, and in the ' Letters and 
 Memorials ' he allowed the reproach to stand without ex- 
 planation.' Evidently she had resented the outrage on 
 the spot, and, as he humbly said, *he had not needed 
 that addition to make his lonely journey abundantly 
 sombre.' Yet he had been innocent as a child. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyley Manchester. 
 
 Scotsbrig, September 4, 1851. 
 That of the cigar, at which you showed so much offence, not 
 much to my consolation on the way homewards, was an attempt on 
 my part to whisper to you that I had given the maid half a crown, 
 nothing more or other, as I am a living sinner. What you, in your 
 kind assiduity, were aiming at, I in the frightful, hateful whirl of 
 such a scene had not in the least noticed or surmised. You un- 
 kind woman, unfortunate with the best intentions, to send me off 
 in that humour with such a viaticum through the manufactui'ing 
 districts ! I thought of it all day ; yet \cith sorrow, not with anger, 
 if you will believe me. 
 
 How many of Carlyle's imagined delinquencies in this 
 department may not have been equally explicable ! Of 
 late years, even with her he had grown shy and awkward ; 
 meaning always well, and failing in manner from timidity. 
 At Scotsbrig he soothed himself with the * Life of Chal- 
 mers.' 'An excellent Christian man,' he said. * About as 
 great a contrast to himself in all ways as could be found 
 in these epochs under the same sky.' He found his mother 
 not ill, but visibly sinking. She had divined that all was 
 not as well in Cheyne Row as it ought to be. Why had 
 not Mrs. Carlyle come too, to see her before she died ? 
 She said over and over again, ' I wad ha' liked well to see 
 
 » Vol. ii., p. 11. 
 
TO Carhjle^s Life in London. 
 
 Janie ance mair.' All else was still and peaceful. The 
 air, the home faces, the honest, old-fashioned life, did for 
 him what Malvern and Gully could not do. The noise of 
 the outside world reached him only as an echo, and he was 
 only provoked a little when its disturbances came into his 
 close neighbourhood. 
 
 Father Gavazzi (he says, in a letter of September 10) is going to 
 harangue them (at Dumfries) to-morrow in Italian, which one 
 would think must be an extremely unprofitable operation for all 
 but the Padre himself. This blockhead, nevertheless, is actually 
 making quite a furore 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 ! ), and one ass, whom I 
 heard the bray of in some Glasgow newspaper, says, * He strik- 
 ingly reminds you of our grand hater of shams, T. Carlyle.' Cer- 
 tainly a very striking resemblance indeed ! Oh, I am sick of the 
 stupidity of mankind — a servum 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 Com- 
 pany. The profoundest Orcus or beUy 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 Ashburton were 
 now there, and wrote to summon him to join them. At 
 such a command the effort seemed not impossible, lie 
 went to London, joined Browning at the South Eastern 
 Railway station, and the same evening found him at 
 Meurice's. The first forty-eight hours were tolerable: 
 ' nothing to do except amuse himself,' which he thought 
 could be borne for a day or two. Lord Ashburton of course 
 saw everyone that was worth seeing. ' Thiers came the 
 second afternoon and talked immense quantities of watery 
 enough vain matter.' Thiers was followed by two other 
 ' men of letters,' ' one Merimee,' ' one Laborde,' NichU 2u 
 
Tnj) to rar'iH. 71 
 
 hedeuten. The third and fourth nights sleep unfortunately 
 failed, with the usual consequences. He grew desperate, 
 ' found thai he had made a fruitless jump into a Red Sea 
 of mud.' The last remains of his patience vanished when 
 Merimee dared to say that he ' thought Goethe an in- 
 ferior French apprentice.' This was enough of literature, 
 lie packed his bag and fled home to Chelsea. He had 
 better have stayed out his time at Scotsbrig. On his ar- 
 rival he recorded his Paris adventures in his Journal. 
 
 Went to Paris for a week, tmvelling with the Brownings, and 
 got nothing by the business but confusion, pain, disappointment ; 
 total (or almost total) want of sleep ; and, in fine, returned home 
 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 bed again, in my own poor hut again, with the prospect of ar- 
 rangements that suited me a little. Saw at Paris, besides English 
 people of high name, but small significance, Thiers several times 
 — not expressly visiting me — a lively little Provencal figure, not 
 dislikeable, veiy far from estimable in any sense : item, MerimSe — 
 wooden pedant, not without conciseness, pertinency, 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 lan- 
 guage (so ill) with such people on such topics as ours was a per- 
 petual burden to me. 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 dirty unswept look still ; other- 
 wise was much changed for the better. Bide in the Bois de Bou- 
 logne with Lord 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-course ; othen^ise 
 dirty, unkempt, a smack of the sordid grating everywhere on one*s 
 ill-humour. Ariiculate-speaking France was altogether without 
 beauty or meaning to me in my then diseased mood ; but I saw 
 ti*aces of the inarticulate, industrial, &c., being the true France 
 and much worthier. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 A.D. 1851-2. ^T. 56-57. 
 
 Purpose formed to write on Frederick the Great — The author of 
 the * Handbook of Spain ' — Afflicting visitors — Studies for 
 * Frederick ' — Visit to Linlathen — Proposed tour in Ger- 
 many — Rotterdam — The Ehine — Bonn — Homburg— Frank- 
 furt — Wartburg — Luther reminiscences — "Weimar — Berlin — 
 Eeturn 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 manner of men and 
 things. The revolutions of 1848 had aggravated his 
 natural tendencies. He liad thought ill enough before of 
 the modern methods of acting and thinking, and had fore- 
 seen that no good would come of them. The universal 
 crash of European society had confirmed his convictions. 
 He saw England hurrying on to a similar catastrophe. 
 He had lifted up his voice in warning, and no one would 
 listen to him, and he was irritated, disappointed, and per- 
 haps surprised at the impotence of his own admonitions. 
 To go on with them, to continue railing like Timon, was 
 waste of time and breath ; and time and breath had been 
 given to him to use and not to waste. His best I'esonree, 
 he knew, was to engage with some subject large enough 
 and difficult enough to take up all his attention, and he 
 had fixed at last on Frederick of Prussia. He had dis- 
 cerned for one thing that Prussia, in those days of totter- 
 ing thrones, was, or would be, the centre of European 
 
Frederick the Great, 73 
 
 stability, and that it was Frederick who had made Prussia 
 what she was. It was an enormous undertaking; noth- 
 ing 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 suflFer in the cooking process. For Carlyle to 
 write a book on Frederick would involve the reading of a 
 mountain of books, memoirs, journals, letters, state papers. 
 The work with Cromwell would be child's play to it. 
 He would have to travel over a large part of Germany, to 
 see Berlin and Potsdam, to examine battle-fields and the 
 plans of campaigns. He would have to make a special 
 study, entirely new to him, of military 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 Car- 
 lyle's heart. He had 'no piety ' like Cromwell, no fiery 
 convictions, no zeal for any ' cause of God,' real or im- 
 agined. He lived in an age when sincere spiritual helief 
 had become difficult, if not impossible. But he had one 
 supreme 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' which Carlyle found to 
 be so loathsome in England— there was in Frederick ab- 
 solutely none. He was a man of supreme intellectual 
 ability. One belief he had, and it was the explanation of 
 his strength —a belief \\\ facts. To know the fact always 
 cxiftly as it was, and to make his actions conform to it, 
 was the first condition with him ; never to allow facts 
 to be concealed from himself, or distorted, or pleasantly 
 flavoured with words or spurious sentiments j and there- 
 
74 Carlyle's Life m London. 
 
 fore Frederick, if not a religious man, was a true man, the 
 nearest approach to a religious man that Carlyle believed 
 perhaps to be in these days possible. He might not be 
 true in the sense that he never deceived others. Poli- 
 ticians, 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 from 
 himself by specious phrases, or allowed voluntary halluci- 
 nations to blind his eyes, and thus he stood out an excep- 
 tional figure in the modern world. Whether at his age 
 he could go through with such an enterprise was still un- 
 certain to him; but he resolved to try, and on coming 
 back from Paris sat down to read whatever would come 
 first to hand. He did not recover his good-humour. 
 Lady Ashburton invited Mrs. Carlyle to spend December 
 with her at the Grange, to help in 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 individu- 
 ally. If I refuse this time, she will quarrel with me outright. 
 That is her way ; and as quarrelling with her would involve also 
 quarrelling with Mr. C. it is not a thing to be done lightly. I wish 
 I knew what to answer for the best. 
 
 Not a pleasant position for a wife, but she made the 
 best of it and submitted. She went to the Grange. He 
 stayed behind with Jomini and the Seven Years' War, 
 patiently reading, attending to his health, dining out, see- 
 ing his friends, and at least endeavouring to recover some 
 sort of human condition — even, as it seems, cleansing the 
 Cheyne Row premises with his own hands. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle, at the Grange. 
 
 Chelsea : December 8, 1851. 
 On Saturday last in the morning I did what is probably my chief 
 act of virtue since you went ; namely, I decided not to walk, but 
 to take water and a scrub-brush, and swash into some degree of 
 
Umoelcome Visitors. 75 
 
 tolerability those gpreasy clammy flags in the back area. I did it 
 without rebuke of Anne. I said she couldn't do it in her present 
 state of illness ; and on the whole proceeded, and found it decidedly 
 hiird work for three-quarters of an hour. Some ten or twelve pails 
 of water with vigorous scnibbing did, however, reduce the affair to 
 ; order, whereupon I washed myself and sat down to breakfast in 
 victorious peace. ' Dirt shall not bo around me,' said Cobbett, * so 
 long as I can handle a broom.' Our weather here is now absolutely 
 beautifuL I executed a deal of riding yesterday, and after near 
 four hours' foot and horse exercise was at South Place little after 
 time. ♦ Mutton chop with Ford ? ' ' There waa a gi-and dinner 
 when I arrived en frac, Mrs. Ford, Lawrence, and the girls all 
 dressed like tulips ; Anthony (Sterling) himself in white waistcoat, 
 all very grand indeed. I was really provoked, but said nothing. 
 Happily I was clean as new snow, and had not come in my pilot 
 jacket ; and in short I could not help it. Ford, though a man 
 without humour or any gracefulness or loveability of character, 
 is not the worst of men to dine with at all ; has abundance of au- 
 thentic information — not duller than Macaulay's, and much more 
 certain and more social too — and talks away about Spanish wines, 
 anecdotes, and things of Spain. I got away about eleven, not quite 
 ruined, though not intending to go back soon. 
 
 December II. 
 
 Do but think : I have had a letter from that bird-like, semi- 
 idiot son of poor , thanking me for the mention of his father 
 
 in * Sterling,' and forwarding for my judgment a plan to renovate 
 suffering society ! a big printed piece with MS. annotations, ac- 
 companiments, &c. — an association to do it all. My answer was, 
 in brief, * A pack of damned nonsense, you unfortunate fool ! ' 
 
 December 12. 
 
 Last night, just as tea was in prospect, and the hope of a quiet, 
 busy evening to a day comijletely lost^ enter, with a loud knock, 
 
 poor leading his little boy ; a huge, hairy, good-humoured, 
 
 stupid-looking fellow the size of a house gable, and all over with 
 hair, except a little patch on the crown, which was bald ; the boy 
 noisy, snappish, and inclined to be of himself intolerable. I gave 
 
 them tea, tried to talk. Poor has no talent. You expect 
 
 good-lnimoured idiomatic simplicity at least, and you do not get 
 even that. He tarns like a door on a hinge from every kind of 
 
 ' Author of the * Handbook of Spain,* and parent of the whole handbook 
 
76 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 opinion or assertion, and is a colossus of gossamer. They bored 
 me to death, and at half-past nine, to complete the matter, Saffi ' 
 enters. Oh, heavens ! the whole night, like the day, was a pain- 
 ful wreck for the rational soul of man. 
 
 Afflictions would come, but Cai-ljle's essentially kind 
 heart put up with them. He liad to secure himself more 
 effectually before he could make progress with Frederick, 
 which still hung before him uncertain. He joined his 
 wife at the Grange in the middle of the month, and stayed 
 out the year there. 
 
 Journal, 
 
 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 — I still continue. "Was at the Grange before and 
 till New Year's Day, three weeks in all, Jane five weeks — rode 
 daily, got no other good — Lords Lansdowne and Grey ; Thack- 
 eray, Macaulay, Twisleton, 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, ineptitude, and gloom. Keep reading Frederick. 
 Precise, exact, copious, dullest of men, Archenholtz (my first Ger- 
 man book near thirty years ago), Jomini, Lloyd, and now Freder- 
 ick's own writings. I make slow progress, and am very sensible 
 how lame I now am in such things, Hope is what I now want. 
 Hope is as if dead within me for most part ; which makes me affect 
 solitude and wish much, if wishing were worth aught, that I had 
 even one serious intelligent man to take counsel with, and com- 
 municate 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. Was hedeutefs aher ? Re- 
 ligious reviews, I believe, are in a terrible humour with me and it. 
 Don't look at one of them. Various foolish letters about it. 
 ' Latter-day Pamphlets ' have turned nine-tenths of the world 
 * Friend of Mazzini ; ex-triumvir of Rome. 
 
Stttdlea for Frederick. 7T 
 
 dreadfully against me — und dds aiich, was bedeuteCs ? Can Freder- 
 ick be my next subject — or what ? 
 
 Six months now followed of steady reading and excerpt- 
 ing. 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 occasionally to tea. If any 
 called before, he left them to his wife and refused to be 
 disturbed. I was then living in Wales, and saw and heard 
 nothing of him except in some rare note. In the Journal 
 there are no entiies of consequence except the character- 
 istic one of April 1. 
 
 You talk fondly of * immortal memory,' &c. But it is not so. 
 Our memory itself can only bold 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. Longe\'ities 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 seem to have much mended. 
 There were small ailments and the usual fretfulness under 
 them. When June came he sent his mother a flourishing 
 account of himself, but his wife added a sad-merry post- 
 script as a corrective : — 
 
 Jnne 5. 
 It is quite true that he is done with that illness, and might liave 
 been done with it much sooner if he had treated himself with or- 
 dinary sense. I am suiprised that so good and sensible a woman 
 as yourself should have brought up her son so badly that he 
 should not know what patience and self-denial mean — merely ob- 
 serving * Thou'st gey ill to deal wi'.' Gey ill indeed, and always 
 the longer the worse. Wlien he was ill this last time, he said to 
 Anne (the servant) one morning, * I should like tea for breakfast 
 this morning, hut you need not hurnf* The fact was, he was pm*- 
 posing to wa.sh all over with soap and water ; but Anne didn't 
 know that, and thought he must be dangerously ill, that he should 
 over have thought of saying you needn't huny. * It was such an 
 
78 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 unlikely thing for the master to say, that it quite made my flesh 
 creep.' You see the kind of thing we still go on with. 
 
 He had decided on going to Germany in August. "With 
 the exception of the yacht trip to Ostend, he had never 
 been beyond Paris. Mrs. Carlyle liad never been on the 
 Continent at all ; and the plan was for them to go both 
 together. Repairs were needed in the house again. He 
 was anxious to complete a portion of his reading before 
 setting out, and fancied that this time he could stay and 
 live through the noise ; but the workmen when they came 
 in were too much for liim. She undertook to remain 
 and superintend as usual. He had to fly if he would not 
 be driven mad — fly to Scotland, taking his books with 
 him ; perhaps to his friend Mr. Erskine. 
 
 To Thomas Erskine, LinlatJien. 
 
 Chelsea : July 12, 1852. 
 Dear Mr. Erskine, — I foresee that, by stress of weather and of 
 other evil circumstances, I shall, in spite of my reluctance and in- 
 ertia, he 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 fore- 
 see, especially if this hot weather holds, that I shall have to run. 
 My wife, who is architect and factotum, will retire to som^ neigh- 
 bour's house and sleep ; but cannot leave the ground till she see 
 these two upper storeys made into her image of them. I have 
 fled into a dressing-room far aloft ; sit there very busy with cer- 
 tain books, also with watering-pot, which, all carpets &c. being 
 off, is a great help to me. Here I would so gladly hold out ; but 
 in spite of wholesome and unwholesome inertias, shall too prob- 
 ably be obliged to fly. Whitherward ? is now the question, and I 
 am looking round on various azimuths to answer the same. Tell 
 me, if you are, or are likely to be, tolerably solitary for a ten days 
 
Visit to Idrdathen, 79 
 
 at Linkthen, and about what time. A draught attracts me thither, 
 so as to few other places. But alas ! in evei'if 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 reading, and send me down once a day to bathe in 
 your glorious sea, 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. CABLYIiE. 
 
 Erskine, who loved Carlyle and delighted in his com- 
 pany, responded with a hearty invitation, and on July 21, 
 the weather still flaming hot, Carlyle dropped down the 
 river in a boat from Chelsea to the Dundee steamer, which 
 was lying in the Pool, his wife and Nero accompanying 
 to see him off. She was delighted that he should go, for 
 her own sake as well as for his. When he was clear off, 
 she could go about her work with a lighter heart. She 
 writes to tell John Carlyle of his brothers departure, and 
 goes on : — 
 
 Noise something terrific. In superintending all these men, I 
 begin to find myself in the career open to my particular talents, 
 and am infinitely more satisfied than I was in talking * wits ' in my 
 white silk gown, with white feathers in my head, at soirees at Bath 
 House, and all that sort of thing. It \s such a consolation to bo 
 of some ttsey though it is only in helping stupid carpenters and 
 bricklayers out 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 material annoyances, con- 
 sidering my morbid sensitiveness to moral ones ; and when Mr. 
 C. is not here recognising it with his overwhelming eloquence, 
 I can regard the present earthquake as something almost laugh- 
 able. 
 
 He meanwhile was reporting his successful arrival in 
 Fife. 
 
80 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Linlathen : July 23, 1852. 
 Ton and Nero vanishing amid the ships of the Pool were a wae 
 kind of sight to me in my then and subsequent condition of imag- 
 ination. ... 'I got on very well in the steamer, was nearly 
 ■Uerly silent, found everybody civil, and everything tolerably what 
 It should be. The weather was of the best. That first evening, 
 with the ships all hanging 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 sor- 
 row, 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 ac- 
 cordingly 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 ; everything is so delightful- 
 ly kind and appropriate here — weather, place, people, bedrooih, 
 treatment all so much * better than I deserve.' But one's imagi- 
 nation is a black smithy of the Cyclops, where strange things are 
 incessantly forged. . . . The good Thomas and all the rest 
 religiously resj)ect 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 talk- 
 ing 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 partially contented for a week 
 together. The German problem seemed frightful as the 
 
YM to Lirdatlien. 81 
 
 time drew on. Travelling of all kinds was horrible to 
 him. ' Frederick was no sufficient inducement to lead 
 him into such sufferings and expenses.' ' Shall we cower 
 into some nearest hole,' he said, * and leave Germany to 
 *the winds? I am very weary of all locomotion, of all 
 jargon talk with my indifferent brethren of mankind. 
 " She said, I am aweary, a-weary." I am very, very 
 weary, truly so could I say ; and the Rankes, Yarnhagens, 
 and other gabbling creatures one will meet there are not 
 very inviting.' Linlathen itself became tedious : he ad- 
 mitted that all the circumstances were favourable — the 
 kindest of hosts, the best of lodging ; ' but the wearisome 
 was in permanence there.' It was only by keeping as 
 nnich alone as possible that he managed to get along. 
 ' Oh, Goody ! ' he cried, ' have pity on me and be patient 
 with me ; my heart is very lonely sometimes in this world.' 
 They would make him talk, that was the offence ; yet it 
 was his own fault. His talk was so intensely interesting, 
 so intensely entertaining. Xo one who heard him flowing 
 on could have guessed at the sadness which weighed upon 
 him when alone. Those bursts of humour, flashing out 
 amidst his wild flights of rhetoric, spoke of anything but 
 sadness ; even the servants at places where he dined had 
 to run out of the room, choking down their laughter. The 
 comic and the tragic lie close together, inseparable like 
 light and shadow, as Socrates long ago forced Aristophanes 
 himself to acknowledge. He escaped to Scotsbrig after a 
 fortnight with the Erskines, and there he hoped his wife 
 would join him. But the work at Cheyne Row lingered 
 on, and was far from completion. He felt that he ought 
 to go to Germany ; yet he was unwilling to leave her be- 
 hind him. 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 from me in this world.' To himself it 
 Vol. IV.— 6 
 
82 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 would be no pleasure at all. ' Curtainless beds, noisy, 
 sleepless nights' were frightful to contemplate. He, in- 
 dividually, was ' disheartened, dyspeptical, contemptible in 
 some 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 come to him at Scots- 
 brig. She had held aloof of late years, since things had 
 gone awry. ^My poor "old mother,' he wrote, * comes in 
 with her sincere, anxious old face : " Send my love to 
 Jane, and tell her" (this with a wae-ish tone) "I would 
 like right w^eel to have a crack ^ wi' her ance mair." ' 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle was still unable to come away from Chel- 
 sea, but she was alarmed at the extreme depression of his 
 letters. He reassured her as well 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, espe- 
 cially 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 
 lightnings, and cannot help it, poor devil ! 
 
 Pie concluded that he must go to Germany. She, if 
 thing^s were well, might come out afterwards, and join him 
 in Silesia. He found that ' he did not care much for 
 Frederick after all ; ' but ^ it would be disgraceful to be 
 beaten by mere travelling annoyances.' 
 
 My 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 Rotterdam, 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 o.wn capabilities to join me, especially the xchen of that ; and, 
 on the whole, am one * coal of burning sulphur ' — one heap, that 
 is to say, of chaotic miseries, horrors, sorrows, and imbecilities, 
 actually rather a contemptible man. But the ass does swim, I 
 sometimes say, if you fling him fairly into the river, though he 
 
 » Crack, conversation. 
 
To go io Oermany or not 88 
 
 brays lamentably at being flung. Oh, my Goody 1 my own, or not 
 my own, Goody I is there no help at all, then ? 
 
 Letter followed letter, in the same strain. It was not 
 jest, it was not earnest ; it was a mere wilfulness of hu- 
 mour. He told her not to mind what he said ; * it was the 
 mere grumbling incidental to dyspepsia and the load of 
 life. It was, on the whole, the nature of the beast, and 
 was to be put np with, as the wind and the rain.* She 
 had to decide, perhaps prudently, that she could not go, 
 either with him or after him. * The wind and the rain,' 
 with the aggravation of travelling, would probably rise to 
 a height. He himself was heartily disappointed. *I do 
 grudge,' he said, * to go to Germany without you, and feel 
 as if half the sclieme were gone on that account.' He was 
 a little ashamed, too. It was harvest- time at Scotsbrig, 
 and men and women were all busy with the shearing. 
 
 These rugged Annandale shearers (he said) ought to put a K(^f- 
 hdnger hke me to shame. In Germany, whether I slept or not, the 
 odious captivity to indolence, incompetence, and do-nothingism 
 which encircles me at present would be cast off at least. Life any- 
 where will swallow a man, unless he rise and vigorously try to 
 swallow it. 
 
 He gathered himself together for the effort. On August 
 25 he wrote : — 
 
 Last night I slept much better, and, indeed, except utter dis- 
 piritment and indolent confusion, there is nothing essential that 
 ails me. ' Jist plain mental awgony in my ain inside,' that is all ; 
 which I can in a great manner cure whenever I like to rise and put 
 my finger in the pipie o' t. 
 
 And on the 27th : — 
 
 Yesternight, before sunset, I walked solitary to Stookbridge 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 clearness ; 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 
 
84 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 aDd 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 thee ever, dear Jeannie ! that is my heart's prayer, go 
 where I may, do or suffer what I may. 
 
 All this came from his heart, and she knew it well. 
 She never doubted his heart; but, in the midst of his 
 emotions, he had forgotten his passport, and had to in- 
 struct her to go with the utmost liaste 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 Mr. O. 
 could learn not to leave everything to the last moment, 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 street-cabs hy the hour, like a madwoman, and lost two 
 whole nights' sleep in consequence — the first from anxiety, the 
 second from fatigue. 
 
 All was settled at last — resolution, passport, and every- 
 thing else that was required ; and on Sunday, August 30, 
 Carlyle found himself ' on board the greasy little wretch 
 of a Leitli steamer, laden to the water's edge with pig- 
 iron and herrings,' bound for the country whose writers 
 had been the guides of his mind, and whose military hero 
 was to be the subject of his own greatest work. He 
 reached Rotterdam at noon on September 1. He was not 
 to encounter the journey alone. Mr. !Neuberg was to join 
 him there, a German admirer, a gentleman of good pri- 
 vate fortune, resident in London, who had volunteered 
 his services to conduct Carlyle over the Fatherland, and 
 afterwards to be his faithful assistant in the ^ Frederick ' 
 biography. In both capacities Neuberg was invaluable, 
 and Carlyle never forgot liis obligation to him. His 
 letters are the diary of his adventures. They are ex- 
 
At Bonn, 85 
 
 tremely long, and selections only can be given here, lie 
 went first to Bonn, to study a few books before going 
 farther. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle, Clielsea. 
 
 Bonn : Sunday, September 6, 1852. 
 Thank thee very much, dear Jeannie, for the letter of yester- 
 day, which lay waiting to refresh me in the afternoon when I re- 
 turned from my dusty labours in the library here. 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 hatl I grown, would have been right welcome. My 
 journey has had nothing that was not pleasant and lucky hitherto. 
 At Bonn here, on my anival, there lay nothing for me except a 
 note from Lady Ashburton,, enclosing 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 circumstances, with half-blind eyes, 
 and stooping over low rickety tables is perfectly unpleasant to 
 me. . . . Well, 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 snoring, and the most in- 
 dustrious cocks I ever heard. Tlie 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 precious humour to rise, and settle with unin- 
 telligible waiters and Gennan steambo&t clerks, and get myself, 
 on any terms, on board. On board I, got, however, and the place 
 proved infinitely better than I hoped ; some approach to Chris- 
 tian food to be had in it, some real sleep even ; indeed, the prin- 
 cipal sleep I have yet had since Friday gone a week was four 
 hours, and again foui* hours, deep, deep, lying on the cabin sofas, 
 amid the general noises, in that respectable vessel. I spoke Ger- 
 man too, being the one Englishman on board, made agreeable 
 acquaintances, &c. Ac. The Rhine, of a vile reddish-drab 
 coloui', and all cut into a reticulary work of branches, flowing 
 through an absolutely flat country, lower than itself was far 
 from beautiful about Rotterdam, and for a fifty miles higher, but 
 
86 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 it was highly curious, and worth seeing once in a way ; a country 
 covered with willows, bukushes, 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 4 p.m. of the first day) the river gets decided- 
 ly 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, announces that the 
 ' picturesque ' is just going to enter on the scene. Much good may 
 it do us ! We had beautiful weather all the way, and yet have. 
 But surely the most picturesque of all objects was that of Neu- 
 berg, 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. 
 
 Neuberg'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 industrious day and night under the back window, &c. 
 &c. But, upon the whole, I have slept every night here more or 
 less, and am decidedly learning to do it ; and Neuberg asserts that 
 I shall become expert by-and-by. 
 
 Yesterday, as my first day's work, I went to the University 
 Library here ; found very many good books unknown to me 
 hitherto on Vater Fritz ; took down the titles of what on inspec- 
 tion 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 Eoland's Eck, for one 
 week, where sleep is much more possible, and there examine my 
 twenty books before going farther, and consider what is the best 
 to be done farther. 
 
 September 9. 
 
 A letter from my Jeannie will surely be one of the joyfullest oc- 
 currences 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 Boland's Eck, 
 
At Bonn. 87 
 
 a terrestrial Paradise and water-cure which Neuberg and the 
 world recommended as every way eligible. Well, the little 
 journey took effect, though under difficulties and mismanage- 
 ments. But the 'place'! It was beautiful exceedingly; but it 
 was as little like sleeping in as Cremonie 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 reluctance, to try one of his 
 eligiblest places, and accordingly I packed on the morrow and pro- 
 ceeded thither to take possession. What a nice long letter I pro- 
 posed to write to my poor Goody out of that sti'ange place, the 
 heart of a real German D'Orflein in the lap of the hills, when once 
 I should have had a night's sleep ! Neuberg 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 everywhere 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 sleei? or die, go where you will in this 
 country. Then for noise — loud gossip in the street till towards 
 midnight, 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 Nacldlagei' 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 
 tlie poor villagers, smoked two or three times out of my %\indow, 
 and, on tlie whole, was not so unhappy at all, and had thoughts 
 of my loved ones far away which were pious mther than otherwise. 
 Neuberg, at the meeting on the mon'ow, agreed tliat we must in- 
 stantly get oflf towards Homburg, perhaps towards Nassau, Ems, 
 Ac, but always ultimately through Frankfurt. At Homburg, if 
 at no other of these places, a week's quiet reading might be pos- 
 sible, and he could send the books back to Bonn. ... So 
 
88 Cai'lyle^s Life in London. 
 
 stands it, then : to-morrow at eight we sail, pass Coblentz towards 
 Frankfurt. One can get out and stay where one likes. 
 
 Some professors have come athwart me — none that I could avoid 
 — * miserable creatures lost in statistics.' Old Arndt, a sturdy old 
 fellow of eighty-three, with open face, loud voice, and the liveliest 
 hazel eyes, is the only one I got even momentary good of. lo non 
 cerco nessuno, and find Gelehrten in particular less and less charm- 
 ing to me. The river is grand and broad, the country rather pic- 
 turesque and very fertile and pleasant, though the worst-cultivated 
 in creation, a Lothian farmer would say ; the people sonsie, indus- 
 trious, in their stupid way, and agreeable to look on, though tend- 
 ing towards ugliness. Tobacco perpetually burning everywhere. 
 Many Jews abroad. Travellers, if not English, are apt to be rich 
 Jews, with their Jew^esses, I think. Neuberg is not bright, but full 
 of kindness and solid 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 shall do my journey 
 without damage if I take care. 
 
 Homburg : September 15. 
 
 We did get out of Bonn fairly on Friday morning. At first 
 wefctish, but which dried and brightened by degrees. ... Of 
 the Ehine 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 the rate of four or 
 five miles an hour, icithout 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 silent 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. Neuberg and I got out at Coblentz that Friday 
 about 2 p.m., and, by N.'s suggestion, put ourselves in the coupe of 
 an Ems omnibus — Bad Ems, ten miles ofi", 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 — Matlock ; but a far steeper set of rocks close 
 to rear ; in front a river equal to Nith ; and half a mile of the 
 brightest part of E.ue de Rivoli (say Regent's Quadrapt) set into 
 it ; a place as from the opera direct, and inhabited by devil's 
 sei-vants chiefly. Of it enough in winter evenings tliat are coming. 
 We got the quietest lodging perhaps in Germany (not very quiet 
 either), at the farther end of the place ; and there, in spite of 
 
Ujp tlie Rhine. 89 
 
 cooks, 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 biing them home to read. At 
 Ems we saw Russians gambling every evening; heard music by 
 the riverside among fantastic promenades and Regent's Quadrant 
 edifices, and devil's-servant peoi)le eveiy evening, every morning. 
 Saw a dance, too, unforgetable by man ; in fine, drove in cheap 
 cuddy vehicle on Sunday evening up to Nassau (Burg Nassau, the 
 birthplace of William the Silent and other heroes). A kind of 
 pious pilgrimage which I am glatl to have done. At the top of 
 the high tower, on a high, woo'dy hill, one has of course a * view * 
 not worth much to 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 : veiy sublime indeed, really worth a sight. Say a 
 hundred miles of a Loch Lomond, or half Loch Lomond, all rush- 
 ing on at five' 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 ut- 
 most I can bring it to in this world usually. Beyond Coblentz 
 our boat was too crowded ; nasty people several of them, French 
 mainly ; stupid and polite, English mainly. There was a sprink- 
 ling of Irish, too, * looking at the vine-clad hills,' as I heard them 
 lilting and saying. 
 
 Neuberg guided and guides, and does for me as only a third 
 power of courier reinforced by loyalty and friendship could. Bless 
 him ! the good and sensible but wearisome and rather heavy man ! 
 At Maintz at dusk it was decidedly pleasant to get out and have 
 done with the Rhine, which had now gro'v^^l quite flat on either 
 side, and full of islands with willows, not to sj^eak of chained 
 (anchored) cornmills, &c. Maintz and Faust of Maintz we had to 
 Kui-vey by cat's-light — good enough for us and it, I fancy. In fine, 
 about ten the railway, twenty miles or so, brought us to Frankfurt, 
 and the wearied human tabernacle, in well-waxed wainscoted 
 upper appartments in the ' Dutch Hof,* prepared itself to court 
 repose ; not with the best prospects, for the street or square was 
 still rattlinj? 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 Malvern inn gate, and endeavoured 
 to possess my soul in patience. In shaving next morning, with my 
 
90 Carlijles Life in London. 
 
 face to the Square, which was very lively, and had trees in the 
 middle, I caught, with the corner of my eye, sight of a face which 
 was evidently Goethe's. Ach Gott ! merely in stone, in the middle 
 of the Platz among the trees. I had so longed to see that face 
 alive ; and here it was given to me at last, as if 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 Mephisto M at Weimar. 
 
 Behold, one of the first faces the morning offered me at Frankfurt 
 
 was that of M 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 Weimar 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 Wiirzburg, &c., to Weimar, 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 Berlin. 
 
 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 Judengasse, grimmest section of 
 the Middle Ages and their pariahood I ever saw. The Eomer 
 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 M 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 survey- 
 ing Frankfurt city and the interior parts of Germany as far as 
 IDOssible. 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 
 uere lucky enough to find a floor unoccupied, and still are, for at 
 least one other day. As I said, my book-excerpting, taliter qualiter, 
 is as good as done ; and the place is really quite rustic, out at the 
 very end of Homburg, and that by narrow lanes. I see nothing 
 here but fields, and hear nothing but our own internal noises. 
 
Ilomhxirg, 91 
 
 Last niglit accordingly I expected sleep. Alas ! our upper floor 
 lodgers took ill — Devil mend them ! — 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 hojjed, a few hours, half a jwrtion, out of the black dog's 
 throat ; and let eveiy disturbance warn me more and more to bo 
 sioift in my motions, to restrict myself to the indispensable, and 
 to hurry hcmie^ there to sleep. I calculate there will but little 
 good 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. Wise 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 pojjulation, very 
 coarse of feature for most part, yet seldom radically lidsslich ; 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 — N. and I took survey last night. A 
 public set of rooms — Kursaal they call such things, finer than 
 some palaces, all supported by gambling, all built by one French 
 gambling enfrepretieur, 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 playing 
 Gowpavfuls of gold pieces every stake, a figure I shall never forget 
 in this world. One of the first I saw risking coin at an outer 
 
 table was Lord almost a beauty here, to whom I did not 
 
 speak. Afterwards in music-room — also the gambling eutrepre- 
 neur'Sy as indeed everything here is — the poor old Duke of Au- 
 gustenburg hove in sight. On him I ought to call if I can find 
 spirits. Oh, what a place for human creatures to flock to ! Och ! 
 Och ! The taste of the waters is nasty. Seltzer, but stronger— as 
 Ems is too, only hot. On the whole, if this is the last of German 
 Badeoi'tei- 1 ever see, I shall console myself. 
 
 The next letter is to his mother dated from "Weimar, 
 September 19. She, lie well knew, if slie cared for noth- 
 ing else, would care to hear about the Luther localities. 
 She had a picture of Luther in her room at Scotsbrig. He 
 was her chief Saint in the Christian calendar. After de- 
 
92 Cm^hjle'S Life in London. 
 
 scribing briefly the early part of his jonrney as far as 
 llomburg, which he calls the * rallying-place of such a set 
 of empty blackguards as are not to be found elsewhere in 
 the world,' he tells how on his way to Cassel he stopped 
 at Marburg, 'a strange, most ancient tow^n, famed for 
 some of Luther's operations and for being the Landgraf 
 Philip of Hesse's place of residence.' He continues : — 
 
 The Landgraf s 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 Wartburg, where Luther lay concealed translat- 
 ing the Bible ; and there I spent one of the most interesting fore- 
 noons I ever got by travelling. Eisenach is about as big as Dum- 
 fries, a very old town but well whitewashed, all built of brick and 
 oak with red tile roofs of amazing steej)ness and several grim old 
 swagbellied steeples and churches and palatial residences rising 
 conspicuous over them. It stands on a perfect plane by the side 
 of a little river, plain smaller than Langholm and surrounded by 
 hills which are not so high, yet of a somewhat similar character, 
 and are all grassy and many of them thickly wooded. Directly on 
 the south side of it there rises one hill, somewhat as Lockerbie 
 hill 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 Wartburg, which it takes you 
 three-quarters of an hour to reach ; an old castle — Watch Castle 
 is the name of it — near 800 years old, whei'e 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 mon- 
 strous old houses, so to speak, with enormous roofs to them, com- 
 23arable to two gigantic peak 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 Weimar, to whom the place 
 belongs, is engaged in restorations, &c. , and has many masons em- 
 ployed on it just now. I heeded little of all they had to show, 
 except Junker Georg's "^ chamber, which is in the nearest of the 
 
 1 The Tower of Repentance on Hoddam Hill. Carlyle illustrates through- 
 out from localities near Ecclefechan which his mother would know. 
 
 2 The name under which Lather passed when concealed there. 
 
The Castle at Wartbu?^. 93 
 
 peat stacks, the one nearest Eisenach and close by the gate when 
 yon enter on yonr right hand. A short stair of old worn stone 
 conducts yon up. They open a door, you ent«r a little apartment, 
 less than your best room at Scotsbiig, I almost think less than 
 yonr smallest, a very poor low room with an old leaded lattice 
 window ; to me the most veueiable of all rooms I ever entered. 
 Luther's old oak table is there, about three feet square, 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 castle wall 
 into deep chasms, over the great ranges of silent woody mountains, 
 and thought to myselfj * 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 pious, 
 kind, tiTie, and motherly — a noble old peasant woman. There is 
 also Luther's self by the same Cranach ; a ijicture infinitely supe- 
 rior to what your lithograph would give a notion of ; a bold 
 effectual-looking mstic man, with brown 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 Wartburg. 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 Wartburg, 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— veiy 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 lotlged 
 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 
 
94 Carlyle^s Life in London, 
 
 overhanging walls, and still the very room in it where Martin 
 Luther lived when a monk, and, one guide-book said, the very 
 Bible he found in the Convent library and read in this cell. This 
 of the Bible proved wrong. Luther's particular Bible is not here, 
 but is said to be at Berlin. Nothing really of Luther's there ex- 
 cept 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 it- 
 self in the second storey. Except this and Luther's old inkstand, 
 a poor old oaken hoxie with inkbottle 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 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, however, is again a i:)ortrait of Luther by Cranach, and 
 this I 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 affec- 
 tionate 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 Weimar, 
 lie was less minute in his account of the relics of Goethe. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Weimar : September 20, 1852. 
 Last night I sat long, till everything was quiet, in this Gasthof 
 zum Erbprinz, writing to my mother all about Luther's localities. 
 Those of to-day belong especially to you. I write within half a 
 gun-shot of the Goethe'sche Hans 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 un- 
 der tolerable circumstances. I finished my books and saw the 
 Schloss, where are many interesting portraits, and a whole lot of 
 books about Frederick, to the whole of which I 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 
 
Weimar. 95 
 
 with the good Duchess and her two sons and two daughters ; in a 
 very- Babylonish condition as to languages, but otherwise quite 
 pleasant and luminous. The old gentleman sat mostly silent, but 
 looking genial ; the Duchess, whose French seemed bad, and 
 whose German was not clear to me, is a fine broad motherly woman. 
 The girls, with theii- stiff English, were beautiful, clear-eyed, faii- 
 skinned creatures, and happy in spite of their exile ; the sons 
 ditto ditto. It was here that I fii-st heard of "Wellington's death, 
 the night before we came away. Cassel is a large, dull town, and 
 there, in the best inn, was such an arrangement for sleeping as — 
 Ach Himmel ! I sliall not forget those cow-homs and * Horet ihr 
 Herren ' in a hurry. It was a night productive of * pangs which 
 were rather exquisite,' and nevertheless, some three hours of sleep 
 on which one could proceed and say, ' It will not come back.' I 
 had also the pleasure to see that Hassenpflug's — the tyrannous, 
 tmitorous court minion's — windows were broken as we drove past 
 in the morning towards Eisenach, where again we halt for Luther's 
 and the Wartburg'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 the castle wall, and far and wide out upon the woody 
 multitude of hills ; and reflect that here was authentically a kind 
 of gi-eat man and a kind of holy place, if there were any such. In 
 my tom-up, sick, exasperated humour I could have cried, but 
 didn't. ... Weimar — a little, bright enough place, smaller than 
 Dumfries, with three steeples and totally without smoke — stands 
 amid dull, undulating country ; flat mostly, and tending towards 
 ugliness, except for trees. We were glad to get to the inn, by the 
 worst and slowest of clatches, and there procure some chack of din- 
 ner. Poor M had engaged me the ' quietest rooms in Ger- 
 many,' ricketty, bare, crazy rooms, and with a noisy man snoring 
 on the other side of the deal partition — yet really quiet in compar- 
 ison, where I did sleep last night and hope to do this. M 
 
 tmly has been unwearied, would take me into Heaven if it de- 
 pended on him. Good soul ! I really am a little grateful, hai-d 
 as my heart is ; and ought to be ashamed that I am not more. 
 Neuberg too — veritably he is better than six couriers, and ia a 
 fiiend over and above. People are very good to me. 
 
 Goethe's house, which was opened by favour, kept us occupied 
 in a strange mood for two houra or more. Schiller's for one ditto. 
 Everybody knows the Goethe'sche Haus ; and poor Schiller and 
 
96 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 Goethe here are dandled about and multiplied in miserable little 
 bustkins and other dilettantisms, till one is sick and sad. G.'s 
 house is quite like the picture, but one-third smaller ; 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 there. Elieu ! Eheu ! what a world ! I have since dined at 
 
 M 's with two Weimarese moderns. One of them is librarian 
 
 here, of whom I shall get some use. But, oh Heavens ! would 
 that I were at home again. Want of sleep and ' raal mental 
 awgony i' my ain inside,' do hold me in such pickle always. Quiclf, 
 quick, and let us get it done ! 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Nieder Rathen, near Dresden : 
 September 25, 1852. 
 
 I wrote to you from Weimar some five days ago, and therefore 
 there is nothing pressing me at present to write ; but, having a 
 quiet hour here by the side of the Elbe river, at the foot of wild 
 rock mountains in the queerest region you ever saw, I throw you 
 another word, not knowing when I 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 the Bastei, a kind of thing you are obliged to do. This 
 we have done, and are to go to-morrow towards Frederick's first 
 battle-field in the Seven Years' War ; after which, the second day, 
 if all go well, will bring us into Berlin. We came by an Elbe 
 steamer, go on to-morrow by another steamer, then by railway ; and 
 hope to see, though, alas ! in quite confused 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. 
 
Wtinuir. \u 
 
 The (lay after I wrote we were to leave Weimar ; but lo, in the 
 
 morning while we sat at breakfast, little M came in, looking 
 
 highly animated, with letters from the Schloss, from the * Grand 
 Duchess,' from the, &c. In short, the said Grand Ihichess — 
 sister of the Czar Nicholas, and mother of the Duke, who was at 
 Chelsea — had seen in the newsimpers that one 'Carlyle' was anion*^ 
 the arrivals. Could this be the bei-uhmte, &c., in which case natu- 
 rally he and his companion must coine to dinner; and of course 
 there could be no travelling that day. Well, we did go to dinner, 
 saw how they ackit ; a rather troublesome dramatic affair, of which 
 you shall have full description when I retura. 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 pretty, though 
 hard always as nails or diamonds. Her husband, a kind of imbe- 
 cile man they say, looJcs 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 lialf-doaf 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 Goit ! At last we got away, 
 soon after five, and I for one was right chai'med 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 Neuberg too 
 by a touch of Court life which he would not othersv'ise have seen. 
 
 At Leipzig all was raging business, the fair being in hand ;- 
 noisy and busy almost as Cheapside, London. Lots of dim haber- 
 dashery, leather without end, and all things 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 Auerbachs Keller — and at last got safe to Dresden, eighty miles 
 off, which was a mighty deliverance, as from the tumult of Cheap- 
 side 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 plimge along and save, as from a conflagration, what 
 little I could of my iwssibilities ; and at length, with gratitude to 
 Heaven, to get away into the steamer this afternoon and bid adieu 
 
 Vol. IV.— 7 
 
98 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 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) enjoying 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. We go to-morrow at nine. 
 Lobositz (in Bohemia), Zittau (Lusatia), Frankfurt am Oder — Ber- 
 lin — that is the projected route, but liable to revisal. 
 
 Mrs.'Carlyle was still in Chelsea with her workmen all 
 this time. It had been a trying summer to her. But slxe 
 had the comfort of knowing that her husband was achiev- 
 ing the part of the business which had fallen to his share, 
 better than might have been looked for. She writes to 
 her brother-in-law, John: — 
 
 Mr. 0. seems to be getting very successfully through his travels, 
 thanks to the patience and helpfulness of Neuberg. He makes in 
 ev^ery letter frightful miserei-es 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 sleeping accommodations during the last 
 three months. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Bad Toplitz, September 27. 
 No opportunity of posting the above ; so I tear it open again 
 and add a few words. We have had a sore pilgrimage these last 
 two days since I ended the other page ; a small space to go over, 
 but by confused Bohemian conveyances amid the half-savage Bo- 
 hemian populations, with their fleas, their dirt, and above all their 
 noises. However, we have partly managed the thing, and are got 
 into beautiful quarters again ; 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 full before us, and after Berlin, home, home ! We 
 have actually seen Lobositz, the first battle-field of Fritz in the 
 Seven Years' War ; and walked over it all this morning before 
 breakfast, under the guidance of a Christian native, checked by my 
 best memory of reading and maps, and found it do tolerably well. 
 
Berlin, 99 
 
 In fact, oh Goody dear, I have seen many cnrions and pleasant 
 things, I ought to say— and inll say at great length when we are 
 by our own fireside together again. Neuberg is strong ; one of 
 the fiiendhest, handiest, most patient of men. 
 
 BerUn, October 1, 1853. 
 [British Hotel, Unter den Linden.] 
 
 Here yon see we are at the summit of these wanderings, from 
 which I hope there is for me a swift perpendicular return before 
 long ; not a slow parabolic one as the ascent has been. We came 
 twenty-four hours ago, latish last night, from Frankfurt-on-the- 
 Oder, from the field of Knnersdorf (a dreadful scraggy village 
 where Fritz received his worst defeat), and various toils and strap- 
 azen ; veiy 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 first refuge is to sit down and write, if haply he 
 have anyone to whom his writing will give a feeling of pity for 
 him. . . . Oh, I do wish these sleepless, joyless, sad and weaiy 
 wanderings were at an end, as by Heaven's help they now soon 
 shall be. And you too, poor little weaiy soul ! You are quite 
 worn out with that accursed * thorough repair.* "Would 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 poison 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 included. 
 But no. Rather let us have patience. Nevertheless, I do grieve 
 for thee. But let me narrate as usuiU, only with greater brevity. 
 
 From Lobositz to Toplitz the last letters brought you, letters 
 written in the so-called Saxon Switzerland, amid the Bohemian 
 mountains. ... No English, scarcely any ci^^lized traveller 
 seems to have accomplished the thirty or forty English miles 
 which lie between Lobositz and Zittau. We had a strange and 
 strangest day of it in slow German Stellwagens ; 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 
 Herrnhuty where we had to wait foui* hours of the stillest life you 
 
100 Carlyle's Life in London, 
 
 ever saw or dreamt of. Herrnhut (Lord's keeping) is the primi- 
 tive and still central city of the Moravian brethren ; a place not 
 bigger than Annan, but beautiful, pure, and quiet beyond any 
 town on the earth I dare say ; and indeed more 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 Herrnhut too some day, for it is 
 among the notable spots of the world, and I retain a lively mem- 
 ory of it. But not of it, nor of dreary moory Frankfurt and its 
 Kunersdorf villages and polite lieutenants — for a Prussian lieu- 
 tenant-adjutant knew me there by fame, and was very polite with- 
 out knowing me— not of 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 London, 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. Many 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 veiy 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 nearly so dear as a London one — two guineas a week, one 
 guinea each. 
 
 October 3, 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 Ambassa- 
 dor's, who can procure me liberty to take books home. Well re- 
 ceived 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 Museum Picture Gallery since. Endless Christs 
 and Marys, Venus's and Amors — at length an excellent portrait of 
 Fritz. 
 
Jounxey Ended. 101 
 
 Octobers. 
 We leave Berlin to-morrow, Saturday the 9th. Go by Bruns- 
 wick, by Hanover, CJologne, and from thence on Tuesday evening 
 at Ostend I find a steamer direct for London. ... I have had 
 a terrible tumbling week in Berlin. Oh, what a month in general 
 I have had ; month of the profoundest, ghastliest solitude 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 — es- 
 pecially a certain Herr Professor Magnus, the chief portrait painter 
 here — have been quite mai*vellous with their civility ; and on the 
 whole it was usually rather a relief to me to get an hour, as now, 
 to oneself, ^nd be left to private exertions and reflections mainly. 
 Yesterday I saw old Tieck, beautiful old man ; so serene, so calm, 
 so sad. I have also seen Cornelius, Ranch, &c., including Preuss, 
 the historian of Frederick, all men in short for whom I had any 
 use. Nay, they had me in their newspapers it would appear, and 
 would gladly make a lion of me if I liked. A lion that can only 
 get half sleep is not the lion that can shine in that ti*ade, so we 
 declined. 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 Magnus had engaged me before, and I could only 
 make it tea. No matter for that, for they were all English com- 
 mon-places where I went. You will see me on Wednesday, but 
 not till noon or later. 
 
 So was this terrible journey got done with, which to 
 anyone but Carlyle would have been a mere pleasure trip ; 
 to him terrible in prospect, terrible in the execution, terri- 
 ble in the retrospect. , His wife said he could not conceal 
 that he was pretty well, and liad nothing really to com- 
 plain of. Here is what he himself said about it when 
 looking back with deliberate seriousness : — 
 
 After infinite struggles I had roused myself to go. The jmrting 
 with my poor old mother, the crowning point of those unbeai-able 
 days, was painful beyond endurance almost ; and yet my heart in 
 the inside of it seemed as if it were made of stone, as if it would 
 not wcei) any more except perhaps blood. One pays dear for any 
 
102 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 ' intellect ' one may have. It means primarily ' sensibility,' wliicli 
 again means injury, pain, misery from unconscious nature, or con- 
 scious 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 whom he had met, he goes on : — 
 
 All this, which is etched into me painfully as with burning 
 acids, I once thought of writing down in detail, but have not 
 done, probably shall not do. It was a journey done as in some 
 shirt of Nessus ; misery and dyspeptic degradation, inflammation, 
 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 
 eveiywhero, was the kindest, best-tempered, most assiduous of 
 friends and helpers, ' worth ten couriers to me,' as I often defined 
 him. 
 
CHAPTER XXL 
 
 A.D. 1852-3. ^T. 57-58. 
 
 The Grange — Cheyne Row — ^The Cock torment — Reflections — An 
 improved house — Funeral of the Duke of Wellington — Begin- 
 nings of * Frederick ' — The Grange again — An incident — Pub- 
 lic 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 Carlvle got home in the middle 
 of October. lie was in no condition to face any more 
 annoyances, and he and his wife took refuge for three 
 weeks at the Grange with the ever-hospitable Ashburtons. 
 There, too, the snlphui-ons mood was still predominant, and 
 things did not go well with him. It was not till Novem- 
 ber that he was fairly re-established in his own quarters, 
 and in a condition to so much as think of seriously begin- 
 ning his work. A preliminary skirmish became necessary, 
 to put to silence his neighbour's cocks. Mr. Remington, 
 who then lived near him, and was the owner of the offend- 
 ers, has kindly sent me the correspondence which passed 
 on the occasion ; very gracious and humble on Carlyle's 
 part, requesting only that the cocks in question should l>e 
 made inaudible from midnight till breakfast time; Mr. 
 llemington, though they were favourites which he Jiad 
 brout'lit from Northumberland, instantlv conscntinj; to 
 suppress them altogether. This accomplished, (^arlyle pro- 
 ceeded as it were to clear the stage by recovering his own 
 mental condition, and took himself severely to task for 
 what he found amiss. Much that he says will seem ex- 
 
104 Carlyle's L^fe ^Vl London. 
 
 aggerated, but it will be remembered that he was not 
 speaking to the world but to himself. It is idle to judge 
 him by common rules. His nerves were abnormally sen- 
 sitive. He lived habitually, unless he violently struggled 
 against it, in what he had described as ' an element of 
 black streaked with lightning.' Swift, when the evil 
 nmour was on him, made a voyage to the Houyhnhmns, 
 and discharged his bile on his human brethren. Carlyle, 
 who wished to purge the bile out of himself that he might 
 use his powers to better purposes, began with a confession 
 of his sins. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 Novemher 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 these years and days. 
 Never in my life nearer sunk in the mud oceans that rage from 
 without and within. My 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 common 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 pres- 
 ent situation. For my health is miserable too ; diseased liner 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 nearly 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 ivell, all sorrow 
 then and smothered rage and despair itself shall have been cheap 
 
Refiedions, 1Q5 
 
 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 sincerely of it, though 
 with an ettbrt that way. 
 
 Dundee steamer to Linlathen about the middle of July ; inex- 
 pressible gloom, silence. Sickly imprisonment of oncis whole 
 soul and life ; such has often before been my lot, has also become 
 my customary lot in this world. Cowardice ? Sometimes. Gen- 
 erally, in late years, I think it is. Unusual weights liave been 
 thrown upon me. Ach Gott ! whole mountains of horror and chok- 
 ing imi>ediment. But certainly 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 respectabilities, 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. Schickaal und eigen Schuld. Aye, aye. 
 Three weeks at Linlathen very memorable to me just now, but 
 sordid, unproductive, to think of. Came away, by Kirkcaldy 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, Rotterdam steamer, the 
 Rhine, Bonn for a week. Ems, Frankfurt, Homburg, Cassel, Eisen- 
 ach, Wartburg (unforgettable), Weimar, Leipzig, Dresden, Lo- 
 bositz, Zittau, Herrahut, Kuneradorf, and Berlin, whence, after 
 ten days, home. 
 
 My arrival here. Seas of paint still flooding everything, and 
 my j)Oor 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 dear to me — this also is memorable, only too much. 
 We went to the Grange till these uncleannesses were over here. 
 At the Grange almost for four weeks. No right rest, no right col- 
 lapse 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 Medusa-like to these sick, solitary eyes. Courage! 
 piety ! patience ! Heaven grant me wisdom to extract the mean- 
 ings 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 was easier to propose 
 than to do. When a writer sets to work again after a long 
 
1Q6 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 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 bj her summer dis- 
 cipline, and was ' never thinner for seven years.' She had 
 gone home first from the Grange to get things ready. 
 
 Jane (be wrote to Ms 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 niuch 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 hrashed with all these tum- 
 blings about, and have not yet fairly recovered my feet, but with 
 quiet, with pious endeavour, I shall surely do so ; and then 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 re- 
 member ; and, on the whole, I hope to get to a little wm^k again, 
 and that is the consolation which surpasses all for me. 
 
 lie would have got under way in some shape, but, be- 
 fore starting, any distraction is enough to clieck the first 
 step, and there were distractions in plenty ; among the 
 rest the Diike of Wellington's funeral. The Duke had 
 died in September. He was now to be laid in his tomb 
 in the midst of a mourning nation ; and Carlyle did not 
 like the display. The body lay in state at Chelsea, ^ all 
 the empty fools of creation ' running to look at it. One 
 day two women were trampled to death in the throng at 
 the hospital close 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 
 solemn fact for England that such a man lias been called 
 away, the last perfectly honest and perfectly brave public 
 
Wellington's Funeral, 107 
 
 man they had ; and they ought, in reverence, to reflect on 
 that, and sincerely testify that^ if they could, while they 
 connnit liini to his resting-place. But alas for the sin- 
 cerity. It is even professedly all liypocrisy, noise, and 
 expensive upholstery, from which a serious man tui*ns 
 away with sorrow and abhorrence.' In spite of ' abhoi- 
 rence ' he was tempted to witness the ceremony in the 
 streets, which, however, only increased it. 
 
 Journal. 
 Novembei' 19, 1852. — Yesterday saw the Duke of Wellington's 
 funeral procession from Bath House second-floor windows ; a 
 iminfnl, miserable kind of thing to me and others of a serious turn 
 of mind. The one true man of official men in England, or that I 
 know of in Europe, concludes his long course. The military mu- 
 sic soimded, and the tramp of feet and the roll of guns and 
 coaches, to liim inaudible for evermore. The regiment he frst 
 served in was there, various regiments or battalions, one soldier 
 from every regiment of the British line ; above 4,000 soldiers in 
 all. Nothing else in the sumptuous procession was of the least 
 dignity. The car or liearee, a monstrous bronze mass, which broke 
 through the pavement in various places, its weight being seven or 
 ten tons, was of all the objects I ever saw the abominably ugliest, 
 or nearly so. An incoherent huddle of expensive palls, flags, 
 slioets, and gilt emblems and cross poles, more like one of the 
 street carts that hawk door-mats than the bier for a hero. Disgust 
 was general at this vile ne plus ultra of Cockneyism ; but poor 
 Wellington lay dead beneath it faring dumb to his long home. 
 All people stood in deep silence and reverently took off* their hats. 
 In one of the Queen's carriages sat a man conspicuously reading 
 the morning newspaper. Tennyson's veilSes are naught. Silenco 
 alone is respectable on such an occasion. 
 
 ' Frederick ' meanwhile was still unstarted. Where to 
 ])egiu ? On what scale ? In what tone ? All was un- 
 settled, and. JMncertainty, with Carlyle, was irritation and 
 
 (If ■ ;cy. 
 
 A> u>sm*i I he says, on ttie 51 li of December) many things, or al- 
 most all things, are conspiring to hinder me from any clear work, 
 or to choke up my power of working altogether. If I do not stand 
 
108 ' Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 to myself and to my own cause it will be the worse for me. 
 Heaven help me ! Oh Heaven ! But it is so always. The ele- 
 m.ents of our work lie scattered, disorganised, as if in a thick vis- 
 cous chaotic ocean, ocean illimitable in all its three dimensions ; 
 and we must swim and sprawl towai'ds them, must snatch them, 
 and victoriously piece them together as we can. Eheu ! Shall I 
 try Frederick, or not try him ? 
 
 The winter passed on. In January he tells his mother : — 
 
 Our quiet way of life continues, and our wet weather, and other 
 puddles, outward and inward, have not ceased either. We should 
 be thankful for the health we have, both of us. If we use our 
 besom machinery and sweep honestly and well, the puddles do not 
 gain quite the upper hand after all. Jane is out just now, gone 
 out to enjoy the dry day among so many wet. She complains of 
 defective sleep, &c., but still goes hardily about, and indeed I 
 think is stronger than in past years. She reads now with specs in 
 the candlelight, as well as I ; uses her mother's specs I perceive, 
 and indeed looks very well in them, going handsomely into the 
 condition of an elderly dame. I remember always your joy over 
 specs. Old age is not in itself matter for sorrow. It is matter for 
 thanks if we have left our work done behind us. God deal with us 
 in mercy, not in rigour, on that head ; as we trust it will be for the 
 faithful of us. But, in fact, it is not a serious person's sorrow 
 surely that he is getting out of the battle ; that he sees the still 
 regions beyond it, where there is no battle more. 
 
 He began at last to write something — bnt it was WTongly 
 pitched. It w^ould not do, and he threw it aside. In 
 March he was off to the Grange again — off there always 
 when the Ashbnrtons^invited him — but always, or almost 
 so, to no purpose. ' Worse than useless to me,' he said 
 when the visit w^as over. 'A long nightmare ; folly and 
 indigestion the order of the day. Why go thither ? 
 Eeally it neither does, nor can do me any good to frecfnent 
 that much coveted kind of society — or, alas ! any kind. I 
 believe there is no lonelier mortal on the face of the earth 
 at present, nor perhaps often was. Don't be a Kojpf- 
 hdngei\ how^ever. Use Solitude, since it is thy lot ; that 
 
Beginning/ of ^Fredein^k.^ 109 
 
 also is a lot, and rather an original one in these days.' 
 Tlie party at the Grange was in itself brilliant enough. 
 Yenables was there, whom he liked better than most men; 
 and Azeglio and other notabilities. But even Yenables, 
 on this occasion, he found * dogmatic,' and to Azeglio he 
 was rude. Azeglio had been talking contemptuously of 
 Mazzini. ''Monsieur^ said Carlyle to liim, ^ vous ne le 
 connaissez jpas du tout, du tout ! ' and turned away and sat 
 down to a newspaper. ' Xot a word of sense was talked 
 to him, except by accident.' One thing, however, did 
 occur which impressed him considerably, and of which I 
 often heard him speak. 
 
 To Margaret Carlyle^ Scotshrig. 
 
 The Grange, April 1, 1853. 
 Last night, while we sate quietly at dinner, a slip of paper was 
 handed in by one of the servants to Lord Asliburton. * A fii*e 
 visible somewhere in the neighbourhood.' I admired much the 
 silent promptitude ^vith which Lord A., telling nobody, went out, 
 leaving his dinner in the middle, drew on boots and cloak as we 
 found afterwards, and galloped off with a gi-oom in the wild, 
 squally night, which soon became jjlunges of rain. This is what 
 an English country gentleman is always good for, this and the lilce 
 of this, if he is of the right quality. The fire proved to be six 
 miles off — one of the farmers of this estate, his 'omstead all in a 
 blaze, cattle, &c., saved. Lord A. came back about eleven, wet 
 enough, but one would have said almost glad ; though to him also 
 it will be a considerable loss, no doubt. 
 
 A week at the Grange was as nmch as he could bear, 
 and it did not seem to have done very much for him. 
 
 Journal. 
 April 13, 1853. — Still stmggling and haggling about Frederick. 
 Ditto ditto, alas ! about many things ! No words can express the 
 forlorn, heai-t-broken, silent, utterly enchanted kind of humour I 
 am kept in ; the worthless, empty, and painfully contemptible way 
 in which, with no company but my own, with my eyes open, but 
 as with my hands bound, I pass these days and months, and even 
 years. Good Heavens ! Shall I never more rally in this world 
 
110 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 then, but lie buried under mnd and imbecility till the end itself 
 (which cannot be distant, and is coming on as with seven-leagned 
 boots) overtake me ? Several are to blame ; for though no one 
 hates me, I think nearly everybody of late takes me on the wrong 
 side, and proves unconsciously unjust to me, more or less destruc- 
 tive to me. Several are to blame, or to pity. But above all there 
 is one. Thou thyself. Awake — arise ! Oh heaven and earth, shall 
 I never again get awake, and feel myself working and alive ? In 
 the earth there is no other pleasure for me, no other possession for 
 me but that same ; and I neglect it, indolently lie praying for it, 
 do not rise and victoriously snatch it, while the fast fleeting days 
 yet are. Here are now ten years, and what account can I give of 
 them ? The work done in them is very small even, in comparison. 
 Kemorse is worthless. The remnant of the future, this yet re- 
 mains to us. . . . Endless German history books ; dull, bad, 
 mostly wearisome ; most uninstructive, every one of them ; Fred- 
 erick, an unfortunate subject. In the heart of huge aolar systems 
 — anti-solar rather, of chaff and whirling confusions, I sometimes 
 think I notice lineaments of a Fritz, concerning whom I shall have 
 a word to say — say it ? Oh Heaven, that I could say it ! 
 
 The review newspaper and world, all dead against me at present, 
 which is instructive too if I take the right point of survey for it, 
 and look into it without jaundice of any kind. The canaille of 
 talkers in type are not my friends then. They know not well what 
 to say about me if not ' Thou, scoundrel, art of other mind than 
 we, it would appear ; ' which the wiser are afraid might be question- 
 able ; and the unwiser, with one voice pretty much, have already 
 done. Well, out of that too I had got new views. I myself was 
 in fault, and the depths and immensities of human stupidity were 
 not practically known to me before. A strange insight, real, but 
 hardly fit for utteiing even here, lies in that. ' Who can change 
 the opinion of these people ? ' That is their view of the world, ir- 
 refragable, unalterable to them. Take note of that, remember 
 that. ' The Gadarene Swine ! ' Often, in my rage, has that inci- 
 dent occurred to me. Shrill snort of astonishment, of alert atten- 
 tion. ' Hrumph ! ' ' That is it, then ! ' * So sits the wind ! ' And 
 with tails up and one accord at full speed away they go, down 
 steep places to their watery grave, the Devil being in them. 
 Withal it is rather curious to remark also, as I do on various occa- 
 sions, how, while all the talk and print goes against me, my real 
 estimation in the world— alas, certainly without new merit of mine. 
 
A Sage's Sorrows, 111 
 
 for I never Teas so idle and worthless— seems steadily increasing — 
 steadily in various quarters, and surely fast enough, if not too fast. 
 Bo true to thyself. Oh Heaven ! Be not a sluggard. And so give 
 up this and take to something like work. 
 
 To try to work Carlyle was determined enough. 1 1 e went 
 nowliere in the Buminer, ])ut remained at Chelsea chained 
 to ' Frederickj' and, moving ahead at last, leaving his wife 
 to take a holiday. His brother John, who was now mar- 
 ried, had taken a house at Moffat, and Mrs. Carlyle, need- 
 ing change, w^ent off to stay w^ith him there. Paint was 
 wanted in Cheyne Row again, and Carlyle w^as exquisitely 
 sensitive to tlie smell of it. Otlier cocks — not, it is to be 
 hoped, Mr. Remington's — set up their pipes in the summer 
 mornings. 'Yile yellow Italians' came grinding under 
 his windows. He had a terrible time of it ; but he set 
 his teeth and determined to bear his fate. One haunting 
 thought only refused to leave him. Good might still lie 
 ahead if his wife and he could keep the devil out of them. 
 If ! but what an ^ if ' ! 
 
 O Jeannie (ho wrote), you know nothing ahout me just now. 
 With all the cl(?arne.ss of vision you have, your lynx-eyes do not 
 reach into the inner region of nie, and know not what is in my 
 heart, what, on the whole, was always, and will always be there. I 
 ^ish you did ; I wish you did. 
 
 Sitting all alone in his Clielsea garden he meditated on 
 his miseries, in one letter eloquently dilating on them, in 
 the next apologising for his weakness. 
 
 But what could I do (he said) ? fly for shelter to my mammy, 
 like a poor infant with its finger cut ? complain in my distress to 
 the one heart that used to be opey to me ? 
 
 ' Greater than man, less than woman,' as Essex said of 
 Queen Elizabeth. The cocks were locked up next door, 
 and the fireworks at Cremorne were silent, and the rain 
 fell and cooled I lie July air; and Carlyle slept, and the 
 universe became uiice more tolerable. 
 
112 ■ Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 With friends outside his family he was equally discon- 
 solate. 
 
 To TJiomas Erskine, LinlatJien. 
 
 Chelsea : July 9, 1853. 
 
 I had a very miserable tour in Germany ; not one night of sleep 
 all the time, and nothing, or too little, of the Uving kind that was 
 beautiful to look upon in return for all that physical distress at 
 once so tormenting and so degrading. I remember the Khine 
 river as a noble acquisition to my internal j)icture gallery. Co- 
 logne, &c., I got no good of, but rather mischief; the sight of 
 those impious charlatans doing their so-called ' worship ' there (a 
 true devil worship, if ever there was one) ; and the fatal brood, 
 architectural and others — Puseyites and enchanted human apes 
 that inhabit such places — far transcended any little pleasure I 
 could have got from the supreme of earthly masonry,^ and con- 
 verted my feeling into a sad and angry one. I w^as in the Wart- 
 burg, however — in Martin Luther's room — and I believe I almost 
 wept there, feeling it to be, as far as 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 subdu- 
 able, 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 por- 
 traits by Cranach of Luther and his father and mother hung on 
 the walls. Martin 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 wres- 
 tle down the devil in a handsome manner. 
 
 The Wartburg is much visited by tourists ; but I was not sorry 
 to find they did not much heed Luther — merely took him among 
 the rest and dwelt chiefly on the ' Byzantine architecture ' and 
 restorations. The only other beautiful thing I saw was Tieck, 
 and he is since dead. On Fritz I can make no impression what- 
 
 ' Bunsen had once tried to enlist Carlyle's sympathies in the completion of 
 Cologne cathedral, showing him the plans, &c. Carlyle said nothing till 
 obliged to speak. Then at last, being forced, he said : ' It is a very fine pa- 
 goda if ye could get any sort of a God to put in it ! ' Bunsen's eyes flashed 
 anger for a moment, but the ' ridiculous ' was too strong for him, and he 
 burst out laughing. I have heard the story told as if there had been a break- 
 fast party with bishops, &c. , present. Carlyle, however, when I asked him, 
 said that he and Bunsen were alone. 
 
End Xcar at SroUhrig. 113 
 
 ever, and practically consider 1 have given him up and am not 
 equal to such a task on such terms. 
 
 My wife is now at Moffat with my brother and his household. 
 As to me, I got so smashed to pieces and perceptibly hurt in every 
 way by my journeying last autumn — all travel and noise is at all 
 times so noxious to me — I have never yet been able to brook the 
 notion of travelling since, but have flattered myself I should sit 
 still here, and would on almost any terms. Ceiiain it is, I have 
 need enough to stay here, if staying by myself in my own sad com- 
 ])any be the way to riddle any of the infinite dross out of me and 
 get a little nearer what grains of metal there may be. 
 
 Adieu ! dear Mr. Erakine. Give my kind and grateful remem- 
 brances to your two ladies and to eveiybody at Linlathen. 
 I am always faithfully yours, 
 
 T. CAKLYIiE. 
 
 A real calamity, sad but inevitable and long foreseen, 
 was now approach inii:. Signs began to show that his old 
 mother at Scotsbrig was drawing near the end of lier pil- 
 grimage. She was reported to be ill, and even danger- 
 onsly ill. Mrs. Carljle hurried over from Moffat to assist 
 in nursing her, meeting, when' slie arrived there, the never- 
 forgotten but liumbly offered birthday present of July 14 
 from her poor husband. Her mother-in-law, while she 
 was there, sank into the long, death-like trance which she 
 so vividly describes.' Contrary to all expectations, the 
 strong resolute woman rallied fiom it, and Carlyle, always 
 hopeful, persuaded himself that for the time the stroke had 
 passed over. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle, ScoL^brig. 
 
 Chelsea : July 23, 1853. 
 
 Thank you very much, my dear, for your judicious and kind at- 
 fontion in writing and in not writing. You may judge with what 
 t'o(»ling8 I road your letter last night, and again and again read it ; 
 liow anxiously I expect what you will say to-night. If I had in- 
 deed known what was going on during Monday, what would have 
 become of me that day ? I see everything by your description as 
 if I Jooked at it with my own eyes. My j)oor, beloved, good old 
 
 ' T^ttrvH and AfetnoriaU^ vol. ii. p. 11. 
 Vol. IV.— « 
 
114 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 mother. Things crowd round me in my solitude, old reminiscen- 
 ces 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 the inexorable that there is in life, and to say, as piously as I 
 can, ' God's will, God's will ! ' Upon the whole, I am 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. Write to me ; 
 do not fail to write while you continue. Was not that a beautiful 
 old mother's message : ' None, I am afraid, that he would like to 
 hear ' ? ^ Sunt lacrymce rerum. You need not be apprehensive 
 of — — where you are. She really likes you, and has good insight, 
 though capable of strong prepossessions. 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 minous. 
 
 I have done my task to-day again, but I had drugs in me, and 
 am not in a very vigorous humour. My task is a most 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 riddle his history into purity and 
 consistency out of the endless mbbish of so many dullards as have 
 treated of it. But I will tiy, 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 
 work no more, what is the good of me further ? We 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 say- 
 ing, 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. 
 
 The alarm at Scotsbrig having passed off, minor evils 
 became again important. The great cock question revived 
 
 1 ' I asked her if she had any message for j'ou, and she said, "None, I'm 
 afraid, that he would like to hear, for he'll be sorry that I'm so frail." '-—Let- 
 ters and Memorials, vol. ii. p. 13. 
 
Jlic Demon FmoU. 115 
 
 in formidable proportions. Mrs. Carlj^le liad prone to her 
 cousin's at Liverpool, but her presence was needed urgently 
 in Cheyne Row to deal with it. A room was to be con- 
 structed 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 suf- 
 fering dismally. 
 
 I foresee in general (lie 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 dmwer 
 what of minei-al or vegetable extract would do the fatal deed. 
 Truly I think often it will need to be (lone. A man is not a Chat- 
 ham nor a Wallengtein ; 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 deai- ! I am a most un victorious man 
 surely. 
 
 Morning 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 size, should be submitted to such 
 scandalous paltrinesses ; and it must end, and I had better make 
 that my first business to-day. But I will do nothing till you come. 
 Then indeed I feel as if mercy were already wrought for me. 
 
 For some cause there was a respite for a night or two, 
 but now the owner of the cocks, one Ronca, was heard 
 coughing at half-past eight in the morning, and this — but 
 this could hardly be made a crime. * Poor devil ! ' he said 
 to In'iiisdf, with a tinge of remorso, 'a l)ad cough indeed ; 
 iind I am to be annoyed at the wwvr. noise of it. Selfish 
 mortal ! ' Lady Ashburton, hearing of his forlorn condi- 
 tion, made over the now vacant Addiscombe to him. His 
 wife came back. The cocks were for a time disposed o^ 
 
116 Oarlyle's Life in London, 
 
 and the new room was set about. The new room was the 
 final hope. Till it was finished there could be no surety 
 of peace. ^ Ach Gott!'' he said, 'I am wretched, and in 
 silence nearly mad.' 
 
 Journal. 
 
 August 17, 1853. — 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 innumerable paltiy things ; and, to crown all — a true 
 mock-crown — with the crowings, shriekings, and half-maddening 
 noises of a stock of fowls which my poor neighbour has set up for 
 his profit and amusement. To great evils one must oppose great 
 virtues; and also to small, which is the harder task of the two. 
 Masons, who have already killed half a year of my life in a too sad 
 manner, are again upon the roof of the house, after a dreadful bout 
 of resolution on my part, building me a soundless- room. 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 unvictorious man is now living. 
 I can do no work though I still keep trying. Try better ! Alas ! 
 alas ! my dear old mother seems to be fading fast away from me. 
 My thoughts are dark and sad continually with that idea. Inexorabile 
 fatum ! The great, the eternal is there, and also the paltriest and 
 smallest, to load me down. I seem 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. I am getting taught contempt of the 
 world and its beneficences. Nay, perhaps I am really learning. 
 Let me learn vfiih. piety. Perhaps I shall one day bless these mise- 
 ries too. Steady ! steady ! Don't give it up ! . . . Panizzi, 
 Avliom I do not love, and who returns the feeling, icill not, though 
 solicited from various quarters — high quarters some of them— 
 admit me to the silent rooms of the King's Library, to a place 
 where I could read and enquire. Never mind ! No 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, the blame is not in him, but in the prurient 
 
Mueries Great and ISmaU. 117 
 
 darkness and confused pedantry and ostentatious inanity of the 
 world which put him there, and which I must own he very faii-ly 
 represents and symbolizes there. Lords Lansdowne and Brougham 
 put Pauizzi in ; and the world with its Hansards and ballot-boxes 
 and sublime apparatus put in Lords Lansdowne and Brougham. 
 A saddish time, Mr. Rigmarole. Yes ! but what then ? 
 
 Of the two extreme trials of which Carlyle spoke, the 
 greatest, the one which really and truly was to shake his 
 whole nature, was approaching its culmination. Although 
 his mother had rallied remarkably from her attack in the 
 summer, and was able to read and converse as usual, there 
 had been no essential recovery ; there was to be and 
 there could be none. His mother, whom he had regarded 
 with an affection ' passing the love of sons,' with whom, 
 in spite of, or perhaps in consequence of, her profound 
 Christian piety, he had found more in common, as he 
 often said, than with any other mortal — was now evidently 
 about to be taken away from him. A feeling peculiarly- 
 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 alternately 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, were spent in contrib- 
 uting to her comforts. When money came from Boston 
 for the 'French Revolution,' the 'kitlni' instantly sent 
 ' the auld cat' an 'American mouse.' If she gloried in his 
 fame and greatness, he gloried more in being the son of 
 the humble Margaret Carlyle — and while she lived, she, 
 and only she, stood between him and the loneliness of 
 which he so often and so passionately complained. No 
 one else, perhaps, ever completely understood his charac- 
 
118 Carlyle^s Life in London, 
 
 ter ; and of all his letters none are more tenderly beauti- 
 ful 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. Pie wrote it on his own 
 birthday, when he was on the point of going again to the 
 Grange, and it is endorsed by him in his own latest shak- 
 ing hand, ' My last letter to my mother.' 
 
 Chelsea : December 4, 1853. 
 My 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 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. Meanwhile 
 I have- bargained to be private all day in their big house, to go on 
 with my work just as if at home, &c. We 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's 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 ! Well ! we are all 
 in God's hands. Surely God is good. Surely we ought to trust 
 in Him, or what trust is there for the sons of men ? Oh, my dear 
 mother ! Let it ever be a comfort to you, however 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, and 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, 
 
Margaret Caiiyle. 119 
 
 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 sjjeak- 
 ing through me ; essentially 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 is 
 worthy and good, will still be yours. May God reward you, 
 dearest mother, for all you have done for me ! I never can. All 
 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 no more on that at present, 
 for it is better for me to bo silent. 
 
 Perhaps a note from the doctor will arrive to-morrow ; I 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 wTites me the best \dew he can take ; but I see too, 
 how utterly frail my poor mother is, and how little he or any mor- 
 t£d 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 assiduously watching over you ; and it is a great bless- 
 ing to us all that she is there to do such a duty. As to my own 
 health, I am almost suriDrised 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 her 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 sit- 
 ting here reading. She sends her affection to you and to them alL 
 She speaks to me about you almost daily, and answers many a 
 question and speculation ever since she was at Scotsbrig. Give 
 my love to Jamie, to Isabella, and them all. May God's blessing 
 1)(> on you all ! T. CAiUiYiiE. 
 
 It conld not have been with any pleasure that, at a mo- 
 ment when liis mother was so manifestly sinking, Carlyle 
 felt liimself called on to go again to the Grange. IIg had 
 been at home only a month since ho last left. But thei*o 
 
120 Carlyles Life in London. 
 
 was to be a grand gathering of great London people there. 
 The Ashbnrtons were pressing, and he was under too 
 many obligations to refuse. They went, both of them, 
 into tl^e midst of London intellect and social magnificence. 
 Mrs. Carlyle was able to stay a few days only, for the 
 cock problem had reached a crisis. In his despair, Car- 
 lyle had thonght of actually buying the lease of the house 
 where the dreadful creatures were nourished, turning the 
 people out and leaving it empty. The ' demon fowls ' 
 were a standing joke at the witty Grange. Either he or 
 his wife was required upon the spot to make an arrange- 
 ment. He says that she proposed to go ; she indicates 
 that the pressure was on his side, and that she thought it 
 a ' wildgoose enterprise.' ^ At any rate, the visit which 
 was to have improved her health was cut short on this ac- 
 count, and she was packed off to Chelsea. He continued 
 on in the shining circle till, on December 20, news came 
 from Scotsbrig that his mother was distinctly worse and 
 could not long survive. It was not quite clear that the 
 danger w^as immediate. He tried to hope, but to no pur- 
 pose. He felt that he ought to go down to her, at any 
 rate that he ought not to continue where he was. His 
 hostess consented to his going ; he writes as if he had 
 been obliged to apply for permission. Lady Ashburton, 
 he says in one place, gave him leave.""' In a letter written 
 at the time, he says, ' Lady A. admitted at once, when I 
 told her the case, that I ought to go thither, without 
 doubt; at all events to get out of this has become a neces- 
 sity for me ; this is not supportable in my present condi- 
 tion.' He hurried to Scotsbrig, stopping only a night in 
 London, and was in time to see his mother once more 
 alive. He has left several accounts of the end of this 
 admirable woman. That in his Journal is the most con- 
 cise. 
 
 * Letters and Memorials^ vol. ii., p. 24. 2 Ibid. p. 26. 
 
Death of Margaret Carhjle. 121 
 
 Journal, 
 January 8, 1854. — The stroke has fallen. My dear old mother 
 is gone from me, and in the winter of the year, confusedly under 
 darkness of tveather and of mind, the stem final epoch — epoch of 
 old age—m beginning to unfold itself for me. I had gone to the 
 Gmnge with Jane, not very willingly ; was sadly in worthless soli- 
 tude for most part passing my Christmas season there. The news 
 from Scotsbrig had long been bad ; extreme weakness, for there 
 was no disease, tlireatening continually for many months past to * 
 reach its term. What to do I knew not. At length sliaking 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 20 ; on Wednesday 
 I came home ; on Thursday evening set off northward by the ex- 
 press train. The night's travel, Carlisle for the three-quarters of 
 an hour I waited, Kirtlebndge at last, and my anxieties in the walk 
 to Scotsbrig ; these things I shall not forget. It is matter of per- 
 ennial thankfulness to me, and beyond my desert in that matter 
 very far, that I found my dear old mother still alive ; able to re- 
 cognise me with a faint joy, her former self still strangely visible 
 there in all its lineaments, though worn to the uttermost thread. 
 The brave old mother and the good, whom to lose liad been my 
 fear ever since intelligence awoke in me in this world, andved now 
 at the final bourn. Never sliall I forget her wearied eyes that 
 morning, looking out gently into the wintry daylight ; every in- 
 stant falling together in sleep and then opening again. She had 
 in general the most j^erfect clearness of intellect, courageous com- 
 l)osure, affectionate patience, complete presence of mind. Dark 
 clouds 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 l)een 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, p,nd knew her 
 son Tom as of old, * Tell us how thou sleeps ' she said, when I 
 took leave about midnight. * Sleeps ! ' Alas she herself hail lain 
 in a sleep of death for sixteen houi-s, till that very morning at six, 
 when I was on the road ! That was the third ot such slee})s or half- 
 faints lasting for fifteen or sixteen hoi^rs. Jane saw the first of 
 them in August. On Saturday, if I recollect, her sense in general 
 seemed clear, though her ^ook of weakness was greater than ever. 
 
122 Carlyle\s Life in London. 
 
 Brother Jamie and I had gone out to walk in the afternoon. Ke- 
 tnrning about dusk we found her suffering greatly ; want of 
 breath, owing to weakness. What passed from that time till mid- 
 night 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 
 uttermost and sinking in the dark floods. My good veracious af- 
 fectionate 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 laud- 
 anum, the pain of breathing growing ever worse otherwise. Relief 
 percej)tible in consequence — we sent my sister Jean to bed — who 
 had watched for nights and months, relieved only by John at in- 
 tei-vals. I came into the room where John was now watching. 
 * Here is Tom come to bid you good night, mother,' said he. She 
 smiled assent, took leave of me as usual. As I turned to go she 
 said, * I'm muckle obleeged t' ye.' Those were her last voluntary 
 words in this world. After that she spoke no more — slept ever 
 deeper. Her sleep lasted about sixteen hours. She lay on her 
 back, stirred no muscle. The face was as that of a statue with 
 slight changes of expression. ' 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 sorrows 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.' This 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 Thursday. Intense frost had come on the 
 Monday night. I lingered about Scotsbrig, wandering silently in 
 the bright hard silent mornings and afternoons, waiting till all 
 
James CarlyU. 123 
 
 small temporal matters were settled ; wliicli they decently were. 
 On Monday 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 pil- 
 grimage ended. 
 
 Since then I have been languidly sorting rubbish, very languid, 
 sad, and useless every way. It cannot be said that I have yet 
 learned this severe lesson I have got. I must try to leaiii it more 
 and more, or it will not pass from me. 
 
 To live for the shorter or longer remainder of my days \^dth the 
 simple bravery, vemcity, and piety of her that is gone : that would 
 be a right learning from her death, and a right honouring of her 
 memory. But alas all is yet frozen within me ; even as it is with- 
 out me at present, and I have made little or no way. God be help- 
 ful to me ! I myself am very weak, confused, fatigued, entangled 
 in poor worldlinesses too. Newspaper paragraphs, even as this sa- 
 cred and peculiar thing, are not indifferent to me. Weak soul ! 
 and I am fifty-eight years old, and the tasks I have on hand, Fied- 
 erick &c., are most ungainly, incongruous -wdth 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 ! Will he do his Dante 
 now ? ' For him also I am sad ; and surely he has deserved grati- 
 tude in these last years from us all. 
 
 James Carlyle, who was the master at Scotsbrig, was 
 the youngest of the brothers. Carlyle told me 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 tlie years when ^ Tom was home from Col- 
 lege ' ; he had been educated by his father and* motlier, 
 and had believed what tliey believed. There is a touch- 
 iiijj: mention of James in a letter written during this sad 
 time from Scotsbrig. 
 
 * 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.' 
 
 > Translation of Dante, part of which had been admirably done by John 
 Carlyle. He wa« doubting whether to go on with it or leave it. 
 
124 CarlyWs Ufe in London. 
 
 He shuddered as he thought of his hesitation in setting 
 out. 
 
 *0h,' 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 there, 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 wrote on one of them to Erskine. 
 
 * I got here in time to be recognised, to be cheered with the sa- 
 cred beauty of a devout and valiant soul's departure. God make 
 me thankful 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 dwelling too constantly on his irre- 
 parable loss to allow him to make progress. 
 
 My labour (he wrote to his brother John on January 14th, 1854) 
 is miserably languid : the heart within me is low and sad. I have 
 kept quite alone, seen nobody at all. I think of our dear mother 
 with a kind of mournful blessedness. 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 consecrated there as if baptised in sorrow and 
 with the greatness of eternity in them. 
 
 A fortnight later it was still the same. 
 
 My soul is exceeding sorrowful, all hung with hlack 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 conceive at present. 
 
Notes ill JuaniaJ.: 125 
 
 Towards the spring, evening visitors were readmitted 
 into Cheyne Row ; but they were not very welcome, and 
 wore not, perhaps, very graciously received. 
 
 "Wo have a turn or two of talk (he reports on February 10th), 
 which does vve little good, yet is perba^^s better than flat silence, 
 perhaps iwt. The other night, H., by volunteer appointment, 
 came to us ; brought one, R. , more than half-drunk, in his train, 
 and one D., an innocent ingenuous babe, in red hair and beard, 
 
 member for the borough. R. also and more conspicuously, 
 
 member for something, is a Jew of the deepest type, black hook- 
 nosed Jew, with tlie mouth of a shark ; coarse, 8|tvage, infidel, 
 hungry, and with considerable strength of hearty' head, and jaw. 
 He went early away. The rest, to whom Ape L., and an unknown 
 natural philosopher sometimes seen here with him, liad accident- 
 ally joined themselves, stayed long. Nichts zu bedeuten. 
 
 It was entertaining to watch the struggle in Carlyle on 
 such occasions between courtesy and veracity. He was 
 seldom actually rude, unless to a great man like the Sar- 
 dini^i Minister. But he was not skilful in concealing 
 his dislikes and his boredoms. His journal shows a 
 gradual but slow, very slow recovery out of his long pros- 
 tration. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 February 28, 1854. — Not quite idle ; always indeed professing 
 to work ; but making, as it were, no way at all. Alas ! alas ! In 
 truth I am weak and forlorn to a degree ; have the profoundest 
 feeling of utter loneliness in the world ; which the company, * when 
 it comes,* of my fellow-creatures rather tends to aggravate and 
 strengthen than assuage. I have, however, or am getting, a kind 
 of sad peace withal, * renunciation,' more real sui^eriority to vain 
 wishes, worldly honours, advantages, &c., the peace that belongs 
 to the old. My Frederick looks as if it never would take sha|)e 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 inanity now fallen putrid, rotting inevitably towards 
 annihilation ; to destroy and extinguish all that, having got to 
 know it, and to know that it must be rejected for evermore ; after 
 
126 Carlyl^s Life in London, 
 
 wliich the perennial portion, pretty much Friedrich 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 does in some 
 degree) . 
 
 Sunday morning last, there came into my mind a vision of the 
 old Sunday mornings I had seen at Mainhill, &c. Poor old mother, 
 father, and the rest of us bustling about to get dressed in time 
 and down to the meeting-house at Ecclefechan, 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 expensive trappings, 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 all corners of it show nothing else. Time ! Death ! 
 All-devouring Time ! This thought, *£h:e2m^ omnes,' and how the 
 generations are like crops of grass, temporary^ very, and all van^ 
 ishes, as it were an apparition and a ghost ; these things, though 
 half a century old in me, possess my mind as they never did be- 
 fore. On the whole I have a strange interior tomb life, and dwell 
 in secret among scenes and contemplations which I do not sjDeak 
 of to anybody. My mother ! my good heavy-laden dear anc^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 great. I will not 
 ask or guess [know no man ever could or can) what He has ap- 
 pointed for His poor creatures of the earth ; a right and good and 
 wise appointment, it full surely is. Let me look to it with pious 
 manfulness, without either hope or fear that were excessive. Ex- 
 cessive ? Alas ! how veiy small 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 Eest, rest ; let me sleep then if 
 that must be my doom ! For as God lives I am weary, very weary, 
 and the way of this world does not suit me at all. Such changes 
 grow upon the spirit of a man. When I look back thirty years and 
 read my feelings, it is very strange. Oh pious mother! kind, 
 good, brave, and tmthful soul as I have ever found, and more 
 
Notes in Journal, 127 
 
 than I have ever elsewhere found in this world, yonr poor Toni, 
 long out of his schooldays now, has fallen ver}' 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 Eccle- 
 fechan kirkyard yonder you bid him trust in God, and that also 
 he will try if he can understand, and do. The conquest of the 
 world and of death and hell does verily yet lie in that, if one can 
 undei-stand and do it. 
 
CHAPTER XXIL 
 
 A.D. 1854. iET. 59. 
 
 Crimean war — Louis Napoleon — The sound-proof room — Dreams — 
 Death of John Wilson — Character of Wilson — A journal of a 
 day — The economies of Cheyne Row — Carlyle finances — ' Bud- 
 get of a Femme Incomprise.* 
 
 The year 1854 was spent almost entirely in London. 
 JS'either Carlyle nor liis wife was absent for more than a 
 day or two : she in indifferent health, to which she was 
 stoically resigning herself ; he ' in dismal continual wrestle' 
 with ' Frederick,' the ' unexecntable book,' and rather ' in 
 bilious condition,' which meant what we know. The work 
 which he had undertaken was immense ; desperate as that 
 of the girl in tlie fairy tale with the pile of tangled silks 
 before her ; and no beneficent godmother to help him 
 through with it ; and the gea of life, the spring and fire 
 of earlier years, gone out of him. He allowed what was 
 going on in the world to distract him as little as possible ; 
 but the sounds of such things broke in upon him, and 
 were as unwelcome as the cocks had been. The Crimean 
 war was in prospect, and the newspapers were crowing as 
 loud as the Demon Fowls. 
 
 Journal. 
 Spring, 1854. — Eussian 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 mad- 
 der business. 1696 was battle of Zeutha on Theiss ; Eugene's task 
 in this world to break the backbone of Turk. A lazy, ugly, sen- 
 sual, dark fanatic, that Turk, whom we have now had for 400 
 
The Cnmecm Wwr, 129 
 
 ^rears. I, for my own private part, would not buy the continuance 
 of him there at the i*ate of sixpence a century. Let him go when- 
 ever he can, stay no longer with all my heart. It will be a beau- 
 tifuUer, 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. Really, I would wait till Russia 
 meddled with me before I drew sword to stop his increase of 
 strength. It is the idle population of editors, &c., that have done 
 all this in England. One perceives clearly the ministers go for- 
 ward in it against their will. Indeed, I have seen no rational person 
 who is not privately very much inclined to be of my own opinion ; 
 all fools and loose-spoken inexperienced persons being of the 
 other. It is veiy disgraceful for any ' ministry ' or government ; 
 but such is the fate and curse of all ministries here at present, in- 
 evitably. Poor souls ! What 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 popula- 
 tion into or toward proper manliness of spirit and position, and 
 capability of self-defence, and so bid defiance to all the earth, as 
 England peculiarly might — to do this, or any portion of this, is far 
 from them ; therefore they must do the other thing. Better speed 
 to them ! 
 
 The French alliance, into which we were drawn by the 
 Crimean affair, was not, in Carlyle's opinion, a compensat- 
 ing circumstance — very much the reverse. The Revolu- 
 tion of 1848, a weak repetition of 1793, had been followed 
 by a corresponding Napoleonic Empire, a parody on the 
 first. Carlyle had known Louis Xapoleon in England. 
 He had watched him stepping to the throne through per- 
 jury 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 man no good end was 
 to be looked for. It was with a feeling of disgust that he 
 found the English newspapers now hailing the * scandalous 
 Copper Captain,' as he called him, as the saviour of Eu- 
 ropean order, and a fit ally for England. It was with 
 something more than disgust that he heard of tliis person 
 Vol. IV. -9 
 
130 Carlyle^s Life in London, 
 
 paying a visit to the Queen of England, and being wel- 
 comed by her as a friend and brother sovereign. The 
 war and its consequences and circumstances he thrust out 
 of his mind, to the utmost possible distance, and thought 
 of other things. To one of these, ' the eighth wonder of 
 the world,' which had sprung into being out of the Great 
 Exhibition, tlie glass palace of Sydenham, he was less in- 
 tolerant than might have been expected. At the end of 
 April he spent a Saturday and Sunday with the Ashbur- 
 tons at Addiscombe. 
 
 On Sunday (he tells his brother) we made a pilgrimage to the 
 Crystal Palace, which is but some two miles off, a monstrous 
 mountain of glass building on tlie top of Sydenham Hill, veiy 
 conspicuous from Cheyne Walk here. Innumerable objects of 
 Art in it, whole acres of Egyptian monsters, and many really good 
 copies of classical and modern sculptui'e, which well deserve ex- 
 amination one day. The living visitors not so very numerous in 
 so huge an edifice— probably not above 200 — were almost all Jews. 
 Outside were as many thousands of the Christian persuasion — or 
 rather, Christian Cockney — unable to get in. The whole matter 
 seemed to me to be the very highest flight of Transcendental 
 Cockneyism yet known among mankind. One saw ' Kegardless of 
 expense ' written on every fibre of it, and written with the best 
 Cockney judgment, yet still with an essentially Cockney one. Re- 
 gardless of expense ! That was the truly grand miracle of it. 
 
 At Cheyne Row the great feature was the completion 
 of the ' sound-proof ' room, 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 w^all 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, w4iich could be opened for ventilation, but the room 
 itself was lighted from above. It had no outlook except 
 to the sky. Here Carlyle spent his working hours, cut 
 
7%d Soundyproof Room, 131 
 
 off from everyone — * whirled aloft,' as he said ; angry at 
 the fato which had driven him into such a refuge, and 
 finding in it, when finished, the faults inseparable from 
 all human contrivances. But he did admit that 'the light 
 was superb,' that all * softer sounds were killed on the 
 road to him, and that of sharp sounds scarce the thirtieth 
 part could penetrate.' The cocks had been finally abol- 
 ished, jmrchased out of existence by a hi. note and Mrs. 
 Carlyle's diplomacy. Thus they * were quiet as mice,' he 
 working with all his might, dining out nowhere, save once 
 with the Proctors, to meet Dickens, and 'finding it the 
 most hideous evening he had had for years.' Under these 
 conditions, ' Frederick ' ouglit to have made progress, if it 
 could progress at all. But it seemed as if it could not. 
 
 Apinl, 1854. — No way made with my book, nor like to be made. 
 I am in a heavj', stupefying state of health, ioo, and have no ca- 
 pacity 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, superan- 
 nuated stupidity — gain with labour the dreariest glimpses of unim- 
 portant, extinct human things in that region of the world ; but 
 when I begin operating ; how to reduce tliat widespread black 
 desert of Brandenburg sand to a small human garden — alas ! 
 alas! But let me not spend time here making matters ttorse. 
 Surely now I am at the bottom of the wheel. I dream horribly — 
 the finiit of incurable biliousness : waste scenes of solitary desola- 
 tion, gathered from Craigenputtock, as I now perceive, but tenfold 
 iutensafed; endless uplands of scraggy moors, with gnarls of lich- 
 ened crag of a stem ugliness, for always I am quite a hermit there 
 too— fit to go into Dante's ♦ Inferno ; ' with other visions less si^eak- 
 able, of a similar ty|)o. Eveiy vision, I find, is the express sym- 
 bol and suitable representative of the mood of mind then possess- 
 ing me. Also, it is sometimes weeks after the actual dream, as of 
 
132 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 these Dantesqne Galloway moors, when some other analogous 
 dream or circumstance first brings them to my waking recollec- 
 tion — a thing rather curious to me. But nearly all my dreams 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, could one have avoided them. For the rest, I find noth- 
 ing sublime in the act of dreaming, nor even anything very 
 strange. Shut your eyes at any time, there will be a phantasma- 
 gory of thoughts and images begin parading in unbroken series 
 through your head. To sleep is but to shut your eyes and outer 
 senses a little better. I have an impression that one always 
 d7'eams, but that only in cases where the nerves are disturbed by 
 bad health, which produces light, imperfect sleep, do they start 
 into such relief — call it agony and antagony — as to force them- 
 selves on our w^aking consciousness. On the whole, the miracle 
 of dreams was never much of a miracle to me, and now, this long 
 while, none at all, beyond what everything is. 
 
 Advancing years have one inseparable accompaniment, 
 painful if we like to make it so, or soft and sad, as an or- 
 dinance of nature — a thing wliich Jias to be, and must be 
 so accepted. Eacli season takes away witli it more and 
 more of the friends whom we have known and loved, cut- 
 ting one by one the strings wliich attach us to our present 
 lives, and lightening the reluctance with which we recog- 
 nise 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. We forget the injuries we have 
 received, because, after all, they did not seriously hurt us ; 
 we remember the injuries which we have done, because 
 they are past remedy. With the dead, whatever they 
 were, we only desire to be at peace. Between John Wil- 
 son and Carlyle there had never been any cordial relation. 
 They had met in Edinburgh in the old days; on Carlyle's 
 part there had been no backwardness, and Wilson was not 
 unconscious of Carlyle's extraoiKiinary powers. But iie 
 
Death of Johi Wilson. 133 
 
 had been shy of Carlyle, and Carlyle had resented it, and 
 now tliis April the news came that Wilson was gone, and 
 Carlyle had to write his epitaph. 
 
 Journal. 
 April 29, 1854.-— John Wilson dead at Edinburgh abont ten days 
 ago. Apoplexy bad gradually cut him out of the lists of the active, 
 years ago, and for six months had quite broken his memoiy, &c., 
 and rendered recoveiy hopeless. I knew his figure well ; remem- 
 ber well first seeing him in Princes Street on a bright April after- 
 noon — 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 KoKac and the 
 KoXoi ; 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 dis- 
 tant object, strode rapidly along, clearing the press to the left of 
 us, close by the railings, near where Blackwood's shop now is. 
 Westward he in haste ; we slowly eastward. Campbell whispered 
 me, 'That is Wilson of the " Isle of Palms," ' which poem I had 
 not read, being then quite mathematical, scientific, «fec., for extra- 
 neous reasons, as I now see them to have been. The broad- 
 shouldered stately bulk of the man stnick me ; his flashing eye, 
 copious, dishevelled head of hair, and rapid, unconcerned prog- 
 ress, 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 have some distant straggling acquaintance of a per- 
 sonal kind with him. Glad could I 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 seemed to have a feeling I should — could — not become 
 wholly his, in which he was right, and that on other terms he could 
 not have me ; so we let it so remain, and for many yeara — 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 man- 
 ner, strove to consider flattering rather. Poor Wilson ! I can- 
 not remember ever to have at all much respected his judgment, or 
 depth of sincere insight into anything whatever ; and by this time 
 I was abroad in fields quite foreign to him, where his word was of 
 
134: Carlyl^s Life in London, 
 
 less and less avail to me. In London, indeed, I seldom or never 
 heard any talk of him. I never read his blustering, drunken 
 
 * Noctes ' after Gordon in Edinburgh ceased to bring them to me. 
 We lived apart, as in different centuries ; though, to say the truth, 
 I always loved Wilson — 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. Wilson had much 
 nobleness of heart, and many traits of noble genius, but the central 
 tie-beam seemed always wanting ; very long ago I perceived in him 
 the most irreconcilable contradictions, Toryism with sansculottism ; 
 Methodism of a sort with total incredulity ; a noble, loyal, and 
 religious nature, not s/ron^ enough to vanquish the perverse element 
 it is born into. Hence a being all split into i)recipitous chasms 
 and the wildest volcanic tumults ; rocks overgrown, indeed, with 
 tropical luxuriance of leaf and flower, but knit together at the bot- 
 tom — that was my old figure of speech — only by an ocean — of 
 whisky punch. On these terms nothing can be done. Wilson 
 seemed to me always by far the most gifted of all our literary men, 
 either then or still ; and yet intrinsically he has written nothing 
 that can endure. The central gift was wanting. Adieu ! adieu ! 
 oh, noble, ill-starred brother! Who shall say I am not myself 
 farther wrong, and in a more hopeless course and case, though on 
 the opposite side. . . . Wilson spoke always in a curious dia- 
 lect, full of humour and ingenuity, but with an uncomfortable 
 wavering between jest and earnest, as if it were his interest and 
 unconscious purpose to cwcceal 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 Quincey, 
 &c., a little while 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 shone in on him 
 and us ; and such a firework of wildly ingenious — I should say 
 volcanically vivid — hearty, humorous, and otherwise remarkable, 
 entertaining, and not venerable talk (Wordsworth, Dugald Stewart, 
 many men, as well as things, came in for a lick), as I never listened 
 to before or since. We walked homewards together through the 
 summer sunrise, I remember well. Good Wilson ! Poo;* Wilson ! 
 That must be twenty- six years ago. I know not if among all his 
 
 * friends ' he has left one who feels more recognisingly what ha 
 
Death of John Wilsoiu 135 
 
 was, and how ti*agical his life when seemingly most successful, 
 than I now. Adieu to him, good, grand, mined soul, that never 
 could be great, or, indeed, be anything. This present is a ruinous 
 and ruining world. 
 
 In the obituary of this spring the name of another 
 Scotchman appeared^-of more national temperament — on 
 ■whom Carlyle also leaves a few words. 
 
 A few days later (Wednesday last) there died also at Edinburgh 
 liord Cockburn, a figure from my early years : Jeffrey's biog- 
 rapher 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 Keopoetical Wordsworthian, 
 Coleridgean, extremely chaotic * Church of the Future,' if Cal- 
 vary, Parnassus, and whisky punch can ever be supposed capable 
 of growing into anything but a dungheap of the future or past. 
 Cockburn, small, splid, and genuine, was by much the whole- 
 somer 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 per- 
 fectly in the Scotch type, perhaps the very last of that peculiar 
 species. 
 
 Carlyle's own special work at this time was confined 
 almost to reading books. The little that he composed 
 was unsatisfactory, and tlie entries in his journal, which 
 were unusually numerous in the period of forced in- 
 activity, were at once an occupation and a relief. When 
 once he was launched upon his enterprise, he had little 
 leisure for self -reflection. A long vacant interval was 
 soon to follow in the journal ; here is one more passage 
 from it — one more open window into his inner soul : — 
 
 Journal. 
 
 June 15, 1854. — Being to all appearance just about the nadir in 
 my affairs at present, solitary, without any human being to whom 
 I can with profit communicate myself, and totally unable, from 
 illness, Ac, to got any hold of the ugly chaos, wide as the world, 
 which I am called to subdue into the form of trork done, I rushed 
 out yesterday and took a violent, long, fatiguing walk into the 
 
136 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 sunny precincts of Tooting, &c., that at least I might be quite 
 alone with my unbeautiful self and my ditto affairs. A beautiful, 
 soft, bright day ; the sky unusually clear, moist clouds floating 
 about upon the wind far enough aloft, and the sun shining out 
 from time to time. Sitting silent on Wandsworth Common, re- 
 mote amid the furze bushes, I said, * Suppose we write a journal 
 of a week? the time of acti lahores may once again come, in spite 
 of all appearances to the contraiy, and then it will be pleasant to 
 look back.' I did not much entertain the project, nor at this time 
 am I clear to do it. Here, however, is yesterday : — Wrote some 
 business notes invitisshnd Minerva after breakfast ; had lost the 
 little dog, &c., who, however, was found about noon. Then ex- 
 amined the scribble I had been doing about Jiilicli and Berg ; 
 Preussen, &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 -past five ; take my ' Schlos- 
 ser,' vol. 4 ; can do little at it till tea. Not a bad book, though 
 very crabbed and lean. Brother John ' 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 soi7'ee before. Jane poorly ; in a low way for some days 
 back. Kead till one a.m., she soon leaving me. To bed then, 
 having learned little ; how little ! To-day I am at my desk 
 again ; intend to trj Liegnitz and Silesian matters. Small hoj^e 
 there. My eyes are very dim; bad light (from sky direct), 
 though abundant. Chiefly the state of liver, I suppose, which in- 
 deed 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 al- 
 most than the loss of an arm, not to mention money at all, may 
 the Devil confound, as indeed he does. Basta ! Basta ! Lieg- 
 nitz itself will be better than that. 
 
 So far Carlyle on himself and his affairs. I will now 
 add a piece of writing of his wife's, which throws light on 
 the domestic economies of Cheyne Row, and shows how 
 life was carried on there, with what skill, with what thrift, 
 under what conditions, personal and material. Her let- 
 
 ' John Carlyle had come with his wife to live in London. She died tragi- 
 cally two 4BonthB. later ia her ^&t coafiuement. 
 
The Economies of L'ln.yu<i Row. 137 
 
 ters indirectly tell much, but this particular composition 
 is directly addressed to that special subject. There was a 
 discussion some years ago in the newspapers whether two 
 people with the habits of a lady and a gentleman could 
 live together in London on 300^. a year. Mrs. CarJyle, 
 who often laughed about it while it was going on, will 
 answer the question. Miss Jewsbury says that no one 
 who visited the Carlyles could tell whether they were 
 poor or rich. There were no signs of extravagance, but 
 also none of poverty. The drawing-room arrangements 
 were exceptionally elegant. The furniture was simple, 
 but solid and handsome ; everything was scrupulously 
 clean ; everything good of its kind ; and there was an air 
 of ease, as of a household living within its means. Mrs. 
 Carlyle was well dressed always. Her admirable taste 
 would make the most of inexpensive materials ; but the 
 materials themselves were of the very best. Carlyle him- 
 self generally kept a horse. They travelled, they visited, 
 they were always generous and open-handed. They had 
 their house on easy terms. The rent, which when they 
 came first was 30^. a year, I think was never raised — out 
 of respect for Carlyle's character ; but it had many rooms 
 in it, which, because they could not bear to have them 
 otherwise, were maintained in the best condition. There 
 w^as much curiosity among their friends to know how 
 their establishment was supported. Mrs. Carlyle had 
 150/. a year from Craigenputtock. He himself, in a late 
 calculation, had set down his average income from his 
 books at another 150/. For several years before the time 
 at which we have now arrived he had published little 
 which materially added to this. There was a fixed annual 
 demand for his works, but not a large one. The ' Crom- 
 well ' was a large book, and had gone through three 
 editions. I do not know precisely how much he had 
 received from it ; perhaps 1,500/. The * Latter-day 
 
138 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 Pamphlets' had produced little beyond paying their ex- 
 penses. The * Life of Sterling ' was popular, but that too 
 only in a limited circle. Carlyle was thrifty, but never 
 penurious ; he gave away profusely in his own family, and 
 was liberal beyond his means elsewhere. He had saved, 
 I think, about 2,000Z. in all, which was lying at interest in 
 Dumfries bank, and this was all. Thus his entire income 
 at this time could not have exceeded 400Z., if it was as 
 much. His German tour had been expensive. The new 
 room had cost ITOZ. The cost of living was increasing 
 through the rise in prices, which no economy could guard 
 against, and though they had but one servant the house- 
 hold books mounted disagreeably. Mrs. 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 matter, and was inclined to 
 be irritable when spoken to about it. But an explanation 
 at last became necessary, and the humorous acidity of tone 
 with which she entered on it shows that she had borne 
 much before she presented her statement. It is dated 
 February 12, 1855, and is endorsed by Carlyle * Jane's 
 Missive on the Budget,' with a note appended. 
 
 The enclosed was read with great laughter ; had been found ly- 
 ing on my table as I returned out of the frosty garden from smok- 
 ing. Debt is already paid off. Quarterly income to be 58/. 
 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. 
 
 Budget of a Femme Incomprise. 
 
 I don't choose to speak again on the money question ! The * re- 
 plies ' from the Noble Lord are unfair and unkind, and little to 
 the purpose. When you tell me ' I pester your life out about 
 money,' that ' your soul is sick with hearing about it,' that ' I had 
 better make the money I have serve,' ' at all rates, hang it, let you 
 alone of it ' — all that I call perfectly unfair, the reverse of kind, 
 and tending to nothing but disagreement. If I were greedy or 
 
TJie Economies of Cheyne Bow. 139 
 
 extravagant or a bad manager, you would be justified in * staving 
 me off ' with loud words ; but you cannot say that of me (what- 
 ever else) — cannot think it of me. At least, I am sure that I 
 never * asked for more ' from you or anyone, not even from my own 
 mother, in all my life, aad that through six and twenty years I 
 have kept house for you at more or less cost according to given 
 circumstances, but always on less than it costs the generality of 
 people living in the same style. What I should have expected you 
 to say rather would have been : * My dear, you must be dreadfully 
 hampered in your finances, and dreadfully anxious and unhappy 
 about it, and quite desperate of making it do, since you are " ask- 
 ing for more." Make me understand the case, then. I can and 
 will help you out of that sordid 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 liad you been a perfect man ; so I suppose you are 
 not a perfect man. Then, instead of crying in my 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 pai^er * in a 
 state of mind;* driven, for I cannot, it is not in my nature to 
 live • entangled in the details,' and I will not. I would sooner 
 hang myself, though * pestering you about money ' is also more 
 repugnant to me than you dream of. 
 
 You don't understand why the allowance which sufficed in 
 former yeai-s no longer suffices. That is what I would explain to 
 the Noble Lord if he would but — what shall I say ? — keep his temper. 
 
 The beginning of my embarrassments, it will not surjirise the 
 Noble Lord to learn, since it has also been * the beginning of * almost 
 every human ill to liimself, was the repairing of the house. There 
 was a destmction, an irregular iti/, an incessant recurrence of small 
 incidental expenses, during all that period, or two periods, through 
 which I found myself in September gone a yeai*, ten pounds be- 
 hind, instead of 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 unpinched housekeeping had not been 
 long taken to by you as well as myself, and if new unavoidable or 
 not to be avoided ctirrent expenses had not followed close on tliose 
 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. We have a servant of * higher gi-ade ' than we ever ventured 
 
140 Carlyle's Life in London, 
 
 on before ; more expensive in money. Anne's wages are 16 pounds 
 a year ; Fanny's were 13. Most of the others had 12 ; and Anne 
 never dreams of being other than loellfed. The others scrambled 
 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 year's bills. But she jjlagTies us with no fits of ill- 
 ness nor of drunkenness, no warnings nor complainings. She does 
 perfectly what she is paid and fed to do. I see houses not so well 
 kept with 'cook,' 'housemaid,' and 'manservant' (Question!). 
 Anne is the last item I should vote for retrenching in. I may set 
 her down, however, at six additional pounds, 
 
 2. We have now gas and water 'laid on,' both producing ad- 
 mirable results. 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 winter the difference may be computed at 
 fifteen shillings. These two excellent innovations, then, increase 
 the yearly expenditure by one pound fourteen shillings and four- 
 pence — a trifle to speak of ; but you, my Lord, born and bred in 
 thrifty Scotland, must know well the proverb, ' Every little mak's 
 a mickle.' 
 
 3. We are higher taxed. Within the last eighteen months there 
 has been added to the Lighting, Pavement, and Improvement 
 Rate ten shillings yearly, to the Poor Rate one pound, to the 
 sewer rate ten shillings ; and now the doubled Income Tax makes 
 a difference of 5/. 16s. 8d. yearly, which sums, added together, 
 amount to a difference of 71. 16s. 8c?. yearly, on taxes which already 
 amounted to 17/. 12s. 8d. There need be no reflections for want 
 of taxes. 
 
 4. Provisions of all sorts are higher priced than in former years. 
 Four shilling a week for bread, instead of two shillings and six- 
 pence, makes at the year's end a difference of 3/. 18s. Butter has 
 kept all the year round 2d. 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 21s. 8d. by the year. Butcher's 
 meat is a penny a pound dearer. At the rate of a pound and a half 
 a day, ho7ies included — no exorbitant allowance for three people — 
 the difference on that at the year's end would be 21 5s. 6d. Coals, 
 which had been for some years at 21s. per ton, cost this year 26s., 
 last year 29s., bought judiciously, too. If I had had to pay 50s. a 
 
The Economies of CJut/jit Uuio, 141 
 
 ton for them, as some housewives had to, God knows what would 
 liave become of me. (Passionate cries of * Question ! question ! ') 
 We bum, or used to bum — I am afraid they are going faster this 
 winter — twelve tons, one year with another. Candles ai*e riz : com- 
 IX)sites a shilling a ix)und, instead of lOii. ; dips 8 i)ence, instead of 
 bd. or 6</. Of the former we bum 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 2d. a pound 
 dearer ; soap ditto ; potatoes, at the cheapest, a penny a pound, in- 
 stead of three pounds for 2d. We use three pounds of potatoes in 
 two days' meals. Who could imagine that at the year's end that 
 makes a difference of 15s. 2d. on one's mere potatoes ? Compute 
 all this, and you will find that the difference on provisions cannot 
 be under twelve pounds in the year. 
 
 5. What I should blush to state if I were not at bay, so to speak : 
 ever since we have been in London you have, in the handsomest 
 manner, paid the winter's butter with your own money, though it 
 was not in the bond. And this 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 12 
 
 5. Cessation of butter . 
 
 You wiU find a total of £29 10 8 
 
 My calculation will be found quite correct, though I am not 
 strong in arithmetic. I have thochtered all this well in my head, 
 and indignation makes a sort of arithmetic, as well as verses. Do 
 you finally understand why the allowance 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 you like, is that 
 fift.oii montlis ago, when I found myself already in debt, and eveiy- 
 thiJij,' rifiinfj on me, I did not fall at once io pinchiug awiX inuddlinfft 
 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 ser^'ant.' But you ai*e to recollect that when I ftnt 
 
 £ 8. 
 
 d. 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 1 14 
 
 
 
 7 16 
 
 8 
 
 12 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 
142 Caiiyle's Life in London. 
 
 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 ? Well, then, we must come to your as- 
 sistance, poor crlttur. You mustn't be made a bankrupt of.' Sol 
 kept my mind easy, and retrenched in nothing, relying on the 
 promised ' assistance.' But when ' Oh ! it was lang o' coming, lang 
 o' coming,' my arrears taking every quarter a more alarming cifer, 
 what could I do but put you in mind ? Once, twice, at the third 
 speaking, what you were pleasantly calling 'a great heap of money ' 
 — 15/. — was — what shall I say ? — flung to me. Far from leaving 
 anytliing 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 loords fell from the 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 icish 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 coming 
 to my assistance meant : whether it meant 15/. without a blessing 
 once for all ; and, if so, what retrenchments 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 me. Was 
 I wanting 50/. more ; or forty, or thirty ? Was there any conceiv- 
 able sum of money that could put an end to my eternal bothera- 
 tion ? ' I will answer the question as if it had been asked prac- 
 tically and kindly. 
 
 Yes. I have the strongest idea what amount of money would 
 ' satisfy ' me. I have computed it often enough as I lay awake at 
 nights. Indeed, 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, 29/., divided into quar- 
 terly payments, would satisfy me (with a certain parsimony about 
 little things somewhat less might do), I engaging my word of a 
 gentlewoman to give hack at the year's 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 29/. 
 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 disbursements (Hear, hear!). You anticipate, per^ 
 
The Economies of Cfwtjne Rotr. 148 
 
 haps, some draft on your waste-paper Ijasket. No, my Lord, it 
 has never been my habit to interfere with your ways of making 
 money, or the rate which you make it at ; and if I never did it in 
 eai'ly years, most unlikely I should do it now. My bill of ways 
 and means has nothing to do with making money, only with dis- 
 ix)siug of the money made. (Bravo ! hear !) 
 
 1. Ever since my mother's death you have allowed me for old 
 rviaiy ?*Iills 3/. yearly. She needs them no more. Continue these 
 titree pourulsfor the fioiise. 
 
 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 hnifing me things^ you gave me at the 
 New Year bl. Oh I know the meaning of that 5/. quite well. Give 
 me nothing ; neither money nor money's worth. I would have it 
 so anyhow, and continue the 5/. for the house. 
 
 3. Ever since we came to London you have paid some 2/., I 
 guess, for butter^ now become uneatable. Continue that 2/. for the 
 house ; and we have already ten pounds which you can't miss, not 
 having been used to them. 
 
 4. My allowance of 25/. is a very libeml 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 
 imix)ssibility. I can keep up my dignity and my wardrobe on a 
 loss sum — on 15/. 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 gowns at all. So deduct 10/. from my personal 
 allowance ; and continue that for the house. 
 
 But why not transfer it privately from my own purse to the 
 house one, and ask only for 19/. ? It would have sounded more 
 modest—^Mrec/ better. Just because * that sort of thing ' don't 
 please me. I have tried it and found it a bad go : a virtue not its 
 own reward ! I am for every herring to hang by its own head, 
 overy purse to stand on its own bottom. It would woiry me to be 
 thought rolling in the wealth of 25/., when I was cleverly making 
 
 15/. do, and investing 10/. in coals and taxes. Mrs. is up to 
 
 that sort of self-sacrifice thing, and to finding compensation in the 
 sympathy of many friends, and in smouldering discontent. I am 
 Up to neither the magnanimity nor the compensation, but I am 
 
144 Carlyle-8 Life in London. 
 
 quite up to laying down lOZ. of my allowance in a straight-forward 
 recognised way, without standing on my toes to it either. And 
 what is more, I am determined upon it, will not accept more than 
 15/. in the present state of affairs. 
 
 There only remains to disclose the actual state of the exchequer. 
 It is empty as a dram. (Sensation.) If I consider twenty-nine 
 more pounds indispensable — things remaining as they are — for the 
 coming year, beginning the 22nd of March, 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 10/. of arrears. You assisted me with 
 15/., and I have assisted myself with 10/., five last August, which 
 I took from the Savings Bank, and the five you gave me at New 
 Year, which I threw into the coal account. Don't suppose — ' if 
 thou's i' the habit of supposing ' — that I tell you this in the un- 
 devout imagination of being repaid. By all that's sacred for me — 
 the memory of my father and mother — what else can an irreligious 
 creature like me swear by ? I would not take back that money if 
 you offered it with the best grace, and had picked it up in the 
 street. I tell it you simply that you may see I am not so dread- 
 fully greedy as you have appeared to think me latterly. Setting 
 iny 10/. then against the original arrears, with 15/. in assistance 
 from you, it would follow, from my own computation, that I should 
 need 14/. more to clear off arrears on the weekly bills and carry me 
 on paying my way until 22nd of March, next quarter-day. (Cries 
 of Shame! and Turn her out!) I say only ^should need.' Your 
 money is of course yours, to do as you will with, and I would like 
 to again * walk the causeway ' carrying my head as high — as — Mr. 
 A., the upholsterer, owing no man anything, and dearly I would like 
 to ' at all rates let you alone of it, ' if I knew who else had any 
 business with my housekeeping, or to whom else I could properly 
 address myself for the moment ; as what with that expensive, most 
 ill-timed dressing-gown, and my cheap ill-timed chiffonnier, and 
 my half-year's bills to Ehind and Catchpole, I have only what will 
 serve me till June comes round. 
 
 If I was a man, I might fling the gauntlet to Society, join with 
 a few brave fellows, and ' rob a diligence.' But my sex ' kind o' 
 debars from that.' Mercy! to think there are women — your friend 
 Lady A., for example {' Eumeurs I ' Sensation) — I say for example; 
 who spend not merely the additamental pounds I must make such 
 pother about, but four times my whole income in the ball of one 
 night, and none the worse for it, nor anyone the better. It is — 
 
The hjconoriueH of Chcyne lioic. 145 
 
 what shall I say? — 'curions,' upon my honour. But just in the 
 same manner Mrs. Freeman might say : *To think there are women 
 — Mrs. Carlyle, for example — who 8i)end 3/. 14s. 6r/ on one dress- 
 ing-gown, and I with just ttro Uxives and eighteen pence from the 
 parish, to live on by the week.' There is no bottom to such reflec- 
 tions. The only thing one is perfectly sure of is * it will come all 
 to the same ultimately,' and I can't say I'll regret the loss of my- 
 self, for one. — I add no more, but remain, dear Sir, your obedient 
 humble servant, Jane Welsh Caklyle. 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle, it must be admitted, knew how to admin- 
 ister a 'slirewing.' Her poor husband, it must be admitted, 
 also knew how to bear one. lie, perhaps, bore it too well, 
 for tliere were parts of what she said which he might with 
 advantage have laid to lieart sei-iously. At any rate, he 
 recoo^nized instantly and without the least resentment the 
 truth of a statement to which he had been too impatient 
 to listen. The cleverness of it delighted him, in spite of 
 the mockery of himself and his utterances. At the foot 
 of the last page he wrote immediately — 
 
 Excellent, my dear clever Goody, thriftiest, wittiest, and clever- 
 est of women. I will set thee up again to a certainty, and thy 30il 
 more shall be granted, thy bits of debts paid, and thy will be done. 
 
 Feb. 12, 1855. T. C. 
 
 ^o man ever beliaved better under such a chastisement. 
 Not a trace is visible of resentment or impatience, though 
 also less regret than a perfect husband ouglit to have felt 
 that he had to a certain extent deserved it. Unfortu- 
 nately, knowing that he had meant no hai-m and had done 
 all that he was asked to do the instant that the facts were 
 before him, he never could take a lesson of this kind 
 properly to heart, and could be just as inconsiderate and 
 just as provoking on the next occasion that arose. Poor 
 Carl^'le! AVell he might complain of his loneliness! 
 though he was himself in part the cause of it. Both he 
 and she were noble and generous, but his was the soft 
 heart, and hei*s the stern one. 
 Vol. IV. -10 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 A.D. 1854-7. iET. 59-62. 
 
 Difficulties over ' Frederick ' — Crimean war — Louis Napoleon in 
 England — Edward Fitzgerald — Farlingay — Three weeks at 
 Addiscombe — Mrs. Carlyle and Lady Ashburton — Scotsbrig — 
 Kinloch Luicliart — Lady Asbburton's death — Effect on Carlyle 
 — Solitude in Cheyne Eow — Kiding costume — Fritz — Com- 
 pletion of the first two volumes of Frederick ' — Carlyle as a 
 historian. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 Chelsea, September 16, 1854. — 'The harvest is past, the summer 
 is ended, and we are not saved,' What a fearful word ! I cannot 
 find how to take up that miserable 'Frederick,' or what on earth 
 to do with it. ' Hohenzollerns,' ' Sketches of German History ' — 
 something of all that I have tried, but everything breaks down 
 from innumerable outward impediments — alas ! alas ! from the 
 defect of inward fire. I am getting old, yet would grudge to 
 depart without trying to tell a little more of my mind. This of 
 repairing my house has been a dreadful thing, tumbling topsy- 
 turvy all my old habits, &c. I feel as if I never could write any 
 more in these sad, altered circumstances ; as if it were like being 
 placed on the point of a spear, and there bidden at once stand and 
 write. That was my thought this morning when I awoke — an 
 unjust, exaggerated thought ; yet it is certain all depends on my- 
 self ; and in the whole earth, probably, there is not elsewhere so 
 lonely a soul. To work ! Try to get some work done, or thou 
 wilt go mad. 
 
 October 25. — I do not write here, or write at all, to say how ill 
 I prosper, how ill I manage myself ; what a sad outlook my 
 studies, interests, and endeavours in this world continue to offer. 
 I seem as if beaten, disgracefully vanquished, in this ' the last of 
 my fields.' I am weak — a poor angry-hearted mortal, sick, soli- 
 
('riifwan War. 147 
 
 tary, and altogether foiled. For a week or two past I have been 
 to the State Paper Office, in hopes of getting some illumination 
 for my dim, dreary, impossible course through the * desert of 
 Brandenburg sand.' Occasionally it has seemed promising. Neu- 
 berg has now been admitted, or will be in a day or two, to at- 
 tend me there, the good man having heroically undertaken that 
 piece of charity. Let us see ; let us see. Nothing but ' remorse^* 
 the sharp sting of conscience for time wasted, canies me along, 
 or even induces such a resolution for desperate effort as could 
 carry me along. Alas ! I am not yet into the tiling. Generally, it 
 seems as if I never should or could get into it. What will become 
 of me ? Am I absolutely beaten by this and the thousand other 
 paltry things that have gone wrong with me in these late times ? 
 
 * Victoiy at the Alma ! ' tierce and bloody ; forcing a passage 
 right across fortified heights and 45,000 Russians, to begin the 
 siege of Sebastopol— a terrible, and almost hon-ible operation, 
 done altogether at the command of the newspapers. What have I 
 to do with all that ? In common, I believe, with nearly all the 
 rational men in the countrv-, I have all along been totally indis- 
 posed to this miserable Turk war. The windy fools alone — it is 
 the immense majority of that class, that have done and do this last 
 enterpiise of oui-s. Would we were well out of it. That is all 
 my prayer and thought in regard to that. 
 
 Ajyril 4, 1855. — Writing at something called * Frederick.' The 
 * Double Marriage ' at present most mournful, dreary, undoable 
 work. All the world in emotion about Balaclava and the Turk 
 war— too sad a fulfilment of my 'Latter Day' prophecies, as 
 many now admit. I perceive it to be the beginning of bayih^uptcy 
 to Constitutional England, and have in silence my own thoughts 
 about it. Lonelier and lonelier ! Let me get along with my 
 work. For me there is no other good ever to be hoped. 
 
 If lie needed comfort, he was not likely to find it in 
 tl»e tliinojs which were going on round him. It was no 
 satisfaction to him that the state of the army in tlie 
 Crimea— the dysentery and starvation, with the memo- 
 ral)le * take care of Dowb ' in the midst of it — confiimed 
 liis notions of the nature of modern British administra- 
 tion. In this April came the still more sinister phenome- 
 non of the visit to England of the Frenck Emperor. On 
 
148 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 this point, if on no other, he was at one witli the majority 
 of his countrymen. Outside the privileged circles who 
 wanted order preserved, and security to property, and 
 safe enjoyment of idle luxury, Louis Napoleon had no 
 friends among us. But the times were hard, and we 
 looked on, swallowing down our disgust as best we could, 
 while the man of December was entertained at Wind- 
 sor. It was said in the papers that he was received in 
 London by enthusiastic crowds. That was not Carlyle's 
 impression from what he himself saw. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : April 20, 1855. 
 
 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 warm 
 at all. On Monday, just before they arrived, I came (in omnibus) 
 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 gentleman — were drawn up from St. James's Street to 
 Hyde Park Corner to receive the august pair. I looked at them 
 with a shuddering thankfulness that they w^ere not drawn up to 
 receive me. 
 
 April 23. — We have got done with our Emperor. Thank Heaven, 
 he took himself away before the week ended. Never was such a 
 blaze of enthusiastic reception, &c,, says rumour, which I for my 
 own share cannot confirm or decisively contradict. Eoyal children 
 all weeping when the soi-disant august pair took themselves away 
 again — a la bonne heure ! 
 
 Yery bitter this — too bitter as we look back, perhaps. 
 Louis Napoleon was a symbol and creature of his time, 
 which divided with him tlie crime of the couj-) cVetat. He 
 had his day, and paid his debt at the end of it to the re- 
 tributory powers. But while his day lasted and he seemed 
 to thrive, he was an ugly object in the ej^es of those who 
 believed in some sort of Providence. 
 
Vvfit to Farlingay^ 149 
 
 * Frederick ' meanwhile, in spite of lamentations over 
 failure, was at last moving. Carlyle had stood steadily to 
 it for eighteen months, and when August came he re(]uired 
 rest and change. Many friends were eager for the honour 
 of entertaining him. There was no longer any mother to 
 call him down toScotsbrig. lie selected among them Mr. 
 Edward Fitzgerald, who had been useful to him in the 
 * Cromwell' days, investigating Xaseby field, and whose 
 fine gifts of intellect and character he heartily loved and 
 admired. Mr. Fitzgerald lived at Woodbridge, near Far- 
 lingay, in Suffolk, an old-fashioned mansion-house of his 
 own, in which he occupied a few rooms, the rest being a 
 farm-house. The scene was new to him. A Suffolk 
 farmer, * with a dialect almost equal to Nithsdale,' was a 
 fi-esh experience. The farm cookery was simple and 
 wholesome, the air perfect, the sea, with a beach where he 
 could bathe, at no great distance ; his host ready to be the 
 pleasantest of companions if his society was wished for, 
 and as willing ' to efface himself ' when not wanted. 
 Under these conditions, a ' retreat ' for a few days to 
 Woodbridge was altogether agreeable. The love which 
 all persons who really knew him felt for Carlyle made it 
 a delight to minister to his comfort. His humours were 
 part of himself. They took him as he was, knowing well 
 how amply his conversation would pay for his entertain- 
 ment. He, for his part, enjoyed himself exceptionally ; 
 he complained of nothing. Place, lodging, company were 
 ecjually to his mind. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Cnrlyle, 
 
 Parlingay, August 10. 
 Ah to me, all things go prosperously. I made an excellent sleep 
 out last night — at least, two sleeps added topjether that amounted 
 to excellent. Yon see I have skill in the weather too. Here are 
 the sunny autumn days begun, and this, the first of them, has 
 been one of the beautifnllest that could be desired ; as nice a 
 morning as I remember to have seen, and your letter waiting for 
 
150 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 me, and good Fitz sitting patient on a big block— hnge 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. We 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. I 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. 
 
 August 13. 
 
 There have been some adventures here, or rather one adventure, 
 but all goes right after it as much as before. It was an adventure 
 of cows. Cows go in a field — or rather went, but do not now go — 
 opposite this big window, separated merely by the garden and an 
 invisible fence. The night 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, endless apologies, 
 &c. The cows were removed, and I have slept well ever since, 
 and am really growing better and better in my silent rustication 
 here. Fitz took me down yesterday to Aldborough, a very pleas- 
 ant drive — seventeen miles ; off at 8 a.m., home about the same 
 hour of evening. It is a beautiful little sea town, one of the best 
 bathing-places I have seen. Nothing can excel the sea — a mile of 
 fine shingly beach, with iDatches of smooth sand every here and 
 there ; clear water shelving rapidly, deep at all hours ; beach soli- 
 taiy beyond wont, whole town rather solitaiy. My 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. Never saw a place more prom- 
 ising. . . . Adieu, dearest ! Drown Nero, and be reasonable.—^ 
 Yours ever, T. C. 
 
 August 17. 
 
 No news from you to-day, 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 have bathed ; I have been driven about. 
 Weather hot and shining, without wind. Last night I slept un- 
 usually well, and to-morrow I am to go. Fitz has been the best 
 
Three Weeks at Addiscomhe. 151 
 
 of landlords, and has discharged his sacred rites really with a kind 
 of Irish zeal and piety ; a man not to be forgotten. He has done 
 everything except • leave me well alone ; ' tliat he has not quite 
 done ; and to say truth, I shall not care to be off and lie down in 
 my own comer again, even with the sputter of Cremorne in the 
 distance. 
 
 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 con- 
 dition, offered him Addiscomhe again for the short re- 
 mains of the summer, and there he and Mrs. Carlyle tried 
 to make a brief holiday together. It did not answer. She 
 preferred Chelsea and solitude, and left him to wander 
 about the Surrey lanes alone. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Addiscomhe : September 2, 1855. Sunday midnight 
 My poor little Jeannie is away. You may fancy, or rather, per- 
 haps, 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. 
 ' Mrs. Carlyle gone at eight, sir ; don't know wliither ; . 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 Hycena 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 embargo, only io be lifted by hard 
 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 hillside by tlie edge of a wood. Got home 
 five minutes before five, and the punctual Dragon was there with 
 the dinner you had ordered. After dinner I read for an hoar. 
 
152 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 smoked, then sate clownrby the fire, and, waiting to ring for candle, 
 fell into nightmare sleep till almost nine. 
 
 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 
 v/ell enough ; and the Dragon herself is all civility and sugary 
 smiles, if that were of much advantage. For the rest, the dreari- 
 ness 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 cleaning muddy water but by letting it settle. 
 
 However, I calculate you will come, and take the reins in hand 
 for another stage. My poor little Protectress ! Good night now 
 finally. T. C. 
 
 Such letters as this throw strange lights into Carlyle's 
 domestic life, sad and infinitely toncliing. When he com- 
 plains so often of the burdens that were laid upon him, one 
 bet^-ins 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 the J known of his anxieties. I had not yet settled in 
 London ; but I came up occasionally to read books in the 
 Museum, &c. I called as often as I ventured in Clieyne 
 Row, and was always made welcome there.- But I was a 
 mere outward acquaintance, and had no right to expect 
 such a man as Carlyle to exert himself for me. I had, 
 however, from the time when I became acquainted with 
 his writings, looked on him as my own guide and master — 
 so absolutely that I could have said : ' Malim errare cum 
 Platone quant cum aliis hene sentire ' / or, in Goethe's 
 words, whfcli I often indeed did repeat to myself : ' Mit 
 dmneni Mehter zii irren ist dein Gewinn.^ The practice 
 of submission to the authority of one whom one recognises 
 as greater than one's self outweighs the chance of occa- 
 sional mistake. If I wrote anything, I fancied myself 
 writing it to him, reflecting at each word on wdiat he 
 would think of it, as a check on affectations. 1 was busy 
 
Mrs. Carlyle aiul Lady Aahhurton. 153 
 
 then on the first vohnne of my * History of England.* I 
 had set the tirst two chapters in print that 1 might take 
 counsel with friends npon them. I sent a copy to Carlyle, 
 which must have reached him about the time of tliis Addis- 
 combe sojourn, and it came back to me with ]>encil criticisms 
 which, though not wanting in severity, consoled 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 still at his desk. At Christmas there was another visit 
 to the Grange. ' Company at first aristocratic and select : 
 Lord Lansdowne and Kobert Lowe; then miscellaneous 
 shifting, chiefly of the scientific kind,' and moderately in- 
 teresting. But his stay w^as short, and he was absorbed 
 again at his work in the garret room. With Mrs. Carlyle, 
 unfortunately, it was a period of ill-health, loneliness, and 
 dispiritment. At the end of 1855 she had commenced the 
 diary, from which her husUand first learnt, after her death, 
 how miserable she had been, and learnt also that he him- 
 self had been in part the cause. It was continued on into 
 the next spring and sunmier, in the same sad, stoically in- 
 dignant tone ; the consummation of ten years of resent- 
 ment at an intimacy which, under happier circumstances, 
 should have been equally a delight to herself, yet was ill- 
 managed by all parties concerned, and steeped in gall and 
 bitterness her own married life. It is impossible to suf>- 
 pose that Lady Ashburton was not aware of Mrs. Carlyle's 
 feelings towards her. She had a right perhaps to think 
 tliem ridiculous, but for Carlyle's own sake she ought to 
 have been careful how she behaved to her. If nine-tenths 
 of Mrs. Carlyle's injuries were imaginary, if her proud and 
 sensitive disposition saw affronts where there had been 
 only a great lady's negligence, there was a real something 
 of which she had a right to complain ; only her husband's 
 want of i>erception in such matters could have prevented 
 
154 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 him from seeing how imfit it was that she should have to 
 go and come at Lady Aslibnrton's bidding, under fear of 
 her husband's displeasure. A small incident in the sum- 
 mer of 1856, though a mere trifle in itself, may serve as an 
 illustration of what she had to undergo. The Carlyles were 
 going for a holiday to Scotland. Lady Ashburton was 
 going also. She had engaged a palatial carriage, which 
 had been made for the Queen and her suite, and she pro- 
 posed to take the Carlyles down with her. The carriage 
 consisted of a spacious saloon, to which, communicating 
 wdth it, an ordinary compai'tment with the usual six seats 
 in it was attached. Lady Ashburton occupied the saloon 
 alone. Mrs. Carlyle, though in bad health and needing 
 rest as much as Lady A., was placed in the compartment 
 with her husband, the family doctor, and Lady A.'s maid,' 
 a position perfectly proper for her if she was a dependent, 
 but in which no lady could have been placed whom Lady 
 Ashburton regarded as her own. equal in rank. It may be 
 that Mrs. Carlyle chose to have it so herself. But Lady 
 A. ought not to have allowed it, and Carlyle ought 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 
 home in the same wa}^ she refused to go. ' If there were 
 any companionship in the matter,' she said bitterly, when 
 Carlyle communicated Lady A.'s proposal, 'it would be 
 different ; or if you go back with the Ashburtons it will 
 be different, as then I should be going as part of your lug- 
 gage without self -responsibility.' Carlyle regarded the 
 Ashburtons as ' great people,' to whom he w^as under obli- 
 gations : who had been very good to him : and of whose 
 tixdn he in a sense formed a part. Mrs. Carlyle, with her 
 proud, independent, Scotch republican spirit, imperfectly 
 recognised these social distinctions. This it may be said 
 was a trifle, and ought not to have been made much of. 
 
 1 See Hejniniacences; p. 463. 
 
Autumn in Scotland. 155 
 
 But there is no sifirn tliat Mrs. Carlyle did make much of 
 what was but a small instance of her general lot. It hap- 
 pens to stand out by being mentioned 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 Ash- 
 burton went to the Highlands, where Carlyle was to fol- 
 low 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 family were delighted to see 
 him once more amongst them. His brother James was 
 waiting for him at the station. His sister-in-law had 
 provided a long hqw j>7/i>e of the right Glasgow manufac- 
 ture : he would smoke nothing else. His mother — she, 
 alas ! was not there : only the chair in which she had sate, 
 now vacant. 
 
 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 exx)ected 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 in- 
 tention that way. He wrote to her regularly with his 
 usual quiet affection. Her answers ' he found sombre and 
 distnistful perhaps beyond need,' but kind and good ; he 
 * begged her to know that in his own way none loved lier 
 so well as he, or felt that he had better cause to do so.' 
 From Scotsbrig he moved to his sister's at the Gill, by 
 Annan — happy among his own kindred, longing to be 'out 
 of London, never to return,' and to spend the rest of his 
 
156 CarlyUs Life in London. 
 
 days in a scene where health of mind and body would not 
 be impossible. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 The Gill : August 7, 1857. 
 I seem to be doing really excellently in regard to health. What 
 a change {mostly for the better) has been brought about since I es- 
 caped from that Devil's oven with its dirts and noises. The dis- 
 gusting 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 old 
 Scotland, there to adjust ourselves a little, there to lay our bonea^ 
 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 j)rinting enterprises once ended. 
 
 One spot Carlyle could not fail to visit — the Ecclefechan 
 kirkyard : — 
 
 On Sunday (he said) I made a visit whither you can guess ; had 
 a few sacred moments there, standing with bared head out of sight. 
 Surely there is not any mysteiy 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 Mary 
 Mills said in another case.* 
 
 He continued well in health. IS'ever in his life had he 
 more the kind of chance he was always crying out for — 
 ' perfect kindness and nearly perfect solitude, the freshest 
 of air, wholesomest of food, riding horse, and every essen- 
 tial provided — m — m — better than he — m — deserved.'" 
 * He had got some work done,' ' made a real impression 
 on the papers he had brought with him.' Why could not 
 he stay wdiere he w^as when he w^as well off ? Why need 
 
 1 Of the grave of Mrs. Welsh. 
 
 3 Coleridge ; with the humming pronunciation. 
 
Ill the Jllfjlilanda, • 157 
 
 he have supposed that lie mnst start away to the Ash- 
 burtons at Loch Luichart '{ Harvest, he said, was coining 
 ou in Annandale, when guests were inconvenient. Any 
 way, it was a fresh drop of acid to his wife, who took no 
 notice to him of the letter in which he informed her of liia 
 purpose, but wrote to another of the family. 
 
 You say in your lettei-a to — — (he said) you wait for Mb. C.'s 
 plans. Alas ! Mr. 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 Sep- 
 tember ; would be well content to pass the whole time on these 
 present terms, here and about here ; has no theory of future move- 
 ments 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 avoid it, for he went to Loch 
 Luichart, stayed a fortnight there, and did not enjoy 
 himself, if we may judge from this specimen of his ex- 
 periences : — 
 
 Kinloch Luichart : September 23. 
 Very cold ; no fire, or none but an imaginaiy one, can be per- 
 mitted 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 ix)sture : 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. My 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 stuflf one can 
 gather, with liat laid on cheek to keep out the light. I usu- 
 ally get to a kind of warm half-sleep, and last till dinner time not 
 80 ill off. 
 
 His wife was still silent for some days, and when she 
 wrote it was to be satirical at his situation, and to i*efuse, 
 in sharper tones than he liked, to return under Lady A.'S 
 convoy to London. 
 
 The second part of your letter (he replied) is far less pleasant to 
 me than the flrbt. It is wholly grounded on misknowledge, or iu 
 
158 . CarlyU's Life in London. 
 
 deep ignorance 'of the circumstances, and deserves for answer no 
 further details, credible or incredible, about these Highland mat- 
 ters till we meet. There is for you — but you are a good body, 
 too ! What you say about the regal vehicle to London from Edin- 
 burgh 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. My 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 Car- 
 lyle's life was to be removed for ever in the ensuing 
 spring. 
 
 Jownal, 
 
 May 6, 1857. — Monday, May 4, at Paris, died Lady Ashburton, 
 a great and irrexDarable sorrow to me, yet with some beautiful con- 
 solations in it too ; a thing that fills all my mind since yesterday 
 afternoon that Milnes 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 endurance 
 of want of work — is all done ! 
 
 He was present at the funeral, at Lord Ashburton's 
 particular entreaty. It seemed like taking leave of the 
 most precious possession which had belonged to him in 
 the world. A few days after, the 23rd of May, he writes 
 to his brother John : — 
 
 I got a great blow by that death you alluded to, which was to- 
 tally unexpected to me ; and the thought of it widening ever more, 
 as I think further of it, is likely to be a 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 
 stranger world ; a magnanimous and beautiful soul which had fur- 
 nished the English earth and made it homelike to me in many 
 
Death of Ijidy Ashhurion. 159 
 
 ways is not now horc. Not since onr mother's death has there 
 been to me anything resembling it. 
 
 Many years later, on casuall}^ hearing some one de- 
 scribe Lady A. in a way that interested him, he notes : — 
 
 A sketch true in every feature I perceived, as painted on the 
 mind of Mrs. 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 com- 
 mand. Essentially a most veracious soul too. Noble and gifted by 
 nature, had Fortune Lut granted any real career. She was the 
 greatest lady of rank I ever saw, with the soul of a princess and 
 captainess had there been any career i^ossible to her but that fash- 
 ionable one. 
 
 After this the days went on with sombre uniformity, 
 Mrs. Carlyle still feeble and growing indeed yearly weaker, 
 Carlyle toiling on in his ' mud element,' driving his way 
 throngh it, hardly seeing anyone, and riding for three 
 hours every afternoon. lie had called his liorse Fritz. 
 *He was a very clever fellow,' he said of him to me, ' was 
 much attaclied to me, and understood my ways. He 
 caught sight in Palace Yard of King Richard's horse, 
 clearly perceived that it was a horse, and was greatly in- 
 terested in it.' * Ah, Fritz,' he once apostrophised him, 
 ' you don't know all yonr good fortune. You were well 
 brought up to know and do your duty. Nobody ever told 
 you any lies about some one else that had done it for you.' 
 He wrote few letters, his mother no longer living to claim 
 his time. It was only on occasion that he gave anyone a 
 lengthened account of himself. This is to liis 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 
 
160 Carlyle^ Life in London. 
 
 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 house- 
 top 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 noble- 
 ness 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 delayed 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 de- 
 cidedly 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 Hamp- 
 stead. Marquis of Downshire's people, beyond Windsor, and got 
 so much good of her three days there I have been desirous she 
 could get to Scotland or somewither for a couple of months, and 
 she did seem to have some such intention. Sunny Bank ^ the 
 place ; but that has misgone, I fear. Meanwhile, she is very busy 
 ornamenting the garden, poor little soul ; has two China seats, spec- 
 ulates even upon an awning, or quasi-tent, against the blazes of 
 July that are coming, which, you see, are good signs. Poor Doug- 
 las Jerrold, we hear incidentally this morning, is dead ; an ' acrid 
 philanthropist,' last of the ' London wits.' I hope the last. A 
 man not extremely valuable in my sight ; but an honest creature 
 withal ; and he has bade us Adieu for ever ! 
 
 ' The Frederick ' work did not grow more easy. The 
 story, as it expanded, became the history of contemporary 
 Europe, and even of the world, while Carlyle, like a genu- 
 ine craftsman as he was, never shirked a difficulty, never 
 threw a false skin over hoUow places, or wrote a sentence 
 
 ^ Haddington . 
 
Pro(jrem with • Freiierick.'* 161 
 
 the truth of wliicli he liacl not sifted. One day he de- 
 scribed hiin:*elf as * busy drawing water for many hours 
 from the deep Brandenburg well,' and realising nothing 
 * but a coil of wet rope.' Still progress was made in July 
 of this year 1857. The opening chapters were getting 
 into print. Hq did not himself stir from London. The 
 weather indoors had grown calmer after the occasion of 
 difference was gone, and the gentle companionship of 
 early days, never voluntarily impaired on his part, had par- 
 tially 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 oflfT He himself travelled 
 generally third class on railway journeys. She, weak 
 though she was, insisted on going second. Carlyle saw hef 
 into the train. She had a wretched journey, and his first 
 letter, after liearing of her misfortunes, was as tender as a 
 lover's : — 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle^ Sunny Bank. 
 
 Chelsea : July 9, 1857. 
 
 Oh, what a passage ! My poor little Groody 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 ! My heart is sore for my 
 poor weak woman. Never again : should I sell my shirt to buy 
 
 )U 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 stem forms — I will 
 get rid of tliis deplorable task in a not disgi-aceful manner. Then 
 for the rest of our life we will be more to one another than ever 
 we were, if it jUoase Heaven. 
 Vol. IV.-a 
 
162 CarlyWs Life m London. 
 
 I have looked at the birds daily ; ' all right ; and daily bestowed 
 a bunch of chick weed on the poor wretches, who sing gratefully 
 in return. Nero ran with me through the Brompton solitudes last 
 night, merry as a maltman. Always 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 kaep 
 thee ever, dearest ; whom else have I in the world ? Be good, be 
 quiet, and write. T. Caklylb. 
 
 The prohibition against ' presents ' had not been re- 
 scinded. 
 
 This is your birthday (he wrote on July 14). God gi'ant 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 
 now and then troublesome. Photographers worried him 
 to sit for their c;allerj of illustrious men, offering to send 
 their artist to Chelsea for the purpose. The ' incompara- 
 ble artist ' was forbidden to come 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 / 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, from the need 
 of revising the ' Latter-day Pamphlets ' for a new edition. 
 He was not well, and there came one of the old cross iits, 
 and even Nero himself fell out of favour. 
 
 I Mrs. Carlyle's canaries. 
 
Solit^ide in Ckeyne Boic, 163 
 
 7b Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : Jnly 26, 1857. 
 To confess truth, I have had for abont a week past a fit of vil- 
 lanoiis headaches, feverishness, &c., which I at first 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 
 tliink, 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 intolerable messin that he is. I was 
 hunying home from a long walk, full of reflec ions not pleasant. 
 At the bottom of Cadogan Place eleven o'clock struck : time to 
 hurry home for porridge. But the vermin was wanting ; no whis- 
 tle would bring him. I had to go back as far as Wilton Orescent. 
 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 absurd- 
 ity in this house. 
 
 The relapse happily did not last. The cold, or whatever 
 it was, departed, and 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 Xero ceased to be a nuisance. ' Farie,' he said, 'rode 
 with me yesternight. Poor Farie ; very honest, gentle- 
 manlike, friendly, more like a human creature than any- 
 body I see at present.' ' Nero came into the garden and 
 stationed himself on the warm flags to inquire about 
 dirmer.' His wife's comfort, he knew, would depend on 
 the accounts which he sent about himself and he made 
 the best that he could of everything. She was paying 
 visits which were not all pleasant. He was eager for every 
 detail. 
 
 I am glad, he said, you make your bits of complaints freely to 
 me ; if not to me, to whom, else now alive on the earth ? Oh ! 
 
164: CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 never distmst me, as the Devil sometimes tempts your poor heart 
 to do. I know you for an honest soul, far too sharp-tempered, but 
 true 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 everything, 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. Car- 
 lyle's costnme was always peculiar : so peculiar, thanks 
 to his Ecclefechan tailor, that it was past being anxious 
 about. Who that knew Carlyle would care what clothes 
 he chose to wear ? But there were 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 Park, 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 actually getting itself 
 executed had tended wonderfully to soothe down the irri- 
 tated humours. Even a night made sleepless by the heat 
 of the weather had its compensations. 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 yellowish to the north-east ; and only one big star, 
 star of the morning, visible in the increasing 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 own writing 
 even was turning out better than he expected, though his 
 opinion of it varied from day ta day. 
 
Mrs. CarlyUs Crifkn»tn of ' Frcikrkk: 1C5 
 
 The worst is, he said, there is not the lieart 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 ? We must just do without it. I am well aware mourning 
 and kicking at the pricks is not the way to mend matters. 
 
 Tlie news of the Sepoy rebellion coming in this summer 
 of course affected Carlyle, more, liowever, with sorrow 
 than surprise. * Tongue cannot speak,' he wrote, ' the 
 horrors that were done on the English by those mutinous 
 hyaenas. Allow hyaenas to mutiny and strange things will 
 follow.' But he had long thought that * many British in- 
 terests besides India were on a baddisli road.' The best 
 that he could do was to get on with his own work, and not 
 peraiit his attention to be drawn from it. Mrs. Carlyle 
 greatly approved of the opening of * Frederick.' She 
 recognised at once the superiority of it to any other work 
 that he had done, and she told him so. He was greatly 
 delighted ; he called her remarks the only bit of human 
 criticism which he had heard from anyone. 
 
 It would be worth while to write books [he said] if mankind 
 would read them as you do. From the fii-st discovery of me you 
 have i)redicted good in a confident manner ; all the iame whether 
 the world were singing chorus, or no part of the world dreaming 
 of such a thing, but of much the reverse. 
 
 He was essentially peaceable the whole time of her ab- 
 sence ; a flash might come now and then, but of summer 
 sheet-lightning, which meant no harm. Even distant 
 cocks and wandering organ-grinders got nothing but a 
 passing anathema. 
 
 I am better to-day, he wrote on September 1, after he had been 
 for two months alone. I hope you do not mind transient grum- 
 bling, knowing the nature of the beast by this time. Yellow scoun- 
 drels [the organ boys] , though I si)eak of them so often, really are 
 not troublesome ; very many days they do not oome at all, and if 
 I were always tolerably well I should care little alnmt them. A 
 young lady, very tempestuous on the piano at one of those open 
 
166 Cadyle-^ Life in London. 
 
 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 him 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 home to him, and ' there 
 was joy in Kero and the canaries, and in creatures more 
 important.' Work went on witliout interruption. Fritz 
 gave increasing satisfaction, taking better care of his rider 
 tlian his rider could have taken of himself, and showing 
 fresh signs of the excellence of his education. Xot onlj 
 was the moral part of him what it should be, but he had 
 escaped the special snare of London life. ' He had not 
 been brought up to think that the first duty of a horse 
 was to say something witty.' The riding was late in the 
 afternoon, and lasted long after dusk, along the suburban 
 roads, amidst the glare of the red and green railway lamps 
 at the bridges, and the shrieks and roars of the passing 
 trains ; Fritz never stumbling or starting, or showing the 
 Icnst 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. Tlie 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 their miserable wives trying 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 
 ill a state of drunken saturnalia, delirium, or quasi-delirium, ac- 
 cording to their several sorts ; a very strange method of thanking 
 God for sending them a Eedeemer ; a set singularly worth ' re- 
 deeming,' too, you would say. I spent Christmas and the two 
 days following in giim contention all day each time with the most 
 refractory set of proof-sheets I expect in this work ; the sternly 
 
Mrs. CiU'lyU's ILiAiUh. 1H7 
 
 sad remembrance of another Christmas [when his mother died] 
 present to me also at all moments, which made a strange combina- 
 tion, 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 
 heen as he had said in the suminer, 'They were more to 
 one another than they liad ever been.' But Mrs. Carlyle 
 suffered more than she had yet done from the winter cold, 
 and a shadow of another kind now darkened the prospect, 
 lie had gone for three or four days to the now solitary 
 Grange, at Lord Ash burton's earnest entreaty. Mrs. Car- 
 lyle was to have gone with him, but could not venture. 
 He had been most unwilling to leave her, but she insisted 
 that he must. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : January 23, 1858. 
 
 Happily, my poor Jane is somewhat better. She had a little 
 improved on Friday or Saturday, which made her urge the shock- 
 ing? 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 woi*se 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 first 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 here, busy upon the grate and its back and its tiles 
 down below, with whom she had a great deal of trouble and vexa- 
 tion. They, I think, had mainly done it. I had, at any rate, a 
 considerable notion to kick their lime-kits and them completely 
 out of the house, but abstained from interfering at all, lest explo> 
 sioii sliould arise. Poor little soul ! I have seldom seen anybody 
 weaker, hardly ever anybody keeping (mfoot on weaker terms. But 
 if slio 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 ihe 
 
1(58 Cavlyle'8 Life in London. 
 
 has lost lately. She has a particular pain about a handbreadth 
 below the heart, rather sore to the touch — on pressure not sore at 
 all, if not stirred, nor seemingly connected with coughing other- 
 wise than by the mere stir produced. This is now some three 
 weeks old, and vexes her somewhat. T. yesterday — judicious, 
 kind man ! — assured her lie 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. Caelyle. 
 
 House worries, with servants, &c., did not improve 
 Mrs. Carljle. Fritz liad been left at the Grange. Car- 
 Ivle, driven to liis feet as^ain, had lost his own chief com- 
 fort, and ' Frederick ' had to be continued in more indif- 
 ferent spirits. In the spring he writes to John again :— 
 
 Chelsea : March 23, 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 soli- 
 tary intrinsically. I refuse all invitations, and, except meeting 
 people in the street, have next to no communication with my ex- 
 ternal fellow-creatures. I 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. My 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. 
 "We are changing our servant too ; but how the new one (will 
 answer) — a Scotch Inverness subject of promising gemuth, but in- 
 experienced 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 still hope this relapse will not last long. 
 
 To the 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 been for that Devil's brood of house servants. 
 
London Servants, 169 
 
 Aime went away a fortnight ago— no further good to be had of 
 Anne. Better that she should go. Then came the usual muster 
 and choice for poor Missus — great/as/t, fidget, and at last a simple- 
 looking Scotch lass preferred, who did not know her work^ but whose 
 physiognomy pleased hugely in the proper quarter. Much new 
 fash in consequence for the two weeks gone — patient teaching of 
 the simpleton, animated by hope of honesty, veracity, aflfectionate 
 mind, &c., Ac, the whole of which fell uix)n 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 
 hfing, ' drinking of cream on the road upstairs,' &c., and that, in 
 short, it was hopeless. And while we yet spoke of it, a poor char- 
 woman, used to the house, knocked at the room door, and entered 
 with the sudden news that our simpleton was oflf, bag and baggage, 
 plus a sovereign that had just been advanced her. Gone, ten p.m., 
 and had left the pass key with the said charwoman. 
 
 My poor little sick partner. I declare it is heart-breaking for 
 her sake, disgusting^ 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 impro^-ised a 
 new arrangement — unhappily no sleep almost yet, and we must help 
 her all we can. 
 
 In spite of anxieties and * sordid miseries,' the two' 
 volumes of 'Frederick' meanwhile drew to completion. 
 Carlyle (for liim) was amazingly patient, evidently for his 
 wife's sake liaving laid strong constraint on liimself. His 
 complaints, when he did complain, were of a liuman reason- 
 able kind. Neuberg was most assiduous, and another young 
 intelligent admirer — Mr. Larkin,' who lived next door to 
 him — had volunteered his services, which were most grate- 
 fully recognised. ' My excellent helper,' he calls Mr. Lar- 
 kin, ' in these printing enterprises, makes maps, indexes, 
 &c., *fec., makes everything; in fact, one of the best men 
 I have almost ever seen, and a very indispensable blessing 
 to me.' Much went against him — or so he thought. 
 
 * Ltttert and Memorial*^ vol. it p. 114, 
 
170 Carlyle^s Life in London, 
 
 April 15. 
 Nothing (he said), will ever reconcile me to these miserable iron 
 pens. Often in writing the beautiful book now on hand I remind 
 myself of the old Spaniard who had to do his on leather with a 
 dagger/ 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. 
 
 By the first of May the printers had their last ' copy.' 
 By the end of May all was in type. In the second week 
 in June the first instalment of the work on which he liad 
 been so busy toiling was complete and off his hands, wait- 
 ing to be published in the autumn. For six years he liad 
 been labouring over it. In 1851 he had begun seriously 
 to think about the subject. In 1852 he made 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 temperature. 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 Yevj few words 
 myself about it, and on Carlyle's historical method gen- 
 erally. 
 
 History is the account of the actions of men ; and in 
 * actions ' are comprehended the thoughts, opinions, mo- 
 tives, impulses of the actors and of the circumstances in 
 which their work was executed. The actions without the 
 motives are nothing, for they may be interpreted in many 
 ways, and can only be understood in their causes. If 
 'Hamlet' 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 
 
 * The Araucana^ by Alonzo de Ercilla, 
 
Carlyle as an Historian. 171 
 
 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 men cannot 
 be thus completely known, that their inner nature is be- 
 yond our reach, that the dramatic portraiture of things is 
 only possible to po^ry, 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 them ; and, in fact, the 
 historian assumes that he does know it, for his work with- 
 out it is pointless and colourless. And yet to penetrate 
 really into the hearts and souls of men, to give each his 
 due, to represent him as he appeared at his best, to him- 
 self and not to his enemies, to sympathize 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 be- 
 liefs, the acquirements, the intellectual atmosphere of an- 
 other age, is a task which requires gifts as great or greater 
 than those of the greatest dramatists ; for all is required 
 which is required of the dramatist, with the obligation to 
 truth of ascertained fact besides. It is for this reason 
 that historical works of the highest order are so scanty. 
 The faculty itself, the imaginative and reproductive in- 
 sight, is among the rarest of human qualities. The moral 
 determination to use jt for pui-poses of truth only is rarer 
 still — nay, it is but 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 time, 
 and it is only at periods when men of intellect have 
 * swallowed formulas,' 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 sides.' 
 
 It is said that history is not of individuals ; that the 
 proper concern of it is with broad masses of facts, with 
 tendencies which can be analysed into laws, with the evo- 
 
172 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 liition of humanity in general. Be it so — but a science 
 can make progress only when the facts are completely as- 
 certained ; and before any facts of human life are avail- 
 able for philosophy we must have those facts exactly as 
 they were. You must have Hamlet before you can have 
 a theory of Hamlet, and it is to be observed that the more 
 completely we know the truth of any incident, or group of 
 incidents, the less it lends itself to theory. We have our 
 religious historians, our constitutional historians, our philo- 
 sophical historians ; and they tell their stories each in 
 their own way, to point conclusions which they have be- 
 gun by assuming — but the conclusion seems plausible only 
 because they know their case imperfectly, or because 
 they state their case imperfectly. The writers of books 
 are Protestant or Catholic, religious or atheistic, des- 
 potic or Liberal ; but nature is neither one nor the 
 other, but all in turn. E^ature is not a partisan, but out 
 of her ample treasure-house she produces children in infi- 
 nite variety, of which she is equally the mother, and dis- 
 owns none of them ; and when, as in Shakespeare, nature 
 is represented truly, the impressions left upon the mind 
 do not adjust themselves to any philosophical system. 
 The story of Hamlet in Saxo-Grammaticus might suggest 
 excellent commonplace lessons on tlie danger of supersti- 
 tion, or the evils of uncertainty in the law of succession 
 to the crown, or the absurdity of monarchical government 
 when the crown can be the prize of murder. But reflec- 
 tions of this kind would suggest themselves only where the 
 story was told imperfectly, and because it w^as told imper- 
 fectly. If Shakespeare's ' Hamlet ' be the true version of 
 that Denmark catastrophe, the mind passes from common- 
 place moralising to the tragedy of humanity itself. And 
 it is certain that if the thing did not occur as it stands in 
 the play, yet it did occur in some similar way, and that 
 the truth, if we knew it, would be equally affecting — 
 
Carlyle a$ an Historian. 173 
 
 equally unwilling to submit to any representation except 
 the nndoctrinal and dramatic. 
 
 "What I mean is this, that whether the history of hu- 
 manity can be treated philosophically or not : whether 
 any evolutionary law of progress can be traced in it or 
 not ; the facts must be delineated first with the clearness 
 and fulness which we demand in an epic poem' or a trag- 
 edy. We must have the real thing before we can have a 
 science of a thing. When that is given, those who like it 
 may have their philosophy of history, though probably 
 they will care less about it ; just as wise men do not ask 
 for theories of Hamlet, but are satisfied with Hamlet him- 
 self. But until the real thing is given, philosophical his- 
 tory is but an idle plaything to entertain grown children 
 with. 
 
 And this was Carlyle's special gift — to bring dead things 
 and dead people actually back to life ; to make 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 most trifling inci- 
 dent invented, and yet as a result with figures as com- 
 pletely alive as Shakespeare's own. Very few writei-s 
 have possessed this double gift of accuracy and represen- 
 tative power. 1 could mention only two, Thucydides and 
 Tacitus ; and Carlyle's power as an artist is greater than 
 either of theirs. Lockhart said, when he read * Past and 
 Present,' that, except Scott, in this particular function no 
 one equalled Carlyle. I would go farther, and say that 
 no writer in any age had equalled him. Dramatists, nov- 
 elists have drawn characters with Similar vividness, but it 
 is the inimitable distinction of Carlyle to have painted 
 actual persons, with as much life in them as novelists have 
 given to their own inventions, to which they might ascribe 
 what traits they pleased. He worked in fetters — iu the 
 
174 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 fetters of fact ; yet, in this life of Frederick, the king 
 himself, his father, his sister, his generals, his friends, 
 Yoltaire, 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 men and women, and 
 yet fixed and made visible eternally by the genius whicli 
 has summoned them from their graves. A fine critic 
 once said to me that Carlyle's ' Friedrich Wilhelm ' was as 
 peculiar 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 — Friedrich 
 Wilhelm his real self —discerned and reproduced by the 
 insight of a nature whicli had much in common with him. 
 Those bursts of passion, with wild words flying about, 
 and sometimes worse than words, and the agonised revul- 
 sion, with the *0h, my Feekin ! oh, my Feekin ! whom 
 have I in the world but thee ? ' must have sadly reminded 
 Mrs. Carlyle of occasional episodes in Cheyne Eow. 
 
CHAPTER XXIY. 
 
 A.D. 1858- . MT. -63. 
 
 Night in a Railway Ti*aiii — Anuandale — Meditations — A new Ward- 
 robe—Visit to Craigenputtock — Second time in Grermany — 
 The Isle of Rugin — Putbus — Berlin — Selesia Prag — Weimar 
 — Aix — Frederich Catterfield's and Carlyle's descriptions by 
 turns — Returns to England — Second Marriage of Lord Ash- 
 burton. 
 
 No further progress could be made with * Frederick ' till 
 there had been a second tour in Germany, which was to be 
 effected, if possible, in tlie summer or autumn of this year, 
 1858. Tlie immediate necessity, after tlie completion of 
 the present volumes, was for rest. When the strain was 
 taken off, Carlyle fell into a collapsed condition. Not- 
 withstanding his good resolutions, he became slightly 
 fretful and troublesome, having nothing immediate to do. 
 He was slightly out of health, and fancied himself worse 
 than he was. Mrs. Carlyle had grown better with the 
 warmer weather ; he could venture to leave her, and he 
 went off in the middle of June to his sister in Annandale. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Ckirlyle. 
 
 The Gill, Annan, June 24, 1858. 
 Well, my dear little Jeannie, here I am safe, with less suffering 
 than I anticipated. Nothing went awry of all the arrangements ; 
 not the smallest ill accident befell. My cliief suflfering was from 
 dust. Foul air I overcame by addressing, at the very first pulling 
 up of the opposite window, 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 com* 
 
176 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 parison? ' 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. We were five — mostly fat ; but these arrange- 
 ments secured air, though with a painful admixture of dust and 
 engine smoke. Except 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 ap- 
 prehension, 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 device. Some winks of sleep I 
 had, too, though the stoppage always woke me again. In fine, 
 Carlisle, through a beautiful, bright, breezy morning, a little be- 
 fore six. Cigar there ; hardly finished when we started again ; 
 and at seven the face of Austin, with a gig, met me at Cummer- 
 trees, and within half an hour more I was busy washing here, and 
 about to fall upon breakfast in my old 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-gown, and fairly lie down in 
 quest of a sleep. This will probably be gone before I awake again ; 
 but, indeed, what news can there Avell be in the interim from a 
 man in his sleep. Oh, my dear, one Friendkin'! (what other have 
 I left really ?) 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 
 j)rofit by being left alone, will be abundantly welcome. Adieu, 
 dearest. I even think of Nero, the wretch ! 
 
 Ever yours, 
 
 T. Caklyle. 
 
 The next morning lie 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 reminis- 
 cences and ghosts is assembled round me — sad, very sad of tone in 
 the mind's ear, but not unprofitable either. A Little live note to 
 Goody will be a comfort to myself, and no displeasure to Nero and 
 her over the tea to-morrow morn.' 
 
In Dumfriesshire, 177 
 
 He bethought himself that before he left London he 
 had been more cross than he ought to have been, indeed 
 both cross and pervei-se. It was * the nature of the beast,' 
 as he often said, and had to be put up with, like the wind 
 and the rain. Mrs. Carlyle had imagine^ that she must 
 have been in some fault herself, or that he thought so. 
 
 The one thing that I objected to in your note, he answered, was 
 that of my being discontented, with yon, or having ever for an in- 
 stant been. Depend upon it that is a mistake, once for all. I was 
 indeed discontented with myself, with hot, fetid London, -^^Aca^ 
 with all persons and things — and my stomach had struck work 
 withal ; 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, * Well, 
 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 som- 
 bre, as he liked. 
 
 Here, he said, all goes without jolt ; well enough we may define 
 everything to be. I find the air decidedly wholesome to me. 
 I do my sleeping, my eating, my walking, am out all day, in the 
 oj>en air ; regard myself as put in hospital, decidedly on favourable 
 terms, and am certain to improve 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 shadow. 
 
 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 stem and 
 grand, as if one had the Eternities for company, in defect of suit* 
 abler. 
 
 The Eternities, however fond he was of their company, 
 
 left him time to think of other things. His wife's cousin, 
 
 John Welsh, was ill. He at once insisted that the boy 
 
 should go to Madeira, and should go at his own and his 
 
 Vol. IV. ^12 
 
178 CarlyWs Life m London. 
 
 wife's expense. If thoughtful charity recommends men 
 to tlie Higher Powers, none ever better deserved of them 
 than Carljle. But he thought nothing of such things. 
 He was soon finding himself happy, in clear air and si- 
 lence, with his ^ister, ' feeling only a wearied man, not a 
 ghastly phantasm, haunted by demons, as he usually was 
 in London.' His costume was his chief anxiety. 
 
 Oh you lucky Goody, to be out of all that, he said. Never did 
 I see so despicably troublesome a problem — insoluble, too ; the 
 enci:?!* 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 must 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 ! I am very wae and 
 lonely here. Take care, tal^e care of thy i30or little self, for truly 
 enough I have no other. 
 
 The next letters are very touching, almost tragic. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 The Gill : July 5, 1&58. 
 I reckon myself improving in bodily health. As for the spirit- 
 ual 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 shall mostly continue. I sleep tol- 
 erably well always. They are all as kind and attentive here as 
 they can be. Fr actus hello, fessus annis. I ought to think myself 
 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 caftie hither. My 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 audible but that of tired geese extensively getting 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, and read Ar- 
 
In Dumf7de88hire, 179 
 
 rian. Oh, if I sent you all the thoughts — sad extremely some of 
 them — which I have about you, they would fill much paper, and 
 perhaps you would not believe in some of them. It grieves my 
 heart to think of yoii weltering along in that unblessed London 
 element, wliile there is a bright, wholesome summer rolling by. 
 
 July 8. 
 I am a prey to doleful considerations, and my solitary imagina- 
 tion has free field with me in the summer silence here. My i)oor 
 little Jeannie I my poor, ever-true life-partner, hold up thy little 
 heart. We have had a sore life pilgrimage together, much bad 
 road, poor lodging, and bad weather, little like what I could have 
 wished or dreamt for my little woman. But we stood to it, too ; 
 and, if it please God, there are yet good years ahead of us, better 
 and quieter much than the past have been now and then. There 
 is no use in going on with such reflections and anticipations. No 
 amount of pai)er would hold them all at this time, nor could any 
 words, spoken or written, give credible account of them to thee. 
 I am woe 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 series of hours 
 filled altogether with you. ... I was asleep for some mo- 
 ments, 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. My poor suffering 
 Jeannie was \he theme of my thoughts. Nay, if I had not had 
 that I 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 my- 
 self, This is something like what she has suffered 700 times within 
 the last two years. My poor, heavy-laden, brave, uncomplaining 
 Jeannie ! Oh, forgive me, forgive me for the much I have thought- 
 lessly 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 ! wha,t beneficent power we can call 
 God in this world who is exorable to human prayer. 
 
 One of Mrs. Carlyle's letters had been delayed in the 
 post. It arrived a day late. lie 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 
 
180 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 blackest side of my imaginings, but also a sad fall from the 
 brighter side I had been endeavouring to cherish for the day pre- 
 ceding. 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 nothing but wail and lamentation in the heart 
 of all my thoughts — a voice as of Eachel weeping for her children ; 
 and I cannot divest myself of the most pusillanimous strain of hu- 
 mour. 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 inarticulate with emotion over it. It 
 is as if the scales were falling from my eyes, and I were beginning 
 to see in this, my solitude, things that touch me to the very quick. 
 Oh, my little woman ! what a sujQfering thou hast had, and how 
 nobly borne ! with a simplicity, a silence, courage, and patient hero- 
 ism 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 left alone with the truth 
 sometimes, to hear with all its sternness what it will say to one. 
 
 All this was extremely morbid ; but it was not an un- 
 natural consequence of habitual want of self-restraint, 
 coupled with tenderness of conscience when conscience w^as 
 awake and could speak. It was likely enough that in 
 those night-watches, %Dhe7i the scales fell off, accusing re- 
 membrances must have risen before him which were not 
 agreeable to look into. With all his splendid gifts, moral 
 and intellectual alike, Carlyle was like a wayward child — 
 a child in wilfulness, a child in the intensity of remorse. 
 His brother James provided him with a horse — a ^ drome- 
 dary,' he called it, * loyal but extremely stupid ' — to ride 
 or drive about among the scenes of his early years. One 
 day he went past HoddaniHill, Repentance Tower, Eccle- 
 fechan churchyard, &c., beautiful, quiet, all of it, in the 
 soft summer air, and yet he said, ' The valley of Jehosha- 
 phat could not have been more stern and terribly impressive 
 to him. He could never forget that afternoon and evening, 
 the old churchyard tree at Eeclefechan, the white head- 
 
MisoeUaneom Sorrotos, 181 
 
 stones of which ho caught a steady look. The deepest de 
 rrofandu was poor to the feeling in his heart' Tlie 
 thought of his wife, ill and solitary in London, tortured 
 him. Would she come to the Gill to be nursed ? ^o one 
 in the world loved her more dearly than his sister Mary. 
 The daughters would wait on her, and be her servants. 
 He would himself go away, that he might be no trouble to 
 her. Amidst his sorrows the ridiculous lay close at hand. 
 If he was to go to Germany, his clothes had to be seen to. 
 An entire ' new wardrobe ' was provided, * dressing-gown, 
 coats, trousers lying round him like a hay coil ; ' rather 
 well-made too, after all, though * the whole operation had 
 been scandalous and disgusting, owing to the anarchy of 
 things and shopkeepers in those parts.' Ho had been re- 
 commended to wear a leather belt for the future when he 
 rode. His sisters did their best, but * the problem became 
 abstruse ; ' a saddler had to be called in from Dumfries, 
 and there was adjusting and readjusting. Carlyle, sad and 
 mournful, * inexpressibly wearied,' impatient, irritated, 
 declared himself disgusted with the * problem,' and more 
 disgusted with himself, ' when he witnessed his sister's in- 
 dustrious helpfulness, and his own unhelpable nature.' 
 
 Pardon me, he cried— pardon me, ye good souls ! Oh, it is not 
 that I am cruel or unthankful ; but I am weary, weary, and it is 
 diflScult to get the galling harness from me, and the heavy burden 
 off the back of an old wayworn animal, at this advanced stage. 
 You never saw such sewing of hcUsy thrice over each of the two 
 that were realized (and, in fact, they do seem to fit perfectly) ; not 
 to si^eak of my unjust impatience — most unjust— of my sulky de- 
 spair. Poor, good sister ! No wonder I was wae in walking into the 
 cold, bright sunset after seeing her off. The silence before I re- 
 turned in again — the wind having gone down — was intense ; only 
 one poor collie heard expressing his astonishment at it miles away. 
 
 The clothes and belt question being disposed of, he grew 
 better — slept better. The d^nom came less often. A 
 German Life of Charles XH. was a useful distraction. 
 
182 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 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 become necessary. There 
 was business to be attended to, the tenant to be seen and 
 spoken with, &c. He rather dreaded this adventure, but 
 it was not to be avoided. His brother James went with 
 
 him. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 The Gill, August 6, 1858. 
 Yesterday the Craigenputtock expedition was achieved. Batter- 
 ing 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*liis wife. On the whole, the busi- 
 ness was not at all so uncomfortable as I had anticipated, or, in- 
 deed, to be called miserable, at all, except for the memories it 
 could not fail to awaken. From Stroquhan upwards there are 
 slight improvements noticeable in one or two places, but essen- 
 tially no marked change. The bleak moor road lay in plashes of 
 recent rain from Carstammon onwards. Stumpy [some field] was 
 in crop — very poor promise the oatmeal coming there ; and after 
 two other gates by the side of the ragged woods gi'own 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 woods ; 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 aj)pointment, is a fine, 
 tall, strapping fellow, six feet two or so, with cheerful sense, hon- 
 esty, i)rompt mastery of his business looking 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 re- 
 cognised only the old grate and quasi-marble mantelpiece, little 
 changed, and surely an achievement dear to me now. Your old 
 paper is on the other two rooms, dim, like the fading memories. I 
 
Visit to Craigenjmttock, 183 
 
 looked with emotion upon my old library closeC, and wished I could 
 get thither again, to tinish my • Frederick ' under fair chances. Ex- 
 cept 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 theN.E. 
 comer of the house, under which I have read Waverley Novels in 
 summer holidays) has planted itself near the bare wall — our screen 
 from the old peat-house, you recollect — and has got to be ten or 
 twelve feet high under liouiishing 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 Macadam's burnt plantation begins to come 
 away, and the old trees left of it are tall and venerable beings. 
 Nothing like Craigenputtock larch for toughness in all this coun- 
 tiy.* For most part, there are again far too many trees. ' 300/. 
 worth o' wud to cut away, and mair, and there is a market,* said a 
 man skilled in such matters, whom I found mowing there and con- 
 sulted. ... Is not this enough of Craigenputtock — Crag of 
 the Gleds, as its name means ? Enough, and to spare. 
 
 Germany was to come next, and to come immediately, 
 before tlie days drew in. He shuddered at the recollec- 
 tion of tlie Zwei 7'u/iige Zim77ier, <fec., in which he had 
 suffered so much torture. But lie felt that he must go, 
 cost what it might. Some friend had proposed to take 
 liim in a yacht to tlie Mediterranean and land liiin at 
 Trieste. Lord Ashburton more reasonably had offeied 
 him a cast in another yacht to the Baltic. But Carlyl^ 
 chose to stand by the ordinary modes of conveyance. JIc 
 sent for his passport, nailed a map of Germany to his wall, 
 daily perused it, and sketched an outline of his route. M. 
 Neuberg, who was at Ixiipzig, was written to, but it was 
 doubtful whether he was attainable. A Mr. Fo.xton, a 
 slight acquaintance, offered his companionship, and was 
 conditionally accepted ; and after one or two * preliminary 
 shivers' and 'shuddering recoils,' ('arlyle screwed his 
 courage to the sticking-point and, iu spite of nerves and 
 
184 Car'lyle's Life in London, 
 
 the rest of it, got through with the operation. The plan 
 was to go by steam to Hamburg ; whither next was not 
 quite decided when an invitation came from Baron von 
 Usedom and his English wife to visit them in the Isle of 
 Riigen. It was out of the way ; but Stralsund, Riigen, 
 the Baltic, were themselves interesting. The Usedoms' 
 letter was most warm, and Carlyle, who rather doubted 
 Mr. Foxton's capabilities as courier, thought that this ex- 
 cursion might ' put him on his trial.' He could be dis- 
 missed afterwards if found unsuitable. Much anxiety was 
 given to poor Mr. Foxton. Neuberg held out hopes of 
 joining, .and Foxton in that case would not be wanted. 
 But John Carlyle suggested that IS^euberg and he would 
 perhaps neutralize each other, like alkali and acid. On 
 August 21 Carlyle went off to Edinburgh, whither poor 
 Mr. Foxton had come, at great inconvenience to himself. 
 He found his friend ' very talky, scratch o' plastery, but 
 serviceable, assiduous, and good compared with nothing.' 
 The evening of the same day they sailed from Leith. 
 
 To Jane Welsh 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 seldom made. 
 The Leith people, innocent but ineffectual souls, forgot every 
 promise they had made except that of sailing five hours after their 
 time and landing us at last fifteen hours after ditto. We had bad- 
 dish weather all Sunday, mediocre till this morning, and such a 
 scrambling dog-kennel of a sickly life. However, the sail up 
 the Elbe all this day was bright, sunny, and beautiful, and our his- 
 tory since — a fair prospect 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, poor woman, 
 wherever this may find thee, may set itself at rest on my score. 
 We have the finest airy hotel, cheap too, they say. My room is five 
 stairs up, looking over mere roofs. We dined wholesomely. 
 Neuberg had a man in wait — poor good soul after all ! — to say that 
 he was ready at any hour, <fec. In short, except a storm of fine 
 
Second lour in Gtniuuuj. 185 
 
 ■wind music spreading over the city and not yet concluded, there is 
 a right fair share of comfort and good omens round me here on 
 fair eartli again. The music is excellently sweet ; pathetic withal 
 to the worn soul towards midnight ; and I write to 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 snub- 
 bing into silence ; annihilates himself whenever I like, and is verily 
 a gentleman in air and heart. Good for almost nothing in the way 
 of helpy^ though ]>rompt as possible. But along withNeuberg he 
 will do extremely well. 
 
 AngaHt 2.5, 9 a.m. 
 
 We go off at noon towards Usedom and Riigen, Foxton stopping 
 at Stralsund near by. There will we wait Neuberg's advance in 
 safety, and can take a fine sea-bathe if we like, for B(\gen is the 
 German Isle of Wight. 
 
 Carzitz, Insel ROgen : August 27. 
 
 How glad I am to write to thee from here. Since yesterday 
 my prospects and situation have miraculously mended, and at pres- 
 ent 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 preliminaiy 
 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 miser- 
 able nights on land, which with the three preceding at sea had re- 
 duced me to a bad pitch, I had, with j>oor, helpless but assiduous 
 Foxton stepped out of the railway train at Rostock, biggish sea 
 capital of Mecklenburg, and was hurrying along to get a place in 
 the Stralsund diligence, with no prospect but eight hours of suf- 
 focation and a iright to follow without sleep, when a lady, attended 
 by her maid, addressed me with sunny voice and look, ' Was not I 
 Mr. Carlyle?' ' I am the Frau von IJsedom,* rejoined she on my 
 answer, ' here to seek you, sixty-four miles from home, and you 
 must go with me henceforth.' Hardly in my life had such a nianus 
 e nnhihusi been extended to me. I need not say how thrice gladly 
 I accepted. I had, in fact, done with all my labour then, and was 
 earned on henceforth like a mere child in arms, nothing to do or 
 
 > I may as well aay that both Mr. Foxton and Mr. Neuberg have been dead 
 for several years. 
 
186 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 care for, but all conceivable accommodation gracefully provided 
 me up hither to this pleasant Isle of the Sea, where I now am a 
 considerably rested man. We 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 Stral- 
 sund, 6 p.m., other side of the little strip of sea, and he is oflf to 
 Berlin or whither he likes, and I need not recall him again except 
 as sour to the fat of Neuberg, who is worth a million of him for 
 helping me on and making no noise about it. Happy journey to 
 poor Foxton ! 
 
 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 Eiigen, 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, demonstra- 
 tive, but thoroughly good Madame von Usedom beside me. Most 
 strange, almost as in a Mahrchen. 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, mediaeval, semi-patriarchal, half a farm-house, half a palace. 
 The Herr, who is at Berlin, returns this night. Has made ar- 
 rangements, &c. Oh, what arrangements ! and even * spoken of it 
 to the Prince of Prussia.' What is also for practice definitely 
 lucky, Neuberg's letter finds me this morning, and he will himself 
 be in Berlin to-morrow night, there to wait. N. thinks in about 
 two weeks after our meeting the thing might be got completed. 
 Would it were so, and I home again out of these foreign elements 
 good and bad. In a word, be at ease about me, 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 almost happy here to- 
 day in the silent sunshine on these remote Scandinavian shores. 
 The wind is singing and the sun sporting in the lindens, and I 
 hear doves cooing. Windows 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.^ Oh ! may the like never 
 happen between us again. May this be the last journey I take 
 » Her letters had gone to Dresden. 
 
Berlin, 187 
 
 into foreign tumults and horrors, far away from all tliat I love and 
 all that is really helpful to me. But to my narrative : — The Use- 
 doms in Biigen were the kindest of hosts to me, and the place 
 and circle had its interests and advantages ; but alas ! I fell un- 
 well the day after writing to you. Bathed in the Baltic on the 
 back of all my Hamburg and other adventures ; caught cold ; Juul 
 already caught it, but developed it by the vile ' bathe.' Felt as if 
 I were getting into a fever outright, and had to take decisive meas- 
 ures, though in a foreign house. That did prove effectual, but you 
 can fancy what two or three days 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 cai-ry on. The Herr von Usedom is a fine, sub- 
 stantial, intelligent, and good man. We 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 pi-acticalities. 'To stay over night at Putbus, the 
 Bichmond of Riigen, and then catch the steamer to Stettin, and 
 thence by rail to Berlin next day.' We got to Putbus, doing pic- 
 turesque by the way. A beautiful Putbus indeed ! where I had 
 such a night as should be long memorable to me : big loud hotel, 
 sea-bathing, lodgera with their noises, including plenteous coach- 
 horses under my window, followed by noises of cats, item of brood 
 sows, and at two 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 quarters. Never till the end of things 
 may I visit Putbus again. However, next day's — yesterday's — steam 
 voyage and rail was pleasantly successful, and at 10.30 p.m. I 
 found the useful Neuberg, who had secured me my old a})artment 
 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 
 veiy 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, hot- 
 tish Sunday ; but I will take care not to concern myself with it 
 beyond the needful. To-morrow we are off : Liegnitz, Breslau, 
 Prag, then Dresden ; after which only two battlefields remain, and 
 London is within a week. Neuberg is also going straight to Lon- 
 don. You may compute that all the traveUiag (/e^i/s— washtube. 
 
188 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 railways, money settlements, &c. — are fairly off my hands from 
 this point. I have strength enough in me too. With the snatches 
 of sleep fairly expectable, I conclude myself roadworthy for four- 
 teen days. Then adieu ! Keil 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 Schatz even I, poor I, possess 
 in that quarter, the poorest, but also the richest in some respects, 
 of all the sons of men. 
 
 I saw some prettyish antient Eiigen gentlemen, item ladies, who 
 regarded with curiosity the foreign monster. Small thanks to 
 them. N.B. — The Baltic Sea is not rightly salt at all — not so salt 
 as Solway at half-tide, and one evening we rode across an arm of 
 it. Insignificant sea ! 
 
 Brieg, Lower Silesia : September 10, 1858. 
 
 We quitted Berlin under fair auspices Monday morning last, for- 
 tified with a general letter from the Prince's aide-de-camp to all 
 Prussian officers whatsoever. But hitherto, owing to an immense 
 review, which occupies everybody, it has done us less good than 
 we expected. At Ciistrin a benevolent major did attend us to the 
 field of Zorndorf, and showed us 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 adventures of a confused, not wholly unpleasant, charac- 
 ter. 
 
 Our second place was Liegnitz itself, full of soldiers, oak gar- 
 lands, coloured lamplets, and expectation of the Prince. W^e 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 Leu- 
 then, the grandest of all the battles ; to-day hither about fifty 
 miles away to Molwitz, the first of Fritz's fights, from which we 
 have just now returned. Sleep is the great diflSculty here, but 
 one does contrive some way. Occasionally, as at Ciistrin, one has 
 a night * which is rather exquisite.' But I lie down in the day- 
 time — 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 be- 
 
The BaUleJields, 189 
 
 ings ; poorer classes, especially in the country, much happier than 
 Mith U8. Eveiy kind of industry is on the improving hand ; the 
 land, mainly sandy, is far better tilled than I expected. And oh ! 
 the church stoeplos I have mounted up into, and the baibarous 
 jargoning I have had questioning ignorant mankind. Leuthen 
 yesterday and Molwitz to-day, with their respective ste^jjles, I 
 shall never forget. 
 
 Brei^iau : f>t'j)temr*er IL 
 
 This is a queer old city as you ever heard of. High as Edin- 
 burgh, or more so. Streets very strait and winding ; roofs thirty 
 feet or so in height, and of proportionate steepness, ending in 
 chimney-heads like the half of a butter firkin set on its side. The 
 people are not beautiful, but they seem innocent and obligiDfr, 
 brown-skinned, scrubby 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 propor- 
 tions. An island in the Oder here is completely covered with 
 cathedrals and appendages. Brown women with cock noses, 
 snubby in chai-acter, have all got stmw hats, umbrellas, crinolines, 
 &c., as fashion orders, and are no doubt charming to the brown 
 man. Neuberg is a perfect Issachar for taking labour on him ; 
 needs to be led with a strongish curb. Scratchy Foxton and he 
 are much more tolerable together. Grease plus vinegar, that is 
 the iTile. 
 
 Prag : September 14, 1858. 
 
 From Breslau, where I wrote last, our atlventures have been 
 miscellaneous, our course painful but successful. At Landshut, 
 edge of the Riesen Gebirge, where we arrived 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. 
 Umsonst ! no milk in the house ! no nothing ! only a rnhiges 
 Zimmer not opened for weeks past, by the smell of it. I mostly 
 missed sleep. Our drive next day through the Riesen Gebirge into 
 Bohemian territory was as beautiful as any I ever had. It ended 
 in confusion, getting into milways full of dirty, smoking, Sunday 
 gents, fully as ugly on the Elbe there as on the Thames nearer you. 
 We had passed the sources of the Elbe early in the day ; then 
 crossed it at night. "We have not far quitted it since, nor shall 
 till we pass Dresden. The gents that night led us to a place called 
 PardubiU, terribly familiai- to me from those dull * Frederick * 
 
190 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 books, where one of the detestablest nights of all this expedition 
 was provided me. Big, noisy inn, full of evil smells ; contemptible 
 little wicked village, where a worse than jerry-shoi) 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 as if you had been in the trough of 
 a saddle. Ach Himmel ! We 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 hither 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-Irish people — Irish with the addition of ill-nature and a 
 disposition decidedly disobliging. We called yesterday at an inn 
 on the battlefied of Kolin, where Frederick had gone aloft to take 
 a survey of the ground. * The Golden Sun ' is still 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 summoned 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, Sterbe- 
 hohe, and other localities of the battle which young ladies play on 
 the j)iano — but on the whole it was light compared 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, Eossbach — in two days following. Poor Neuberg has 
 fairly broken down by excess of yesterday's labour, and various 
 misery. He gave up the Hradschin [Radsheen 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 
 every enteri^rise — I could not do without him— and Foxton is good 
 for absolutely nothing, except to neutralize him, which he pretty 
 much does. 
 
Second Tour in Germany. 191 
 
 Dresden: September 15, 185& 
 I have got your second letter here— a delightful little letter, 
 which I read sitting on the Elbe bridge in the sunshine after I 
 had got my face washed, with such a struggle, and could get leave 
 to feel like Jonah after being vomited from the whale's belly. Our 
 journey from l^g lias excelled, in confusion, all I ever witnessed 
 in the world ; the beautifullest country ever seen too, and the 
 beautifullest weather — but, Ach Gott ! However, we are now near 
 the end of it. . . . I am not hurt ; I really do not think my- 
 self much hui*t — but, oh what a need of sleep, of silence, of a right 
 good washing with soap and water all over I 
 
 On September 22 he was safe at home again at Chelsea 
 — having fiiiislied his work in exactly a month. Nero 
 was there to ' express a decent joy' at seeing him again — 
 Isero, but not his mistress. She was away in Scotland 
 with lier friends, Dr. and Mrs. Russell. He had charged 
 her not to return on his account as long as she was getting 
 good from the change of air and scene. On the twenty- 
 third he sent her the history of the rest of his adventures. 
 
 Our journey after Dresden continued, with the usual velocity and 
 tribulation, over Hochkirch — beautiful outlook from the steeple 
 there, and beautiful epitaph on Marshal Keith, one of the seven 
 hundred that perished on that spot, the church doors still holed 
 with the musketry there — over Leipzig, where Foxton rejoined us 
 after our thrice-toilsome day at Torgau ; then from AVeiasenfeld 
 over Bossbach, the last v» our series, thank Heaven ! We then got 
 
 into the Weimar train, found little M , and, wliat was better, u 
 
 fine, quiet bed-room, looking out upon decent garden-ground in 
 the inn already known to me, where I procured a human sleep, 
 and also a tub with water enough next morning — and, in short, 
 was greatly refreshed ; the rather as I absolutely refused to go 
 about except in the narrowest limits next day, and preferred lying 
 on my bed, asleep or not, to all the * sights ' in nature. At three 
 p.m. we had to go again. The Grand Duchess sent a telegram — 
 being telegraphed to — most gracious, but it was to no purpose. I 
 did wish to see the high lady— very clever and distinguished, 
 everybody says — but it involved waiting twenty-four hours in an 
 uncertain hostelry at Eisenach, and then getting off at two a.m., 
 therefore resolutely, * No, Illustrious Madame.' Next day from 
 
192 Carlyle's Life in London, 
 
 Guntersliausen, near Cassel, to Aix-la-Cliai3elle, was among the 
 hardest in my experience of physical misery— begins at four a.m., 
 no sleep behind it, nor any food before it, and lasts incessantly 
 till seven p.m. ; oftenest in slow trains through broiling sun, sand 
 clouds, and manufacturing smoke. My living was a cup of most 
 lukewarm coffee, swallowed like physic, which it much resembled, 
 as all German coffee does, and poor eating to it ; not even a crumb 
 of bread and butter ; raw ham and bread, to be washed down too 
 in one minute of time. On this, with a glass of soda water and 
 cognac and farthing loaf of tough bread picked up somewhere, 
 human nature had to subsist to Aix, arrive there about seven. . . . 
 About half -past eight try to eat if you could something tepid and 
 questionable. Happily the bed was once more human— I was 
 thoroughly done up. 
 
 Next morning stand upon the lid of Charlemagne — abominable 
 monks roaring out their idolatrous grand music within sight. 
 Then embark again — arrived at Ostend six to seven p.m., get on 
 board a boat to Dover (mail steamer), six hours — nothing to be 
 had as living, Neuberg and others very sick. In Dover one a.m , 
 tumult of custom-houses, of over-crowded inns ; in despair try tea 
 and retire to one's garret, with nothing to depend on but lucifers 
 and tobacco through the night. It was not so bad as might have 
 been expected. Next day a fine train up to town, Foxton branch- 
 ing off at Redhill, and taking leave almost with tears. By the 
 river steamer I reach home half-past four, or rather later. To- 
 day, after a good sleejD, good coffee, &c., I have as bad a headache 
 as need be desired, and trace the Strapazen of this journey in a 
 lively manner. I feel in me, down in the breast chiefly, the stock 
 of cold I have had secretly these three weeks, but otherwise ail 
 nothing. 
 
 Such was Carljle's second tonr in Germany, as sketched 
 in these letters by himself. One misses something of the 
 liveliness of the experiences of the first, when everything 
 was new, and was seized upon by his insatiable curiosity. 
 It was a journey of business, and was executed with a 
 vigour and rapidity remarkable in so old a man. There 
 were fewer complaints about sleep — fewer complaints of 
 any kind. How well his sui-veying work M^as done, the 
 history of Frederick's campaigns, when he came to write 
 
Tnspeciion of BaMlejielih. 193 
 
 tliein, were ample evidence. He speaks lightly of having 
 seen Kolin, Torgau, &c., <fec. ^o one would gue^ from 
 reading these short notices that he had mastered the de- 
 tails of every field which he visited ; not a turn of the 
 ground, not a hrook, not a wood, or spot where wood had 
 been, had escaped him. Each picture was complete in 
 itself, unconf used with any other ; and, besides the pict- 
 nre, there was the character of the soil, the extent of 
 cultivation — every particle of information which would 
 help to elucidate the story. 
 
 There are no mistakes. Military students in Germany 
 are set to learn Frederick's battles in Carlyle's account of 
 them — altogether an extraordinary feat on Carlyle's part, 
 to have been accomplished in so short a time. His friends 
 had helped him no doubt ; but the eye that saw and the 
 mind that comprehended were his own. 
 
 Very soon after his return the already finished volumes 
 of * Frederick ' were given to the world. No work of his 
 liad as yet obtained so instant and wide a welcome. 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 December there was a demand for more. lie had 
 liimself been singularly indifferent on this part of the 
 business. In his summer correspondence there is not a 
 single word of expectation or anxiety. As little was there 
 sign of exultation when the world's verdict was pronounced. 
 The child that is born with greatest difficulty 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 heart- 
 rending enterprise he had ever had ' as * worth nothing,' 
 though ' faithfully done on his part.' In Scotland he de- 
 scribes himself as having been * pei*fectly dormant,' * in a 
 sluggish, sad way, till the end of August.' In Gennany 
 he had seen the battlefields — ' a quite frightful month of 
 Vol. IV.— 13 
 
194 CarlyMs Life m London. 
 
 physical discomfort,' with no result that he conld be sure 
 of, ' except a great mischief to health.' lie had returned, 
 he said, ' utterly broken and degraded.' This state of 
 feeling, exaggerated as it was, survived the appearance of 
 the two volumes. He had complained little while the 
 journey was in progress — when he was at home again 
 there was little else but sadness and dispiritment. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 December 28th, 1858. — Book was pubHslied soon after my re- 
 turn ; has been considerably more read, than usual with books of 
 mine ; much babbled of in newspapers. No better to me than the 
 barking of dogs. Verachtung, ja Niclit achtung 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, alle'm, allein auf 
 dieser Erde! However, the fifth thousand is printed, paid for I 
 think — some 2,800^. 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 and are silent about them. Edition of works ^ 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 unfavourable, horse exercise defective, villan- 
 ous ostlers found to be starving my horse. Much is 'defective,' 
 much is against me ; especially my own fidelity of perseverance in 
 endeavor. 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 twilight like a 
 haunted 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, as they tell 
 of something which proved of immeasurable consequence, 
 both to Carlyle and to his wife. 
 
 1 Collected edition of Carlyle' s works. 
 
Second Marriage of Lord Aahhurton. 195 
 
 Lord Ashburton lias wedded again— a Miss Stuart Mackenzie — 
 and they are off to Egypt about a fortnight ago. * The clianges of 
 this age,' as minstrel Bums has it, * which fleeting Time pro- 
 cureth ! ' Ah me I ah me I 
 
 Carlyle sighed ; but the second Lady Ashburton became 
 the guardian genius of the Cheyne liow household ; to 
 Mrs. Carlyle the tenderest of sisters, to Carlyle, especially 
 after his own bereavement, sister, daughter, mother, all 
 that can be conveyed in the names of the warmest human 
 ties. . . But the acquaintance had yet to begin. Miss 
 Stuart Mackenzie had hitherto been seen by neither of 
 them. 
 
CHAPTER XXY. 
 
 A.D. 1859-62. JET. 64-67. 
 
 Effects of a Literary Life upon the Character — Evenings in Cheyne 
 Bow — Summers in Fife — Visit to Sir George Sinclair, Thurso 
 Castle — Mrs. Carlyle's Health — Death of Arthur Clough — In- 
 timacy with Mr. Euskin— Party at the Grange — ^Description 
 of John Keble — ' Unto this Last.' 
 
 ]^o one who has read the letters of Carlyle in the preced- 
 ing chapters can entertain a doubt of the tenderness of his 
 heart, or of liis real gratitude to tliose relations and friends 
 who were exerting themselves to be of use to him. As 
 little can anyone have failed to notice the waywardness of 
 his humour, the gusts of ' unjust impatience' and ^ sulky 
 despair ' with which he received sometimes their best en- 
 deavours to serve him, or, again, the remorse w^ith which 
 he afterwards reflected on his unreasonable outbursts. 
 ' The nature of the beast ' was the main explanation. His 
 temperament was so constituted. It could not be altered, 
 and had to be put up with, like changes of weather. But 
 nature and circumstances worked together ; and Lord Jef- 
 frey had judged rightly when he said that literature w^as 
 not the employment best suited to a person of Carlyle's 
 disposition. In active life a man works at the side of 
 others. He has to consider them as well as himself. He 
 has to check his impatience, he has to listen to objections 
 even when he knows that he is rights He must be content 
 to give and take, to be indifferent to trifles, to know and 
 feel at all times that he is but one among many^ who have 
 
Temptations of a Literary Life, 197 
 
 all their humours. Every day, every hour teaches him 
 the necessity of self-restraint. The man of letters has no 
 such wholesome check upon himself, lie lives alone, 
 thinks alone, works alone. He must listen to his own 
 mind ; for no other mind can help him. Ho requires cor- 
 lection as others do ; but he must be his own school- 
 master. His peculiarities are part of his originality, and 
 may not be eradicated. The friends among whom ho 
 lives are not the partners of his employment ; they share 
 in it, if they share at all, only as instruments or depend- 
 ants. Thus he is an autocrat in his own circle, and ex- 
 posed to all the temptations which beset autocracy. Ho is 
 subject to no will, no law, no authority outside himself ; 
 and the finest natures suffer something from such un- 
 bounded independence. . . . Carlyle had been made by 
 nature sufficiently despotic, and needed no impulse in that 
 direction from the character of his occupations, — while his 
 very virtues helped to blind him when it would have been 
 better if he could have been more on his guard. He knew 
 that his general aim in life was pure and unselfish, and 
 that in the use of his time and talents he had nothing to 
 fear from the sternest examination of his stewardship. 
 His conscience was clear. His life from his earliest years 
 had been pure and simple, without taint of selfish ambi- 
 tion. He had stood upright always in many trials. He 
 had become at last an undisputed intellectual sovereign 
 over a large section of his contemporaries, who looked 
 to him as disciples to a master whose word was a law to 
 their belief. And thus habit, temperament, success itself 
 had combined to deprive hini of the salutary admonitions 
 with which the wisest and best of mortals cannot entirely 
 dispense. From first to last he was surrounded by people 
 who allowed him his own way, because tliey felt his supe- 
 riority — who found it a privilege to minister to him as they 
 became more and more conscious of his greatuees — who. 
 
198 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 when their eyes were open to his defects, were content to 
 put lip with them, as the mere accidents of a nervously 
 sensitive organization. 
 
 This was enough for friends who could be amused by 
 peculiarities from which they did not personally suffer. 
 But for those who actually lived with him — for his wife 
 especially, on whom the lire-sparks fell first and always, 
 and who could not escape from them — the trial was hard. 
 The central grievance was gone, but was not entirely for- 
 gotten. His letters had failed to assure her of his affec- 
 tion, for she thought at times that they must be written 
 for his biographer. She could not doubt his sincerity 
 when, now after his circumstances became more easy, he 
 gave her free connnand of money ; when, as she could no 
 longer walk, he insisted that she should have a brougham 
 twice a week to drive in, and afterwards gave her a car- 
 riage of her own. But affection did not prevent outbursts 
 of bilious humour, under which, for a whole fortnight, she 
 felt as if she was ' keeper in a mad-house.' When he was 
 at a distance from her he was passionately anxious about 
 ]ier health. "When he was at home, his own discomforts, 
 real or imaginary, left no room for thought of others. 
 ' If Carlyle wakes once in a night,* she said to me, '.he 
 will complain of it for a week. I wake thirty times every 
 night, but that is nothing.' l^otwithstanding all his res- 
 olutions, notwithstanding the fall of ' the scales from his 
 eyes ' and the intended amendment for the future, things 
 relapsed in Cheyne Bow after Carlyle returned from Ger- 
 many, and settled again to his work, much into their old 
 condition. Generally the life was smooth and uneventful, 
 but" the atmosphere was always dubious, and a disturbed 
 sleep or an indigestion would bring on a thunder-storm. 
 Mrs. Carlyle grew continually more feeble, continual ner- 
 vous anxiety allowing her no chance to rallj^ ; but her 
 indomitable spirit held her up ; she went out little in the 
 
Mrs. CarlyUa Health. 199 
 
 evenings, but she had her own small tea parties, and the 
 talk was as brilliant as ever. Carlyle worked all day, 
 rode late in tlie 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 come in, take possession of the 
 conversation and deliver himself in a stream of splendid 
 monologue, wise, tender, scornful, humorous, as the in- 
 clination took him — but never bitter, never malignant, 
 always genial, the fiercest denunciations ending in a burst 
 of laughter at his own exaggerations. Though I knew 
 things wei*e not altogether well, and her drawn, suffering 
 face haunted me afterwards 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 passed the next two or three years ; he toiling on un- 
 weariedly, dining nowhere, and refujiing to be disturbed — 
 contenting himself with now and then sending his brother 
 word of his general state. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : March 14, 1859. 
 We go along here in the common way, or a little below it, nei- 
 ther of us specially definable as ill, but suflfering (possibly from 
 the muddy torpid weather), under unusual feebleness, and wishing 
 we were a httle 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 jiower of eat'mrf 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 com- 
 plains of. ' We must do the best we can for a living, boy ! ' As 
 to me, the worat is a fatal inabiUty 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 dei>ends almost altogether on 
 vivacity of nerves. The remedy is . . . there is no remedy 
 but boring along mole-hke or mulo-iike, and refusing to lie down 
 •altogether. 
 
200 Carlyle's Life in London, 
 
 In June after ' months of uselessness and wretchedness,' 
 he was ' tumbled ' into what he called ' active chaos,' i.e. , 
 he took a house for the summer at Hum hie, near Aber- 
 dour in Fife. The change was not very successful. He 
 had his horse with him, and ' rode fiercely about, haunted 
 by the ghosts of the past.' Mrs. Carlyle followed him 
 down. John Carlyle was charged to meet her at Edin- 
 burgh, and see her safe for the rest of her journey. 'Be 
 good and soft with her,' he said, ' you have no notion whar<i 
 ill any flurry or fuss does her, and I know always how 
 kind your thoughts are, and also hers, in spite of any flaw& 
 that may arise.' Was it that he could not ' reck his own 
 rede ! ' or was Mrs. Carlyle herself exaggerating, when she 
 described the next fortnight with him at Humbie, as like 
 being in a ' madhouse ' ? They went afterwards to th^ 
 cousins at Auchtertool, and from Auchtertool she wrot(? 
 the sad letter to a young friend in London w^ho had asked 
 to be congratulated on her marriage.^ They remained in 
 Sxjotland till the end of September. At Chelsea again, on 
 the 3rd of October, he wrote a few words in his journal^ 
 the last entered there for several years. 
 
 ' Returned Saturday night from a long miscellaneous sojourn in 
 Scotland which has lasted veiy idly and not too comfortably since 
 the last days of June. Bathing, solitary riding, walking, one or 
 two fits of cataiThal 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 ! We looked at the 
 place of gi-aves Tuesday last. There at least is peace ; there is 
 rest. Foolish tears almost surprised me.' 
 
 There was a short visit to the Grange in January (1860), 
 another in April to Lord Sandwich at Hinchinbrook — 
 from which he was frightened away prematurely by the 
 
 1 Letters and Memorials, vol. ii. p. 141. 
 
Visit to Thurso Castle. 201 
 
 arrival of Hepworth Dixon. Ho had evidently been 
 troublesome at home, for from Hinchinbrook he wrote to 
 his wife begging her * to be patient with him.' * He 
 was the unhappy animal, but did not mean ill.' With 
 these exceptions, and a week at Brighton in July, he 
 stayed fixed at his desk, and in August, leaving his wife 
 in London, where nervousness had reduced her to the 
 brink of a bilious fever, ho went off, taking his work with 
 him, to stay at Thurso Castle with Sir George Sinclair. 
 There he remained several weeks in seclusion as complete 
 as he could wish. His letters were full and regular, though 
 they did not give entire satisfaction. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Ckn-lyle, 
 
 Off Aberdeen Harbour : Angust 3, 186a 
 Arrived here after what they call an excellent voyage, which in- 
 deed has had good weather and all other fine qualities except that 
 finest, the possibility of reasonable sleeping. I have seldom seen 
 such an overcrowded piggery of a place as we had to try that lat- 
 ter operation in. 
 
 I did manage a little, however, each night. I feel wonderfully 
 tolerable after all is done ; the sound in my ears either gone or 
 else lost amid other innumerable clankings, snorings, and clang- 
 oui-8. Thank God we are got so far with success. Could I only 
 hear that my i>oor Jeannie is a Uttle come round again, now that 
 thq noises and distiurbances from my side of the house are done. 
 
 Thorso Castle : August 6, 1860. 
 Saturday— wet, dreary, gaunt, and strange— was a little dis- 
 piriting, in spite of the cordial and eager welcome of all these 
 good people. But that night I had a capital sleep. Next morn- 
 ing I contrived to shirk church (which I shall 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 visible ; only the grand ever-mui-muring sea ; 
 I'entland Frith clear as crystal, with Orkney Hoy Island, a fine 
 precipitous sea-girt mountain, to our left, and Dunnet Head some 
 six or seven miles ahead. There I sate and sauntered in the de- 
 voutest, quietest, and handsomest mood I have been in for many 
 
202 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 months. Then I read, bathed carefully, and set out vigorously 
 walking to arrive warm and also punctual. In short, dear, I did 
 well yesterday and have had again a tolerable sleep. Nay, have 
 gol my affairs settled, so to speak ; breakfast an hour before the 
 family (who don't get into their worship, &c., till ten), am not to 
 show face at all till three p.m. and mean actually to try some 
 work. If I can it will be very fine for me. 
 
 The little butler here seems one of the cleverest, willingest 
 creatures I have seen for a long time, and is zealously anxious 
 (as hitherto all and sundry are) to oblige the monster come among 
 them. 
 
 Thurso, visible, about two gunshots off, from one of my win- 
 dows, is a poor grey town, treeless, with one or two steam-engines 
 in it, and a dozen or two of fishing-boats. Nor is Thurso 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 charm- 
 ing ; a j)lace built at three different times, from 1664 downwards 
 (quite modern this my northern side of it), with four or five poor 
 candle-extinguisher-like towers in different parts, very bare, but 
 trim, with walks and sheltering offices and walls. No saddle 
 horse ; not even a saddle shelty ; but there is a carriage and 
 pair for the womankind, with whom I have not yet gone, though I 
 mean to. 
 
 August 14. 
 My dear little Goody, — 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 scorn- 
 ful condemnation of my descriptive performance (which I can as- 
 sure you was not done for the sake of future biographers, nor 
 done at all except with considerable pain and inconvenience and 
 at the very first moment possible in my gloom and sickliness, if 
 you had known of it). But all feelings were swallowed up in one 
 — grief and alarm at the sleepless, excited, and altogether j)aintul 
 state my poor little Jeannie had evidently got into. A long letter 
 was to have been written yesterday afternoon after work and bath- 
 ing and dinner were well over. But, alas ! at dinner (which had 
 been unexpectedly crowded forward to two p.m. instead of three, 
 and had sent me into the sea and back again at full gallop, not to 
 miss the essential daily bath) — at dinner, which I found them de- 
 
Thurso Caatle, 203 
 
 nominating luncheon, I was informed that three miles off, at some 
 
 Highland loird's named Major — '■ , there stood an engagement 
 
 for me of a' strict natuie, and that there I was to dine. Nimmer 
 ttnd Nimmei'mehr. The major hod not even asked me. I want no 
 acquaintance with any laird or major. I positively cannot go. It 
 was in vain tliat 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 veiy j^retty Highland place, and a 
 smart douce little daughter who imade the Caithness dialect beau- 
 tiful. Of myself I will say only that 1 have cunningly adjusted 
 my hours ; am called at eight, bathe as at home, run out from 
 heat : breakfast privately^ and by this means shii'k * prayers ' — 
 am at work by ten, bathe at two, and do not show face till three. 
 After which comes walking, comes probably driving. Country 
 equal to Craigenputtock for picturesque eSectSy plus 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 splendidly. 
 
 Carljle abhorred the * picturesque ' when sought after 
 of set purpose. He was exquisitely sensitive of natural 
 beauty, when lie came across it naturally and surrounded 
 by its own associations. Here is a finished picture which 
 he sent to his brother. 
 
 To John Carlyle, 
 
 Thurso : August 24, 1860. 
 I sit boring over my work, not idle quite, but v^ith little visible 
 result, and that has considerably weakened the strength of my \w- 
 sition here. I dimly intended to hold on for * about a month ; ' 
 and this is not unlikely to be the limit. Sir G. has always pro- 
 fessed to be clear for two months as the minimum, but will i)er- 
 haps be at bottom not so avcrs^ to the shorter term, there being 
 such a cackle of grandchildren here, with governesses &c., whom 
 he sees to be a mere bore to me, though to him such a joy. Yes- 
 terday we went to »Tohn o' Groats actually. It is about twenty 
 miles from us to the little seaside inn. There you dismount, walk 
 
204 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 to Groats, i.e. to the mythic site of Groats — a short mile — thence 
 two rather long ones to the top of Duncansby Head. 
 
 It 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 betwe^ sand and farm-field a glacis or steep 
 slope, which is also covered with grass, in some places thick with 
 meadow-sweet, * Queen of the Meadows,' and quite odoriferous as 
 well as trim. The island of Stroma 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 traceable in frag- 
 ments, sticking in the sand, or leant on harrows 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, as at the bottom of a kind of scoop 
 rising slowly behind into highish country, ditto to west, though 
 not into great heights at all, and the big Duncansby quite grandly 
 screening it both from E. and N.E.; and all was so admirably 
 still and solitary : extensive Cheviot sheep nibbling all about, and 
 no other living thing, like a dream. The Orkneys, Eonald Shay, 
 Skerries, &c., lay dim, dreamlike, with a beauty as of sorrow in 
 the dim grey day. Groats' site appeared to me terribly like some 
 extinct farmer's lime-kiln. Eain broke out on coming home, and 
 I lost a good portion of my sleep last night by the adventure. 
 This is all I have to say of Groats or myself. 
 
 Amid these scenes, and heartily conscious of his host's 
 kind consideration for him, he stayed out his holiday. He 
 had wished his wife to have a taste of Scotch air too be- 
 fore the winter, and had arranged that she should go to 
 his sister at the Gill. She had started, and was staying on 
 the way w^ith her friends the Stanleys at Alderley, when 
 her husband discovered that he could do no more at 
 Thurso, and must get home again. The period of his visit 
 had been indefinite. She had supposed that he would re- 
 main longer than he proposed to do. The delay of posts 
 and a misconstruction of meanings led Mrs. Carlyle to sup- 
 pose that he was about to return to Chelsea immediately, 
 and that her own presence there would be indispensable ; 
 
Thurso CdsUe. 205 
 
 and, with a resentment, 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 mistake 
 throughout, for he had intended himself to take Annan- 
 dale on his way home from Thurso ; but he had not been 
 explicit enough, and she did not spare him. He was very 
 miserable and very humble. He promised faithfully tliat 
 when at home again he would worry her no more 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 protection to your poor sick fancy than a new disturbance. Be 
 still ; be quiet. I swear to do thee no mischief at all. 
 
 Alas ! he might swear ; but with the excellentest inten- 
 tions, he was an awkward companion for a nervous, suffer- 
 ing woman. He had meant no mischief. It was impossi- 
 ble that he could have meant it. His misfortune was that 
 he had no perception. He never understood that a deli- 
 cate lady was not like his own robuster kindred, and might 
 be shivered into fiddle- strings while they would only have 
 laughed. 
 
 This was his last visit to Scotland before the completion 
 of ' Frederick.' A few words to Mr. Erskine, who had 
 written to inquire about his wife, give a more accurate ac- 
 count of his own condition than it gave of hers. 
 
 To Thomas Erskinet Esq. 
 
 Chelsea : October 12, 1860. 
 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 audi- 
 ble. I have sunk silent, humiliated, endeavouring 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 world 
 awakens in me either piety or else despair. Why have I not a 
 
206 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 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 
 loyallest quadrupeds. That perhaps is the finest item in the horo- 
 scope. 
 
 The ' improved footing ' as to servants had been Car- 
 Ijle's own arrangement. In his wife's weakened condition 
 he thought it no longer right that she should be left to 
 struggle on with a single maid-of-all-work. He had in- 
 sisted that she should have a superior class of woman as 
 cook and housekeeper, with a girl to assist. He himself 
 was fixed to his garret room again, rarely stirring out ex- 
 cept to ride, and dining nowhere save now and then with 
 Forster, to meet only Dickens, who loved him with all his 
 heart. 
 
 The new year brought the Grange again, where Mrs. 
 Carlyle was now as glad to go as before she had been re- 
 luctant. 
 
 Everybody (he wrote) as kind as possible, especially the lady. 
 This party small and insignificant ; nobody but ourselves and 
 Venables, an honest old dish, and Kingsley, a new, of higher pre- 
 tensions, but inferior flavour. 
 
 The months went by. On March 27 a bulletin to his 
 brother says : — ' I have no news ; nothing but the old si- 
 lent 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 solitude, a daily and nightly es- 
 cort of confused babblements, and thoughts not cheerful 
 to speak of, yet with hope more legible at times than for- 
 merly, and on the whole with health better rather than 
 worse.' 
 
 In this year he lost a friend whom he valued bej^ond 
 any one of the younger men whom he had learnt to know. 
 Arthur Clough died at Florence, leaving behind him, of 
 work accomplished, a translation of Plutarch, a volume of 
 
Death of Arthur Cloxujh, 207 
 
 poems (which by-and-by, when the sincere writing of this 
 ambitious age of ours is sifted from the insincere, may 
 survive as an evidence of what lie might have been had 
 fuhiess of years been granted to him), and, besides these, a 
 beautiful memory in the minds of those who had known 
 liim. I knew what Carlyle felt about him, and I tried to 
 induce him to wnte some few words which might give 
 tliat memory an enduring form. 
 
 I quite agree in what you say of poor Clough (he replied). A 
 man more vivid, ingenious, veracious, mildly radiant, I have sel- 
 dom 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 moment had been guaranteed to * Fred- 
 ei-ick.' Clough was gone ; but another friendship had 
 been formed which v^as even more precious to Carlyiu. 
 He had long been acquainted with Ruskin, but hitherto 
 there had been no close intimacy between them, aH not 
 being a subject especially interesting to him. But Iluskin 
 was now writing his * Letters on Political Economy ' in the 
 'Coi-nh ill Magazine.' The world's scornful anger wit- 
 nessed to the effect of his strokes, artd Carlyle was de- 
 lighted. Political Economy had been a creed while it 
 pretended to be a science. Science rests on reason and 
 experiment, and can meet an opponent with cahnness. A 
 creed is always sensitive. To express a doubt of it shakes 
 its authority, and is therefore treated as a moral ofFence. 
 One loo"ks back with amused interest on that indignant 
 outcry now, when the pretentious science lias ceased to 
 answer a political purpose and has been banished by its 
 chief professor to the exterior ])lanet8. 
 
 But Carlyle had hitherto been preaching alone in the 
 wilderness, and rejoiced in this new ally, lie examined 
 Iluskin more can'rulh He ^a\v. as who that looked 
 
208 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 could help seeing, that here was a true * man of genius,' 
 peculiar, uneven, passionate, but wielding in his hand real 
 levin bolts, not mere flashes of light merely — but fiery ar- 
 rows which pierced, where they struck, to the quick. He 
 was tempted one night to go to hear Ruskin lecture, not 
 on the ' Dismal Science,' but on some natural phenomena, 
 which Ruskin, while the minutest observer, could convert 
 into a poem. ' Sermons in Stones ' had been already Car- 
 lyle's name for ' The Stones of Venice.' Such a preacher 
 he was willing to listen to on any subject. 
 
 To John Garlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : April 23, 1861. 
 Friday last I was persuaded — in fact had unwarily compelled 
 myself, as it were — to a lecture of Buskin's at the Institution, Al- 
 bemarle-street. Lecture on Tree Leaves as physiological, picto 
 rial, 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 lecture ; ' but only did from 
 embarras des richesses — a rare case. Ruskin did blow asunder as 
 by gunpowder explosions 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 was a mere episode, however, in a life which was 
 as it were chained down to ' an undoable task.' Months 
 w^ent by ; at last the matter became so complicated, and 
 the notes and corrections so many, that the printers were 
 called in to help. The rough fragments of manuscript 
 were set in type that he might see his way through them. 
 
 You never saw such a jumble of horrors as the first j)roofs are 
 (he said in rex)orting the result). In my bewildering indexle^^ 
 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 articulation it must have — will disclose itself to me, 
 overlooked by the fifty Dryasdusts I have been consulting. 
 
 Alas ! (he cries at another time) my poor old limbs are nothing 
 
Views on the American Civil War. 209 
 
 like so equal to this work as they once were ; a fact that, but an 
 irremediable one. Si^ldom was a \)oot man's heart so near broken 
 by utter weariness, disgust, and long-continued despair over an 
 undoable job. The only point is, said heart must not break alto- 
 gether, hvLtfinWi if it can. 
 
 No leisure — leisure even for thought — could be spared 
 to otlicr subjects. Even the great phenomenon of tlio 
 century, the civil war in America, passed by him at its 
 opening without commanding his serious attention. To 
 him that tremendous struggle for the salvation of the 
 American nationality was merely the efflorescence of the 
 * Nigger Emancipation ' agitation, which he had always 
 despised. *No war ever raging in my time,' he said, 
 when the first news of the fighting came over, ' was to me 
 more profoundly foolish-looking. Neutral I am to a de- 
 gree : I for one.' lie spoke of it scornfully as * a smoky 
 chimney which had taken fire.' When provoked to say 
 something about it publicly, it was to write his brief Ilias 
 Americaiia in mice. 
 
 Peter of the North (to Paul of the South) : Paul, you unaccount- 
 able scoundrel, I find you hire your servants for life, not by the 
 month or year as I do. You aie going sti*aight to Hell, you 
 
 Paul : Good words, Peter. The risk is my own. I am willing 
 to take the risk. Hire you your sen^ants 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 manage it.'] 
 
 T. C. 
 
 At the Grange, where he had gone in January, 1862, the 
 subject was of course much talked of. The Argyles were 
 there, the Sartoris's, the Kingsleys, the Bishop of Oxford, 
 Milnes, Venables, and others. The Duke and Duchess 
 were strong for the North, and there was much arguing, 
 
 < MacviUlan*» Magazine^ Atigust, 1868.— Carlyle admitted to me after the war 
 ended that perhaps he had not seen into the liottom of the matter. Nererthe- 
 leaa, he republished the Uia» in his Collected Works. 
 Vol. IV.— 14 
 
210 Carlyle^s Life i7i London. 
 
 not to Carlyle's satisfaction. The Bishop and he were 
 always pleased to meet each other, but he was not equally 
 tolerant of the Bishop's friends. Of one of these there is 
 a curious mention in a letter written from the Grange 
 during this visit. Intellect was to him a quality which only 
 showed itself in the discovery of truth. In science no 
 man is allowed to be a man of intellect who uses his facul- 
 ties to go ingeniously wrong. Still less could Carljde ac- 
 knowledge the presence of such high quality in those who 
 went wrong in more important subjects. Cardinal New- 
 man, he once said to me, had not the intellect of a mod- 
 erate-sized rabbit. He was yet more uncomplimentary to 
 another famous person whom the English Church has 
 canonized. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 The Grange : January, 1862. 
 We are a brisk party here, full of locomotion, speculation, and 
 really are in some sort agreeable to one another. The Bear, the 
 Duke, with the womankind wholly, are off some twenty miles, 
 mostly in an open carriage. The Bishop is gone with them, to 
 see some little ape called 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, daylight 
 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 speak much to her. Find the Nigger 
 question much a topic with her, and by no means a safe one. 
 
 'Frederick,' meanwhile, was making progress, though 
 but slowly. The German authorities he found to be raw 
 metallic matter, unwrought, unorganised, the ore nowhere 
 smelted out of it. It is curious that on the human side of 
 things the German genius should be so deficient, but so it 
 is. We go to them for poetry, philosophy, criticism, the- 
 
Meivtal Dialogue. 211 
 
 ology. They have to come to us for a biography of their 
 greatest poets and the history of their greatest king. The 
 standard Life of Goethe in Germany is Lewes's; the 
 standard History of Frederick is Carlyle's. Bat the labour 
 was desperate, and told heavily both ,on him and on his 
 wife. When the summer came she went for change to 
 Folkestone. He in her absence was like a forsaken child. 
 
 Nothing is wrong about the house here (he wrote to her), nor 
 liave I failed in sleep or had other misfortune ; nevertheless, I am 
 dreatlfully low-spirited, and feel like a child wishing Mammy back 
 [itaUcs his own]. Perhaps, too, she is as well away for the mo- 
 ment. The truth is, I am under medical appliances, which ren- 
 ders me for this day the wretchedest nearly of all the sons of 
 Adam not yet condemned, in fact, to the gallows. I have not 
 spoken one word to anybody since you went away. Oh ! for God's 
 sake, take care of yourself ! In the earth I have no other. 
 
 Again, a few days later ; — 
 
 July 3, 1S62. 
 Silence, even of the saddest, sadder than death, is often prefer- 
 able to shake the nonsense out of one. Last night, in getting to 
 bed, I said to myself at last, ' Impossible, sir, that you have no 
 friend in the big Eternities and Immensities, or none but Death, 
 as you whimper to yourself. You have had friends who, before the 
 birth of you even, were good to you, and did give you several 
 things. Know that you have friends unspeakably important, it 
 appears, and let not their aweful looks or doings quite terrify you. 
 You require to have a heart like theirs in some sort. Who knows? 
 And fall asleep upon that honourable pillow of whinstone.' 
 
 This was a singular dialogue for a man to hold with 
 himself. 'A spectre moving in a world of spectres' — 
 * one mass of burning sulphur ' — these also were images 
 in which he now and then described his condition. At 
 siH'li times, if his little finger ached he imagined that no 
 inoi tal had ever suffered so before. If his liver was amiss 
 he was a chained Prometheus with the vulture at his 
 breast, and eai-th, ether, sea, and sky were invoked to 
 witness his injuries, Wlion the fit was on liim ho could 
 
212 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 not, would not, restrain himself, and now when Mrs. 
 Carljle's condition was so delicate, her friends, medical 
 and others, had to insist that thej must be kept apart as 
 much as possible. He himself, lost as he was without her, 
 felt the necessity, and when she returned from Folkestone 
 he sent her off to her friend Mrs. Russell in Mthsdale. 
 Some one, I know not who, wrote to entreat her to stay 
 away as long as possible. The letter runs : — 
 
 I hope you do not think of returning home. Should Mr. Car- 
 
 lyle become rampageous I will set Mrs. on to pray for him. 
 
 Should you, during your absence, require any transaction in 
 London to be carried out with more than usual intelUgence and 
 finesse, remember Mi. 
 
 But no one was more anxious than Carlyle himself now 
 was that she should be saved from worries. As soon as 
 he had clearly recognised how ill she was, his own griev- 
 ances disappeared. There was no ' rampaging.' He was 
 all that was thoughtful and generous. He called himself 
 a ' desultory widow,' but he tried his best to be happy in 
 his desertion, or at least to make her believe him so. 
 . . . She was afraid of costing him money. ' I posi- 
 tively order, he wrote to her, that there be no pinching 
 about money at all. Fie, fie ! Here is a draft, which Dr. 
 Russell, as banker, will pay when you ask.' Not a com- 
 plaint escaped him in his daily letters. All was repre- 
 sented as going well ; ' Frederick ' was going well ; the 
 sleep was w^ell ; the servants were doing well. Fruit, 
 flowers, cream, <fec., came regularly in from Addiscombe — 
 game boxes came with the grouse season. There was a 
 certain botheration from visitors — ' dirty wretches ' would 
 call and be troublesome. It was the year of the second 
 Exhibition, which I believe Carlyle never entered, but 
 which brought crowds to London — a party from Edinburgh 
 among the rest who were well anathematized : but some 
 one came now and then who was not ' dirty,' and on the 
 
Ir^royrenH of ^ Frederick, ^ 213 
 
 whole the book went "forward, and he himself worked, and 
 rode, and grumbled at nothing, save the Scotch Sunday 
 Post arrangements, which interrupted his correspondence. 
 
 * Truly,' he said * that Phariseean Sabbath and mode of 
 disarming Almighty wrath by something better than the 
 secret pour lui plaire is getting quite odious to me, or in- 
 convenient rather, for it has long been odious enough.' 
 
 The third volume of ' Frederick ' was finished and 
 published this summer. The fourth volume was getting 
 into type, and the fifth and last was partly written. The 
 difficulties did not diminish ; ' one only consolation there 
 was in it, that ' Frederick ' w^as 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 Mount Horeb wilderness, 
 but the beggarly ' Creca Moss ' one. Then at other times I think 
 with myself, * Creca,' and the Infinite of ban'en, brambly moor is 
 under Heaven too. "What 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. 
 
 He rarely looked at reviews. He hardly ever read a 
 newspaper of any kind. I do not remember that I ever 
 saw one in his room. For once, however, he made an 
 exception in favour of a notice of his last volume in the 
 
 * Saturday.' 
 
 It was by Venables (he said), not a bad thing at all — excellent 
 in comimrison to much that I supi)ose to be going, though I have 
 only read this and one other. They really do me no ill, the 
 adverse ones, or inconceivably little, and hardly any good, the 
 most flattering of the friendly. In my bitter solitary straggle, 
 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. What am I to them in the presence 
 of very fate and fact ? 
 
214 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 He had one other great pleasure this summer. Ruskin's 
 ' Unto this Last,' a volume of essays on political economy, 
 was now collected and re-published. Carlyle sent a copy 
 to Mr. Erskine, with the following letter: — 
 
 To T. Erskine, Linlathen. 
 
 Chelsea : August 4, 1863. 
 
 Dear Mr. Erskine, — Here is a very bright little book of Ruskin's, 
 which, if you have not already made acquaintance with it, is ex- 
 tremely well worth reading. Two years ago, when the Essays 
 came out in the fashionable magazines, there rose 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 physiognomy for a long time past to the 
 unenchanted eye, and peremjotorily bid it prepare to quit this 
 afflicted earth, as R. has done to several things before now. He 
 seems to me to have the best talent for preaching 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 whether 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 hope), 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 slum- 
 brous mankind, kept the soul of 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 arriving we know 
 where in consequence. I have read nothing that pleased me bet- 
 ter for many a year than these new Ruskiniana. 
 
 I am sitting here in the open air under an awning with docu- 
 mentary 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 still have, it may be possible. I must stand to it or do worse. 
 . . . London has not been so noisy and ugly for ten years, but 
 this too is ending. . . . Adieu, dear friend ! 
 
 Yours ever, T. Caelyle. 
 
CHAPTER XXYI. 
 
 A.D. 1864. ^T. 69. 
 
 Pers<mal intercom-se— Daily habits— Charities — Conversation — 
 Modem science and its tendencies — Faith without sight — 
 Bishop Coleuso — The 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 my account of Carlyle has been taken from written 
 memorials, letters, diaries, and autobiographic fragments. 
 For the future the story will form itself round my own 
 personal intercourse with him. Up to 1800 I had lived in 
 the country. 1 had paid frequent visits to London, and 
 while there had seen as much of Cheyne Row and its in- 
 habitants as Mrs. Carlyle would encourage. I had ex- 
 changed letters occasionally with her and her husband, 
 but purely on external subjects, and close personal inti- 
 macy 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 me, and said that he wished to see more of me — 
 wished me in fact to be his companion, so far as I could, 
 in his daily rides or walks. Ride with him I could not^ 
 having no horse; but the walks were most welcome — and 
 from that date, for twenty years, up to his own death, ex- 
 cept when either or both of us were out of town, I never 
 ceased to see him twice or three times a week, and to have 
 two or three' hours of conversation with him. The first 
 
216 Carlyle's Life in London, 
 
 of these walks I well remember, from an incident which 
 happened in the course of it. It was after nightfall. At 
 Iljde Park Corner, we found a blind beggar anxious to 
 cross over from Knightsbridge to Piccadill}^, 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 him to 
 see what he would do. His dog led him straight to a 
 public-house in Park Lane. We both laughed, and I sup- 
 pose I made some ill-natured remark. * Poor fellow,' was 
 all that Carlyle said ; ' he perhaps needs warmth and shel- 
 ter.' 
 
 This was the first instance that T observed of what I 
 found to be a universal habit with him. Though still far 
 from rich, he never met any poor creature, whose distress 
 was evident, without speaking kindly to him and helping 
 him more or less in one way or another. Archbishop 
 Whately said that to relieve street beggars was a public 
 crime. Carlyle thought only of their misery. ' Modern 
 life,' he said, ' doing its charity by institutions,' is a sad 
 hardener of our hearts. ' We should give for our own 
 sakes. It is very low water with the wretched beings, one 
 can easily see that.' 
 
 Even the imps of the gutters he would not treat as rep- 
 robates. He would drop a lesson in their way, sometimes 
 with a sixpence to recommend it. ... A small vagabond 
 was at some indecency. Carlyle touched him gently on 
 the back with his stick. ' Do you not know that you are 
 a little man,' he said, ' and not a whelp, that you behave 
 in this way ? ' There was no sixpence this time. After- 
 wards a lad of fourteen or so stopped us and begged. 
 Carlyle lectured him for beginning so early at such a trade, 
 told him how, if he worked, he might have a worthy and 
 respectable life before him, and gave him sixpence. The 
 
Carlijh as a Compa/nion. 217 
 
 boy shot off down the next alley. * There is a sermon 
 fallen on stony ground,* Carlyle said, * but we must do 
 what we can.' The crowds of children growing up iii 
 London affected him with real pain ; these small 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 liatred of waste. If 
 ' lie saw a crust of bread on the roadway he would stop to 
 pick it up and put it on a step or a railing. Some poor 
 devil might be glad of it, or at worst a dog or a sparrow. 
 To destroy wholesome food was a sin. He was veiy tender 
 about animals, especially dogs, who, like horses, if well 
 treated, were types of loyalty and fidelity. I horrified him 
 with a story of my Oxford days. The hounds had met at 
 Woodstock. They had drawn the covers without finding 
 a fox, and, not caring to have a blank day, one of the 
 whips had caught a passing sheepdog, rubbed its feet with 
 aniseed, and set it to run. It made for Oxford in its ter- 
 ror, the hounds in full cry behind. They caught the 
 wretched creature in a field outside the town, and tore it 
 to pieces. I never saw Carlyle more affected. He said it 
 was like a human soul flying for salvation before a legion 
 of fiends. 
 
 Occupied as he had always seepied to be with high-soar- 
 ing speculations, scornful as he had appeared, in the ' Lat- 
 ter-day Pamphlets,' of benevolence, philanthrop}^ and 
 small palliations of enormous evils, I had not expected so 
 much detailed compassion in little things. I found that 
 personal sympathy with suffering lay at the root of all his 
 thoughts ; and that attention to little things was as char^ 
 actei-istic of his conduct as it was of his intellect. 
 
 His^ conversation when we were alone together was even 
 more surprising to me. I had been accustomed to hear 
 him impatient of contradiction, extravagantly exaggera- 
 tive, overbearing opposition with bursts id scornful 
 
218 Carlyle's Life in London, 
 
 humour. In private I found liim impatient of nothing 
 but of being bored ; gentle, quiet,- tolerant ; sadly-\\\x- 
 moured, but never ^/Z-humoured ; ironical, but without the 
 savageness, and when speaking of persons always scrupu- 
 lously just. He saw through the 'clothes' of a man into 
 what he actually was. But the sharpest censure was 
 always qualified. He would say, 'If we knew how he 
 came to be what he is, poor fellow, we should not be hard 
 with him.' 
 
 But he talked more of things than of persons, and on 
 every variety of subject. He had read more miscellane- 
 ously than any man I have ever known. His memory was 
 extraordinary, and a universal curiosity had led him to 
 inform himself minutely about matters which I might 
 have supposed that he had never heard of. With English 
 literature he w^as as familiar as Macaulay was. French 
 and German and Italian he knew infinitely better than 
 Macaulay, and there was this peculiarity about him, that 
 if he read a book which struck him he never I'ested till he 
 had learnt all that could be ascertained about the writer 
 of it. Thus his knowledge was not in points or lines, but 
 complete and solid. 
 
 Even in his laughter he was always serious. I never 
 heard a trivial word from him, nor one which he had bet- 
 ter have left unuttered. He cared nothing for money, 
 nothing for promotion in the world. If his friends 
 gained a step anywhere he was pleased with it — but only 
 as worldly advancement might give them a chance of 
 wider usefulness. Men should think of their duty, he 
 said ; — let them do that, and the rest, as much as was 
 essential, ' would be added to them.' I was with him one 
 beautiful spring day under the trees in Hyde Park, the 
 grass recovering its green, the elm buds swelling, the 
 scattered crocuses and snowdrops shining in the sun. The 
 spring, the.^nnual resurrection from death to life, was es- 
 
Mistrust of Modetm Science, 219 
 
 pecially affecting to him. ' Beliold the lilies of the field ! ' 
 he said to nie ; * they toil not, neither do they spin. Yet 
 Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these. 
 AVhat a word was that? and the application was quite 
 tnie too. Take no thought for the morrow — CAre only for 
 what yon know to be right. That is flie rule.' 
 
 lie had a poor opinion of what is called science; of 
 political economy ; of utility as the basis of morals ; and 
 such-like, when they dealt a\ ith liuinan life, lie stood on 
 Kant's Categorical Imperative. Right was right, and 
 wrong was wrong, because God had so ordered ; and duty 
 and conduct could be brought under analysis only when 
 men had disowned their nobler nature, and were governed 
 by self-interest. Interested motives might be compmted, 
 and a science might grow out of a calculation of their 
 forces. But love of Truth, love of Righteousness — these 
 were not calculable, neither these nor the actions proceed- 
 ing out of them. 
 
 Sciences of natural things he always respected. Facts 
 of all kinds were sacred to him. A fact, whatever it 
 might be, was part of the constitution of the universe, and 
 so was related to the Author of it. Of all men that have 
 ever lived he honoured few more than Kepler. Kepler's 
 * laws ' he looked on as the grandest physical discovery 
 ever made by man ; and as long as philosophers were 
 content, like Kepler, to find out facts without building 
 theories on them to dispense with God, he had only good 
 to say of thiem. Science, however, in these latter days, 
 was stepping beyond its proper province, like the young 
 Titans trying to take heaven by storm. He liked ill men 
 like Humboldt, Laplace, or the author of the 'Vestiges.' 
 lie refused Darwin's transmutation of species as un- 
 proved ; he fought against it, though I could see ho 
 dreaded that it might turn out true. If man, as explained 
 by Science, wa& no more than a developed auiuial, aud 
 
220 Carlyle's Life in London, 
 
 conscience and intellect but developments of the functions 
 of animals, then God and religion were no more than in- 
 ferences, and inferences which might be lawfully dis- 
 puted. That the grandest achievements of human na- 
 ture had sprung out of beliefs which might be mere 
 illusions, Carlyle could not admit. That intellect and 
 moral sense should have been put into him by a Being 
 which had none of its own was distinctly not conceivable 
 to him. It jnight perhaps be that these high gifts lay 
 somewhere in the original germ, out of which organic life 
 had been developed ; that they had been intentionally and 
 consciously placed there by the Author of nature, whom 
 religious instincts had been dimly 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 
 science was to Lucretian Atheism ; to a belief that no ' in- 
 tention ' or intending mind was discoverable in the imi- 
 verse at all. If the life of man was no more than the life 
 of an animal — if he had no relation, or none which he 
 could discern, with any being higher than himself, God 
 would become an unmeaning word to him. Carlyle often 
 spoke of this, and with evident uneasiness. Earlier in his 
 life, while he was young and confident, and the effects of 
 his religious training w^ere fresh in him, he could fling off 
 the whispers of the scientific spirit with angry disdain ; 
 the existence, the omnipresence, the omnipotence of God, 
 were then the strongest of his convictions. The faith re- 
 mained unshaken in him to the end ; he never himself 
 doubted ; yet he was perplexed by the indifference with 
 which the Supreme Power was allowing its existence to 
 be obscured. I once said to him, not long before his 
 death, that I could only believe in a God which did some- 
 thing. With a cry of pain, w^hich I shall never forget, he 
 said, ' He does nothing.' For himself, however, his faith 
 stood firm. He did not believe in historical Christianity. 
 
Meligion and Materialism, 221 
 
 He did not believe that the facts alleged in the Apostles* 
 creed had ever really happened. The resurrection of Christ 
 was to him only a symbol of a spiritual truth. As Christ 
 rose from the dead, so were we to rise from the death of 
 Bin to the life of righteousness. Not that Christ had act- 
 ually died and had risen again. He was only believed to 
 have died and believed to have risen in an age when le- 
 gend was history, when stories were accepted as true from 
 their beauty or their significance. As long as it was sup- 
 posed that the earth was the centre of the universe, that 
 the sky moved round it, and that sun and moon and stars 
 had been set there for man's convenience, when it was the 
 creed of all nations that gods came down to the earth, and 
 men were taken into heaven, and that between the two re- 
 gions there was incessant intercourse, it could be believed 
 easily that the Son of God had lived as a man among men, 
 had descended like Hercules into Hades, and had returned 
 again from it. Such a story then presented no internal 
 difficulty at all. It was not so now. The soul of it was 
 eternally true, but it had been bound up in a mortal body. 
 The bmly of the belief was now perishing, and the soul of 
 it being discredited by its connection with discovered 
 error, was suspected not to be a soul at all ; half mankind, 
 betrayed and deserted, wei-e rushing off into materialism. 
 Kor was materialism the worst. Shivering at so blank a 
 prospect, entangled in the institutions which remained 
 standing when the life had gone out of them, the other 
 half were * reconciling faith with reason/ pretending to 
 believe, or believing that they believed, becoming hypo- 
 crites, conscious or unconscious, the last the worst of the 
 two. not daring to look the facts in the face, so that the 
 vorv sense of truth was withered in them. It was to make 
 love to delusion, to take falsehood delil)erately into their 
 hearts. For such souls there was no hope at all. Centu- 
 ries of spiritual anarchy lay before the world befoi-e sin- 
 
223 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 cere belief could again be generally possible among men 
 of knowledge and insight. With the half-educated and 
 ignorant it was otherwise. To them the existing religion 
 might still represent some real truth. There alone w^as 
 any open teaching of God's existence, and the divine sanc- 
 tion of morality. Each year, each day, as knowledge 
 spread, the power of the established religion was growing 
 less ; but it was not yet entirely gone, and it was the only 
 hold that was left on the most vital of all truths. Thus 
 the rapid growth of materialism had in some degree modi- 
 fied the views which Carlyle had held in early and mid- 
 dle life. Then the * Exodus from Houndsditch ' had 
 seemed as if it might lead immediately into a brighter re- 
 gion. He had come to see that it would be but an entry 
 into a wilderness, the promised land lying still far away. 
 His own opinions seemedjo be taking no hold. He had 
 cast his bread upon the waters and it was not returning 
 to him, and the exodus appeared less entirely desirable. 
 Sometimes the old fierce note revived. Sometimes, and 
 more often as he grew older, he wished the old shelter to 
 be left standing as long as a roof remained over it — as 
 long as any of us could profess the old faith with com- 
 plete sincerity. Sincerity, however, was indispensable. 
 For men who said one thing and meant anotlier, who en- 
 tered the Church as a profession, and throve in the world 
 by it, while they emasculated the creeds, and watered away 
 the histories— for them Carlyle had no toleration. Relig- 
 ion, if not honest, was a horror to him. Those alone he 
 thought had any right to teach Christianity who had no 
 doubts about its truth. Those who were uncertain ought 
 to choose some other profession, and if compelled to speak 
 should show their colours faithfully. Thirlwall, who dis- 
 charged his functions as a Macready, he never blamed to 
 me ; but he would have liked him better could he have 
 geen him at some other employment. The Essayists and. 
 
The Broad Church Cl^gy, 223 
 
 Reviewers, the Scptein contra Christum^ were in people's 
 montlis when my intimacy with Carlyle began. They did 
 not please liini. He considered that in continuing to be 
 clergymen they were playing tricks with their consciences. 
 The Dean of Westminster he liked personally, almost 
 loved him indeed, yet he could have wished him anywhere 
 but where he was. 
 
 * There goes Stanley,' he said one day as we passed the 
 Dean in the park, 'boring holes in the bottom of the 
 Church of England ! ' Colenso's book came out soon after. 
 I knew Colenso ; we met him in one of our walks. He 
 joined us, and talked of what he had done" with some slight 
 elation. * Poor fellow ! ' said Carlyle, as he went away ; * he 
 mistakes it for fame. He does not see that it is only an 
 extended pillory that he is standing on.' I thought and 
 think this judgment a harsh one. No one had been once 
 more anxious than Carlyle for the ' Exodus.' No one had 
 done more to bring it about than Colenso, or more bravely 
 faced the storm which he had raised, or, I may add, more 
 nobly vindicated, in later life, his general courage and 
 honesty when he stood out to defend the Zulus in South 
 Africa. Stanley spoke more truly, or more to his own 
 and Colenso's honour, when he told the infuriated Con- 
 vocation to its face, that the Bishop of Natal was the only 
 English prelate whose name would be remembered in the 
 next century. Partly, I believe, at my instance, Mrs. Car- 
 lyle invited Colenso to one of her tea-parties, but it was 
 evident that he suited her no better than her husband. I 
 told her so, and had this note in reply : — 
 
 Oh, my dear Mr. Froude, I surely couldn't have looked so borrl 
 as tliflt. I couldn't because I wasn't. I own to feeling rather 
 antipathetic to tliat anomalous bishop. A man arrived at the 
 years of discretion wearing an absurd little black silk apron, dis* 
 turbs my artistic feelings to begin with. Then consider whom I 
 am descended from, the woman who when J^ing James offered to 
 
224 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 make her husband a bishop if she would persuade him to return 
 to his country and be a peaceable subject, held up her apron and 
 answered, * I would rather kepp his head in there.'' Add to all this 
 fhat I strongly believe with a German friend of mine, that it is 
 the viixing up of things which is the Great Bad ! and that this par- 
 ticular l)ishop mixes up a black silk apron with arithmetical con- 
 futation of the Bible, and you will allow that I have better reason 
 than a woman usually has for first impressions, why I should not 
 take to Colenso. But I was really not bored that day. You came 
 ■\;\'ith him ; you were there ; and, without meaning ta say anything 
 pretty (which is far from my line), I am always so pleased to see 
 you, that were you to come acccompanied by the — th.Q— first gentle- 
 man in England, I should rather than that you didn't come at all. 
 
 Literature was another subject on which Carljle often 
 talked with me. In his Craigenputtock Essays he had 
 spoken of literature as the highest of human occupations, 
 as the modern priesthood, &c., and so to the last ho 
 thought of it when it was the employment of men whom 
 nature had furnished gloriously for that special task, like 
 Goethe and Schiller. But for the writing function in the 
 existing generation of EnglisJmien he had nothing but 
 contempt. A ' man of letters,' a man wlio had taken to 
 literature as a means of living, was generally some one 
 who had gone into it because he was unfit for better work, 
 because he was too vain or too self-willed to travel along 
 the beaten highways, and his writings, unless he was one 
 of a million, began and ended in nothing. Life was 
 action, not talk. The speech, the book, the review or 
 newspaper article was so much force expended— force lost 
 to practical usefulness. When a man had uttered his 
 thoughts, still more when he was always uttering them, 
 he no longer even attempted to translate them into act. 
 lie said once to me that England had produced her great- 
 est men before she began to have a literature at all. 
 Those Barons who signed their charter by dipping the 
 points of their steel gauntlets in the ink, had more mrtue^ 
 
ZUeratiire and the Value of It 225 
 
 manhoody practical force and wisdom than any of their 
 successors, and when the present disintegration had done 
 its work, and healthy organic tissue began to form again, 
 tongues would not clatter as they did now. Tliose only 
 would speak who had call to speak. Even the Sunday 
 sermons would cease to be necessary. A man was never 
 made wiser or better by talking or being talked to. He 
 was made better by being trained in habits of industry, by 
 being enabled to do good useful work and earn an honest 
 living by it. His excuse for his own life was that there 
 had been no alternative. Sometimes he spoke of his 
 writings as having a certain value ; generally, however, as 
 if they had little, and now and then as if they had none. 
 ' If there be one thing,' he said, ' for which I have no 
 special talent, it is literature. If I had been taught to do 
 the simplest useful thing, I should have been a better and 
 happier man. . All that I can say for myself is, that I have 
 done my best.' A strange judgment to come from a man 
 who has exerted so vast an influence by writing alone. Yet 
 in a sense it was true. If literature means the expression 
 by thought or emotion, or the representation of facts in 
 completely beautiful ybrm, Carlyle '<^?a* inadequately gifted 
 for it. But his function was not to please, but to instinct. 
 Of all human writings, those which perhaps have produced 
 the deepest effect on the history of the world have been 
 St. Paul's Epistles. What Carlyle had he had in common 
 with St. Paul : extraordinary intellectual insight, extraor- 
 dinary sincerity, extraordinary i-esolution to speak out the 
 truth as ho perceived it, as if driven on by some impelling 
 internal necessity. He and St. Paul — I know not of 
 whom else the same thing could be said — wrote as if they 
 were pregnant with some world-important idea, of which 
 they were labouring to be delivered, and the eflFect>' is the 
 more striking frum the abruptness and want of artifice iu 
 the utterance. Whether Carlyle would liave been happier, 
 Vol. IV.— 15 
 
226. Carlyle\s Life in London. 
 
 more useful, had he been otlierwise occupied, I cannot say. 
 He had a fine aptitude for all kinds of business. In any 
 practical problem, wliether of politics or private life, he 
 had his finger always, as if by instinct, on the point upon 
 which the issue would turn. Arbitrary as his tempera- 
 ment was, he could, if occasion rose, be prudent, forbear- 
 ing, dexterous, adroit. He would have risen to greatness 
 in any profession which he had chosen, but in such a 
 w^orld as ours he must have submitted, in rising, to the 
 * half -sincerities^ which are the condition of success. We 
 should have lost the Carlyle that we know. It is not cer- 
 tain that we should have gained an equivalent of him. 
 
 This is the sort of thing which I used daily to hear from 
 Carlyle. His talk was not always, of course, on such 
 grave matters. He was full of stories, anecdotes of his 
 early life, or of people that he had known. 
 
 For more than four years after our walks began, he was 
 still engaged with ' Frederick.' He spoke freely of what 
 was uppermost in his mind, and many scenes in the his- 
 tory were rehearsed to me before they appeared, Yoltaire, 
 Maupertuis, Chatham, Wolfe being brought up as living 
 figures. He never helped himself with gestures, but his 
 voice was as flexible as if he had been trained for the stage. 
 He was never tedious, but dropped out picture after pict- 
 ure in inimitable finished sentences. He was so quiet, 
 so unexaggerative, so well-humoured in these private con- 
 versations, that I could scarcely believe he was the same 
 person whom I used to hear declaim in the Pamphlet 
 time. JS^ow and then, if he met an acquaintance who 
 might say a foolish thing, there would come an angry 
 sputter or two ; but he was generally so patient, so for- 
 bearing, that I thought age had softened him, and I said 
 so one day to Mrs. Carlyle. She laughed and told him of 
 it. ' I wish,' she said, ' Froude had seen you an hour or 
 two after you seemed to him so lamblike.' But I was re- 
 
Ca/rlyle'a MetUal Refreshment, %%\ 
 
 lating what he was as I knew him, and as I always found 
 him from tirst to last. 
 
 To go on with the story : — 
 
 Through the winter of 1862-3 Mrs. Carlyle seemed 
 tolerably well. The weather was warm. She had no seri- 
 ous cold. She was very feeble, and lay chiefly on the sofa, 
 but she contrived to prevent Carlyle from being anxious 
 about her. He worked without respite, rode, except on 
 walking days, chiefly late in the afternoon, in the dark in 
 the winter months, about the environs of lx)ndon ; and the 
 roaring of tlie suburban trains and the gleam of the gree^ 
 and crimson signal lamps were wildly impressive to him. 
 On his return he would lie down in his dressing-gown by 
 the drawing-room fire, smoking up the chinmey, while she 
 would amuse him with accounts of her daily visitors. She 
 was a pei-fect artist, and could carve a literary vignette 
 out of the commonest materials. These were his happiest 
 hours, and his only mental refreshment. In !N^ovember, 
 1862, Lord Ashburton fell ill at Paris, and there were 
 fears for his life. ' His death,' Carlyle said, ^ would be a 
 heavy loss and sorrow to us, a black consummation of 
 what there has already been.' But the alarm passed off 
 for the time. *We are both of us,' he reported at the 
 end of December, * what we call well ; indeed, for my 
 own part, I am really in full average case, as if I had got 
 little or no permanent damage from this hideous pfluister 
 of a book, which 1 can hope is now looking towards its 
 finis. I have done the battle of Rossbach (Satan thank 
 it !). Battle of Leuthen, siege of Olmiitz lie in the rough 
 (not very bad, I hope). After that there is only Uoch- 
 kirch. Rigorous abridgment after that. One short book, 
 1 hope, will then end the Seven Years' "War ; and then 
 there is one other. After that, home, like the stick of a 
 rocket.' 
 
 Ajjo so far was dealing kindly with him. There was 
 
22S Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 no falling off in bodily strength. His eyes were failing 
 slightly, but they lasted out his life. His right hand had 
 begun to shake a little, and this unfortunately was to de- 
 velop till he was eventually disabled from writing ; but as 
 yet about himself there was nothing to give him serious 
 uneasiness. A misfortune, however, w^as hanging over 
 him of another kind, which threatened to upset the habits 
 of his life. All his days he had been a fearless rider. He 
 h^d a loose seat and a careless hand, but he had come to no 
 misfortune, owing, he thought, to the good sense of his 
 horse, which was much superior to that of most of his 
 biped acquaintances. Fritz, even Fritz,* was now to mis- 
 behave. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : February 13, 1863. 
 I have been very unlucky, or my excellent old horse was, twice 
 over last week, Tuesday and Friday. Think as you read. I had 
 let the old fellow rest on Monday. Tuesday I tumbled out, and 
 finding rain, snatched my mackintosh cloak and got away. Fritz 
 very lively ; wind so loud that, being then in crisis of interior, I 
 resolved to go at walk. Till the Marble Arch, Hyde Park, we did 
 very well, but the wdnd bejng right ahead, and mackintosh given 
 to rattle, the old scoundrel determined on a caper ; my hat blew 
 off me ; hands under the mackintosh. A labourer picked up the 
 hat, tried to wipe some of the mud off it, Fritz prancing all the 
 while. I had no coppers in my pocket, drew out my purse to give 
 sixpence to the man, crushed on the hat, and galloped home. At 
 night I discovered that I had no purse. In the tempest of rattling 
 and prancing and embarrassed hurrying, I had stuck it, not into 
 my pocket again, llut past my pocket, and it was gone, twelve or 
 ten shillings in it. That was misadventure first, Nichts zu he- 
 deiden in comparison. Till Friday I daily rode the old scoundrel. 
 On Friday, without the least warning or cause, he came smash 
 down, lying flat on the ground for one quarter of an instant, had 
 done me no mischief at all, sprang up and trotted half a mile 
 (greatly ashamed of himself, I suppose) ; when looking over his 
 shoulder I saw the blood streaming over his hoof, drew bridle, 
 dismounted, found the knees quite smashed, and except slowly 
 home have ridden no more since. _Jane will not hear of my ever 
 
Breakdmcn of Fritz. 2W 
 
 riding him again, nor in real truth is it proper. Finis there- 
 fore in that depai-tment. I have been extremely sorry for my 
 poor old fourfooted friend. Gam treu he constantly and won- 
 derfully was ; and now, what to do with myself ! or how to dis- 
 pose of poor Fritz. Of course I can sell him ; have him knocked 
 down at Tattersall's for a 10/. or an old song ; and then (as he 
 goes delirious imder violent usage and is frightened for running 
 swift in harness) get the poor creature scourged to death in a 
 honible way, after all • the 20,000 faithful miles he has carried 
 me, and the wild j^uddles and lonely dark times we have had 
 together. I cannot bear to think of that. He is a strong healthy 
 horse, loyal and peaceable and wise as horse ever was. 
 
 Fritz was sold for nine pounds. What became of him 
 further I never heard. Lady Asliburton supplied his 
 place with another, equally good 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 to Dickens's Reading, 8 p.m., Hanover 
 Rooms, to the complete upsetting of my evening habitudes and 
 spiritual composure. Dickens does do it capitally, such as it is ; 
 acts better than any Macready in the world ; a whole tragic, 
 comic, heroic theatre visible, iperforming under one hat, and keep- 
 ing us laughing — in a sorry way, some of us thought— the whole 
 night. He is a good creature, too, and makes fifty or sixty pounds 
 by each of these readings.' 
 
 From dinner parties he had almost wholly withdrawn, 
 but in the same letter he mentions one to which he had 
 been tempted by a new acquaintance, who grew after- 
 wards into a dear and justly valued friend, Miss Daven- 
 port Bromley, lie admired Miss Bromley from the first, 
 for her light, aiiy ways, and compared her to a ' flight of 
 larks.' 
 
 Summer came, and hot weather ; he descended from his 
 garret to the awning in the garden again. By August he 
 was tired, ' Frederick ' spinning out beyond expectation, 
 and he and Mrs. Carlyle went for a fortnight to the 
 Grange. Lord Ashburtou seemed to have recovered, but 
 
230 Oarlj/ys Life in London. 
 
 was very delicate. There was do party, only Yenables, 
 the guest of all others whom Carlyle best liked to meet. 
 The visit was a happy one, a gleam of pure sunshine be- 
 fore the terrible calamity which was now impending. 
 
 One evening, after their return, Mrs. Carlyle had gone 
 to call on a cousin at the post office in St. Martin's Lane. 
 She had come away, and was trying to reach an omnibus, 
 when she was thrown by a cab on the kerbstone. Her 
 right arm being disabled by neuralgia, she was unable to 
 break her fall. The sinews of one thigh were sprained 
 and lacerated, and she was brought home in a fly in dread- 
 ful pain. She knew that Carlyle would be expecting her. 
 Her chief anxiety, she told me, was to get into the house 
 Avithout his knowledge, to spare him agitation. For her- 
 self, she could not move. She stopped at the door of Mr. 
 Larkin, who lived in the adjoining house in Chejaie Row, 
 and asked him to help her. The sound of the wheels and 
 the noise of voices reached Carlyle in the drawing-room. 
 He rushed down, and he and Mr. Larkin together bore 
 her up the stairs, and laid her on her bed. There she re- 
 mained, in an agony which, experienced in pain as she 
 was, exceeded the 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 from him, 
 and during those first days a small incident happened, 
 which she herself described to me, showing the distracting 
 want of perception which sometimes characterized him — 
 a want of perception, not a want of* feeling, for no one 
 could have felt more tenderl3^ The nerves and muscles 
 were completely disabled on the side on which she had 
 fallen, and one effect was that the under jaw had dropped, 
 and that she could not close it. Carlyle always disliked an 
 open mouth ; he thought it a sign of foolishness. One 
 morning, when the pain was at its worst, he came into her 
 rooni, and stood looking at her, leaning on the mantel- 
 
Accidetit to Mrs. Carlyle. 231' 
 
 pisoe. * Jane,' he said pi-esently, * ye liad better shut your 
 mouth.' She tried to tell him that she could not. * Jane/ 
 lie began again, *ye'll Und yourself in a more compact and 
 pious frame of mind, if ye shut your mouth.' In old- 
 fashioned and, in him, perfectly sincere piiraseology he 
 told her that she ought to be thankful that the accident 
 was no worse. Mrs. Carlyle hated cant as heartily as he, 
 and to her, in her sore state of mind and body, such words 
 liad a tlavour of cant in them. True lierself. as steel, she 
 would not bear it. * Thankful ! ' she said to him ; ' thank- 
 ful for what ? for having been thrown down in the street 
 when I had gone on an errand of charity ? for being dis- 
 abled, crushed, made to suffer in this way ? I am not 
 thankful, and I will not say that I am.' He left her, say- 
 ing he was sorry to see her so rebellious. We can hardly 
 wonder after this that he had to report sadly to his brother: 
 * She speaks little to me, and does not accept me as a sick 
 nurse, which, truly, 1 had never any talent to be.' 
 
 Of course he did not know at first her real condition. 
 She had such indomitable courage that she persuaded him 
 that she was actually better off since she had become help- 
 less 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 was able to struggle to her feet and crawl occasion- 
 ally into the adjoining room. Carlyle was blind. Seven 
 weeks after the accident he could write : * She actually 
 sleeps better, eats better, and is cheerfuller than formerly. 
 For perhaps three weeks past she has been hitching about 
 with a stick. She can walk too, bnt slowly without stick. 
 In short she is doing well enough — as indeed am I, and 
 have need to be.' 
 
 lie had need to be, for he had just discovered that lie 
 could not end with * Frederick ' like a rocket-stick, but 
 that there must be a new vi^lumej and fur his sake, and 
 
232 Cariyle's Life in London, 
 
 knowing how the trutli, if he was aware o£ it, would agi- 
 tate him, with splendid heroism she had forced, herself 
 prematurely to her feet again, the mental resolution con- 
 quering the weakness of the body. She even received 
 visitors again, and in the middle of IN'ovember, I and my 
 own wife once more spent an evening there/ But it was 
 the last exertion which she was able to make. The same 
 night there came on neuralgic pain — rather torture than 
 pain — of which the doctor could give no explanation. ' A 
 mere cold,' he said, ' no cause for alarm ; ' but the weeks 
 went on and there was no abatement, still pain in every 
 muscle, misery in every nerve, no sleep, no rest from suf- 
 fering night or day — save in faint misleading 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 of those intervals, * trouble, anxiety, and confusion. Poor 
 Jane's state is such as to jfill 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 Barnes'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 cessation of all druggings 
 and opiate abominations. They did her a great deal of mischief 
 instead of any good. ... I still tiy 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 what wearing pain 
 slic passes her 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 change 
 and sea air. Dr. Blakeston, an accomplished physician at 
 
 1 Letters and Memorials^ vol. ii. p. 272. 
 
Alone in Cheyne Row. Hf^ 
 
 St. Leonards, whose wife was an old friend of Mrs. Car* 
 lyle, offered to receive her as a guest. She was taken 
 thither in a * sick carriage,' in constmction and appearance 
 something like a hearse, in the beginning of March. Car- 
 ]y\e attended her down, left her, with her cousin ^faL'^gie 
 Welsh, in the Blakestons' affectionate hands, and himself 
 i-eturned to his solitary home and task. There, in Hades 
 as he called it, he sate toiling on, watching for the daily 
 bulletins, now worse, now a little better, his own letters' 
 fidl of passionate grief and impatience with intruders, who 
 came with the kindest purpose to enquire, but- just then 
 could better have been spared. 
 
 ' I was left well alone last night,* he wrote on the 15th of March, 
 
 * and sate at least silent in my gloom. On Sunday came G. to en- 
 quire for Mrs. C. His enquiry an offence to me. I instantly 
 walked him out, but had to go talking with him, mere^re and 
 brimstone upon suet dumpling, progress of the species, &c. «tc., all 
 the way to Hyde Park. "What does the foolish ball of tallow want 
 with me?* 
 
 Sorrows did not come single. Ten days later came news 
 that Lord Ashburton was dead, the dearest friend that 
 had been left to him. As an evidence of regard Lord A. 
 had left him 2,000^., or rather had not left it, but liad de- 
 sired that it should be given to him, that there might be 
 no deduction for legacy duty. It was a small matter at 
 snch a moment that there appeared in the ' Saturday Ee- 
 view'^an extremely 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 lie thought it was a pity that 
 Yenables just then should have allowed the book to fall 
 into unworthy hands. He wrote to his wife daily — a few 
 words to satisfy lier that he was well. At length the ab- 
 sence from her became unbearable. He took a house at 
 St. T/eonards, to which she could be removed ; and, leav- 
 ing Cheyne Row to tlie care of Mr. Larkin, he went down, 
 
234 Carlyle^s Life in London. _ 
 
 with his work, to join her. Most things in this world 
 have their sunny side — the planet itself first, and then the 
 fortunes of its occupants. His grief and anxiety had con- 
 vinced Mrs. Carlyle of her husband's real love for her, 
 which she had long doubted. But that was all, for her 
 sufferings were of a kind which few human frames 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 continued week after 
 week without sign of abating. They remained at St. 
 Leonards till the middle of July, when desperate, after 
 twelve nights 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 enchantment or else to die. 
 
 It was on the eve of her birthday that she made her 
 flight. ]N'o one was more absolutely free than she was 
 from superstition, but times and seasons were associated 
 with human feelings ; she might either end her life alto- 
 gether 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, 
 * flying from 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 re- 
 covered sleep a little, strength a little. Slowly, very 
 slowly and with many relapses, she rallied into a more 
 natural state, first at the Gill and afterwards with the 
 Russells in Nithsdale.* Carlyle could not follow except 
 
 > For the Russells and all they did for Mrs. Carlyle, see Letters and Memo- 
 rials^ vol. ii. p. 300 et seq. 
 
Alone in C^imfms JSow. 235 
 
 with his heart) but the thoughts which he could spare from 
 his work were given to what he would do for her if she 
 was ever restored to him alive. 
 
 There was to be no more hiring of carriages, no more 
 omnibuses. She was henceforth to have a brougham of 
 her own. Her room in Cheyne llow in which she had k> 
 siifFei-ed, was re-papered, re-arranged, with the kind help 
 of Miss Bromley, that she might be snrronnded with ob- 
 jects unassociated with the past. 
 
 Hei*e are a series of extracts from the letters which he 
 wrote to her : — 
 
 Chel«ea : July 29, 1861 
 People do not help me much. Oh darling, when will you come 
 back and protect me ? God above will have an*auged that for both 
 of us, and it will be His will not ours that can rule it. My thoughts 
 are a prayer for my poor little life*partner who has fallen lame be- 
 side me after travelling so many steep and thorny ways. I will 
 stop this, lest I fall to crying altogether. 
 
 Angnst 1. 
 Worked too late yesterday. Walked out for exercise at 7 p.m. 
 Wild, windy sky. Streets — thank God ! — nearly empty ; rain 
 threatening. My walk was gloomy, S(ui as death, but not provok- 
 ing, not so miserable as many. Gloom, sorrow; but instead of 
 rage — suppressed rage as too often — pious grief, heavy but blessed 
 rather. I read till midnight, then out again, Kolitary as a ghost, 
 and to bed About one. I see nobody, wish to see nobody. 
 
 Aagutta 
 I am out of sorts ; no work hardly ; and nrn about as mwerahlft 
 as my worst enemy could wish ; and my poor little friend of friends, 
 she has {alien wounded to the ground and I am alone — alone ! My 
 spirits are quite sunk ; my hand is quite out. Postman Bullock 
 wants me to get his son promoted. Can't I? Somebody else wants 
 601. till he prove the Bible out of square. Another requeste me to 
 induct him into literature. Another to say how he can save man- 
 kind, which is much his wish, &o. 
 
 Angnst 3. 
 
 Tour poor nervous system ruined, not by thoee late months only, 
 but by long yews of more or less the like ! Oh, you have had a 
 hard life ! I, too, not a soft one : but yours beside me 1 Aias L 
 
236 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 alas ! I am better than yesterday, still not quite up to par. The 
 noises have considerably 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 seems madder and even more 
 condemnable to me than this of their brutish bedlamitish creation 
 of needless noises. 
 
 August 4. 
 What a blessed coui-se of religious industry is that of Scotland, 
 to guard 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 rests on ; and such a hubbub made of it by the vile, 
 flunkey souls who call themselves special worshippers of the Most 
 High. Mumbo Jumbo on the coast of Guinea almost seems a 
 shade more respectable. 
 
 I was absent from London during the summer. I had 
 heard that the Carljles had left St. Leonards and that she 
 was in Scotland, and I wrote to him under the impression 
 that she must be recovering. He answered that I had 
 been ycjy too hopeful. 
 
 Chelsea : August 6. 
 The accounts have mostly been bad ; but for two days past seem 
 (to myself) to indicate something of real improvement. I am 
 always very sanguine in the matter ; but get the saddest rebukes, 
 as you see. God only knows what is to become of it all. But I 
 keep as busy as the Fates will allow, and in that find the summary 
 of any consolation that remains to me. My 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 diy land, and 
 see better what steps are to be taken. I have no company here 
 but my horse. Indeed I have 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 use- 
 ful in a small way, which so few are. Wish me well and return, 
 the sooner the better. How well I remember the last night you 
 and Mrs. Froude were here ! It wa« the last sight I had of my 
 poor little life-companion still afoot by my side, cheerily footing 
 
Alone in Clieyiie Row, 237 
 
 the rough ways along with me, not ovem^Iielmcd in wild deluges 
 of miseiy as now. At spes in/racta! This is the Place of Hope.— r 
 Yours ever, T. C. 
 
 To lier his letters continued constant, his spirits varying 
 with her accounts of herself, but, as he had said to nie, 
 always tiTing to be sanguine. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carfyie, 
 
 Chelsea : Aagnat 11. 
 
 Oh, what a deliverance to the loaded heart of me — one ought 
 not to be so desperate, but I was too early awake again, and flesh is 
 weak. Oh, I am so sad, sad, sad, but have often been more misera- 
 ble far. The sorrow h&s forgiveness in it, reconciliation to all men 
 and things, especially to all men, not secret rage and vain struggle, 
 as too often. Oh, do but get better, my own Schatz. We shall 
 have good days yet, please God. 
 
 AaguBt 18. 
 
 May I really think the vengeful Furies are abating, going grad- 
 ually to their homes — and that my poor little Eurydice will come 
 back again and make me rich. God of His mercy gi-ant it to me 
 and you. Amen ! What a humihated, 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, coax- 
 ing them to tell me what they know, tliese long years past, till I 
 feel viyself to have become foul and blockheadish. On, on, to get 
 it pitched away from me into the bottomless Pool I 
 
 August 35. 
 
 Tlie girls are raging and scrubbing ; the curtains all on the 
 ropes in the garden. Cat, with miniature black likeness of hei-self, 
 contemplatively \»*andering among the skirts of them. Not a 
 mouse stirring ! Oh dear ! I i^ish my Goody was back, but I 
 won't be impatient. Oh, no, no ; as long as I hear of her getting 
 inch by inch into her old self again. The heavens truly are mer- 
 ciful and gracious to me, though they load my back rather sore. 
 
 August a9-4X). 
 
 The blessed silence of Sabbath. Nobody loves his Sabbath as I 
 do. Tliore is something quite divine to me in that cessation of 
 barrel organs, pianos, tumults, and jumblings. I easily do a better 
 day's work than on any other day of the seven ; and, if left alone, 
 have a aoleum kind of saduesSi^ a gloom of mind which, though 
 
238 Cm'lyle's Life in London, 
 
 heavy to bear, is not unallied with sacredness and blessedness. 
 . . . Poor little soul! You are the helm, intellect of the 
 house. Nobody else has the least skill in steering. My poor 
 scissors, for example, you would find them in perhaps five min- 
 utes. 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.* 
 It is the waest and forlornest-looking thing, like to make me 
 cry outright. Indeed, I often feel, if I could sit down and greet 
 for a whole day it would be an infinite relief to me, but one's 
 eyes grow dry. What a quantity of greeting, too, one used to do 
 in the beginning of life. ... I am but low-spirited, you see. 
 Want of potatoes, I am ashamed to say, is the source of everything, 
 and I will give up. 
 
 September 8-9. 
 
 Oh, how I wish I had you here again, ill or not ill. We 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. 
 Want 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 nothing for it but that you 
 come home and regulate. 
 
 September 20. 
 You are evidently suffering much. I cannot help you at all. The 
 only thing I can do is to wish for you here again, such 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 ^mendurable. Endurable or not, we two, and not any 
 other body, are the natural bearers of it. . . . Of myself there 
 is nothing to record, but a gallop of excellence yesterday, an even- 
 ing to myself altogether, almost incapable, not quite, and a walk 
 under the shining skies between twelve and one a.m. The weather 
 is as beautiful as it can be. Silent strangely when the infernal 
 cockneyisms sink away — so silent, brilliant, sad, that I was like 
 to greet looking at it. 
 
 1 Deacribingthe re-{yrfftngement of her bedroom. 
 
Mrs. CarhjWs liecuvcf^. 239 
 
 September lii. 
 I had the pain of erduding poor Fane last night. I knew his rap 
 and indeed was peremptory before that. * Nobody I' But Fane 
 really wishes well to both of us. In my loneliness here it often 
 seems to me as if there was nothing but nasty organ-grinding, 
 misguided, hostile, savage, or indifferent people round me from 
 shore to shore ; and Farie's withdrawing footstep had a kind of 
 sadness. 
 
 September 27. 
 It is no wonder, as Jean says, that you are ' blackbased ' * at such 
 a journey lying ahead, but the real likelihood is it will pass with- 
 out 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 Westminster ; 
 innocent heterodox soul, blase on toast and water, coming on with 
 his neat black-eyed little Scotch wife. Oh, what inquiries ! Really 
 very innocent people, and really interested in you. 
 
 September 29. 
 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 sup- 
 pose in the bright beautiful morning ; even Margaretta Terrace 
 looking wholesome and kind, while for poor us there is nothing 
 but restless pain and chagrin. And yet, deai*est, there is some- 
 thing in your note * which is welcomer to me than anything I have 
 yet had — a sound ol piety ^ of devout humiliation and gentle hope 
 and submission to the Highest, which affects me much and has 
 been a great comfort for me. Yes, poor darling ! This was wanted. 
 Proud stoicism 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 weaken- 
 ing it — nay, is the final strength of it, the fountain and nourish- 
 ment of all real strength. Come home to your own ix>or nest 
 .ii?ain. That is a good change, and clearly the best of all. Gird 
 your soul heroically together, and let me see you on Saturday by 
 my side again, for weal or woe. We have had a great deal of hard 
 travelling together, we will not break down yet, please God. How 
 
 » Abased.— It was a phrase of my mother'*.— T. C 
 « iMttn atud MnmridU^ vol. ii. |>. S(U - • « 
 
240 Carlylis Life in London. 
 
 to thank Dr. and Mrs. Eussell for what they have done for you, 
 much more how to repay them, beats all my ingenuity. 
 
 And so Mrs. Carlyle came back to Cbeyne Row, from 
 which she had been carried six months before as in a 
 hearse, expecting to see it no more. She reappeared in 
 her old circle, Aveak, shattered, her body worn to a shadow, 
 but witli her spirit bright as ever — brighter perhaps ; • for 
 Carlyle's tenderness in her illness Iiad convinced her that 
 lie really cared for her, and the sunset of her married life 
 recovered something of the colours of its morning. He, 
 too sanguine always, persuaded himself that her disorder 
 was now worn out, and that she was on the way to a per- 
 fect restoration. She, I think, was under no such illusion. 
 There was a gentle smile in her face, if one ever spoke of 
 it, which showed her incredulity. But from London she 
 took no hurt. She seemed rather to gain strength than to 
 lose it. To her friends she was as risen from the dead, 
 and it was a pleasure to her to see how dear she was to 
 them and with what eagerness they pressed 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 milk in the 
 moi-ning. A supply was sent in daily, fresh from the 
 Rector's cow. The brougham 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 eigh- 
 teen months as of a second youth — almost a second child- 
 hood, with the wisdom and graces of old age, w^hich by 
 Heaven's great mercy were conceded to her and me.' 
 
 * Frederick ' was finished in Januarj^, the last of Car- 
 lyle's great works, the last and grandest of them. ' The 
 dreary task, and the sorrows and obstructions attending it,' 
 'a magazine of despairs, impossibilities, and ghastly diffi- 
 culties never known but to himself, and by himself never 
 to be forgotten,' all was over, ' locked away and the key 
 
''Frederick' Finished. 241 
 
 turned on it' * It nearly killed nie ' [he says in his jour- 
 nal], * it, and my poor Jane's dreadful illness, now happily 
 over. Ko sympathy could be found on earth for those 
 horrid struggles of twelve years, nor happily was any 
 needed. On Sunday evening in the end of January (18C5) 
 I walked out, with the multiplex feeling — joy not ver\ 
 prominent in it, hut a kind of solemn thankfulness trace- 
 able, that 1 had written the last sentence of that unutterable 
 book, and, contrary to many forebodings in bad hours, had 
 actually got done with it for ever.' 
 
 * Frederick ' was translated instantly into German, and 
 in Germany, where the conditions were better known in 
 which Carlyle had found his materials, there was the 
 warmest appreciation of what he had done. The sharpest 
 scrutiny only served to show how accurate was the work- 
 manship. Few people anywhere in Europe dreamt twenty 
 years ago of the position which Germany, and Prussia at 
 the head of it, were so soon to occupy. Yet Carlyle's book 
 seemed to have been composed in conscious anticipation of 
 what was coming. He had given a voice to the national 
 feeling. He had brought up as it were from the dead the 
 creator of the Prussian monarchy, and had replaced him 
 among his people as a living and breathing man. He had 
 cleared the air for the impending revolution, and Europe, 
 when it came, could see how the seed had grown which 
 had expanded into the German Empire. 
 
 In p]ngland it was at once admitted that a splendid addi- 
 tion had been made to the national literature. The book 
 contained, if nothing else, a gallery of historical figures 
 executed with a skill which placed Carlyle at the head of 
 literary portrait painters. The English mind remains in- 
 sular and is hard to interest supremely in any history but 
 its own. The tone of * Frederick ' nowhere harmonized 
 with popular sentiment among ns, and every page con- 
 tained something to offend. Yet even in England it waa 
 Vol. IV.-16 
 
242 • Cadyle's Life in London. 
 
 better received on its first appearance than any of Carlyle's 
 other works had been, and it gave solidity and massiveness 
 to his ah'eady brilliant fame. No critic, after the com- 
 pletion of ' Frederick,' challenged Carlyle's right to a place 
 beside the greatest of English authors, past or present. 
 
 He had sorely tried America ; but America forgave his 
 sarcasms — forgot the ' smoky chimney,' foi-got the ' Iliad 
 in a l^ntshell,' and was cordially and enthusiastically 
 admiring. Emerson sent out a paragraph,* which went 
 the round of the Union, that ' " Frederick " was the wit- 
 tiest book that was ever written ; a book that one would 
 think the English people would rise up in mass and 
 thank the author for by cordial acclamation, and signify, 
 by crowming him with oak leaves, their joy that sucli a 
 head existed among them ; ' ' while sympathising and 
 much-reading America would make a new treatj^, or send 
 a Minister Extraordinary to offer congratulations of hon- 
 ouring delight to England in acknowledgment of this 
 donation.' A rather sanguine expectation on Emerson's 
 part ! England has ceased to stone or burn her prophets, 
 but she does not yet make them the subject of inter- 
 national treaties. She crowns with oak leaves her actors 
 and her prima-donnas, her politicians, who are to-day her 
 idols, and to-morrow will find none so poor to do them 
 reverence ; to wise men she is contented to pay more 
 moderate homage, and leaves the final decorating work to 
 time and future generations. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 A.D. 1865-6. ^T. 70-71. 
 
 * Frederick' completed — Summer in Annandale — Mrs. Carlyle ic 
 Nithsdale — Visit to Linlathen — Thomas Erskine — The Edin- 
 burgh Rectorship — Feelings in Cheyne Row about it— Ras- 
 kin's * Ethics of the Dust.* 
 
 The last proofs of * Frederick ' being corrected and dis- 
 inissed, the Carlyles went down, in the spring of 1865, to 
 stay with Lady Asliburton at a seaside cottage at Seaton, in 
 Devonsliire. They spent a few quiet weeks tliere, and 
 tlien went liome again — Carlyle, so he says, to *8ink and 
 sink into ever new depths of stupefaction and dark misery 
 of body and mind.' lie was a restless spirit. When 
 busy, he complained that his work was killing him ; when 
 he was idle, his mind preyed upon itself. Perhaps, as was 
 generally the case, he exaggerated his own discomforts. 
 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 Murder he was not always being 
 killed. When his soul seemed all black, the darkness only 
 broken by lightnings, he was aware that sometimes it was 
 only a want of potatoes. Still, in the exhaustion which 
 followed on long exertion he was always wildly humoured. 
 About May he found that he wanted fresh change. Some- 
 thing was amiss with Mrs. Carlyle's right arm, so that she 
 had lost the use of it for writing. She seemed well other- 
 wise, however ; she had no objection to being left alone, and 
 he set oil for Anuaudale, where he had not been for three 
 
244 Carlyleh Life in London. 
 
 years. * Poor old Scotland ! ' lie said, ' it almost made me 
 greet when I saw it again, and the first sonnd of a Scotch 
 guard, and his broad accent, was strange and affecting to 
 me.' His wife and he had grown but ' a feckless pair of 
 bodies,' ' a pair of miserable creatures,' but they would not 
 ' tine heart;' and at tlie house of his sister, Mrs. Austin, 
 he found the most careful preparations for his comfort — 
 ^ new pipes,' ' new towels,' ' new, excellent potatoes,' ' a 
 new sofa to lie down upon after his rides,' everything that 
 his heart could wish for. 
 
 Not a sound all night at the Gill, he wrote, after his arrival, ex- 
 cept, 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 Mainmoji tvliip, go- 
 ing 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 — 'Ye accursed slaves ! ' 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle made shift to write to him with the hand 
 which was left to her ; lively as ever, careful, for his sake, 
 to take her misfortunes lightly. He, on his part, was ad- 
 miringly grateful. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 The Gill, June 9. 
 Thanks for the struggle you have made to get me a word of au- 
 thentic tidings sent. I can read perfectly youi' poor little 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 dull- 
 est 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. May the Lord confound all such dreary insolences ot 
 loquacious blockheadism, entitling itself Science. Science, as the 
 understanding of things worth knowing, was once a far different 
 
lietreat in Annandale. 245 
 
 matter from this melancholy maundering and idle looking into the 
 unknowable, and apparently the not worth knowing. 
 
 He had his horse with him — Fritz's successor, Lcidy 
 Ashburton's present, whom lie called Noggs. On Noggs's 
 back he wandered round the old neighbourhood, which he 
 had first known as a schoolboy, and then as usher. 
 
 Poor old Annan ! he wrote. There the old houses stood, a 
 bleared evening sun shining as if in anger on them ; but the dis- 
 agreeable, mostly paltiy living creatures who used to vex me in 
 those days were all gone; The old Academy House ! what a con- 
 siderable 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 reflections, started at a mighty i^ace 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, grandly 
 soughing in the windy sunset, soon hushed the mind of both of us 
 to a better tone, if not a much gladder. 
 
 Again : — 
 
 June-July, 1865. 
 My rides are very strange, in the mood so foreign as inine. Last 
 night, 6 to 8 p.m., was a perfect whirlwind, as the day liad been, 
 though othei-wise fresh and genial. I went for the first time by the 
 Priest-side Sands. Noggs had some reluctance to put forth his 
 speed in the new element : strong temi>ests on the right eye ; on 
 the left the far-off floods of Solway ; Criflfel and the mountains, 
 with the foregroimd 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-8upix)rting mother ! ' says Orestes, addressing the 
 cai-th. 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 meanwhile, 
 dispirited by her lamed hand, and doubtful of the future, 
 
246 Carlyle^s Life in London, 
 
 resolved that she, too, would see Scotland once more be- 
 fore she died. Kot guessing how ill all was with her about 
 the heart, he wished her to join him 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. My 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 hideous 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- 
 ness, I feel as if there were still as much love in me — all gone to 
 potential tears — as there was in my earliest day. 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle was proud of her husband ; she honoured his 
 character, she gloried in his fame, and she was sure of his 
 aifection. But in her sick state she needed rest, and rest, 
 when the dark spirit was on him, she could not find at his 
 side. He had his sister with him ; he had his brother 
 James close at hand. To these kind kindred she might 
 safely leave him ; and she went on past Annan to the good 
 Russells in Nithsdale, who had nursed her in the past 
 year. Carlyle wished her only to do w^hat would give her 
 most 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 get 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 is. 
 
 His 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 minimum,' ' rode a maximum,' 
 sometimes even began to think of work again, as if such 
 
RUi'tat In Anncmdale. 247 
 
 idleness were disgraceful. For her, evidently, he was in 
 no alarm at all. After her birthday, he paid a visit to his 
 old friend, Mr. Sj>edding, at Mirehouse, near Keswick. 
 Spedding himself (elder brother of James, the editor of 
 ' Bacon ') he thought one of the best men he had ever 
 known. There were three /beautiful young ladies,' Mr. 
 Spedding's daughters. Mirehouse was beautiful, and so 
 were the ways of it; 'everything nice and neat, dairy, 
 cookery, lodging rooms. Simplex munditiis the real title 
 of it, not to speak of Skiddaw and the finest mountains of 
 the earth.' He must have enjoyed himself indeed, when 
 he could praise so heartily. * My three days at Keswick,' 
 lie said when they were over, * are as a small polished flag- 
 stone, which I am not sorry to have intercalated in the 
 rough floor of boulders which my sojourn otherwise has 
 been in these parts.' 
 
 To Mrs. 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 ? ' Miss Bromley 
 took charge of her at Folkestone, from which she was 
 able to send a brighter account of herself. He, mean- 
 while, 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 
 ail- here, the old hill-tops and grassy silences — it is with a strange 
 acquiescence that I fancy myself as bidding probably farewell to 
 them for the last time. Annandale is gone out of me, lies all stark 
 and dead, as I shall soon do, too. Why 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 ' Sesame and Lilies.' It 
 was written by a man who professed attachment to Mrs. 
 Carlyle. I need not name him ; he is dead now, and can- 
 not be hurt by reading Carlyle's description of him to her ; 
 
24:8 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 A dirtyish little pug, irredeemably imbedded in commonplace, 
 and grown fat upon it, and prosperous to an unwholesome degree. 
 Don't ?/oi< return his love. Nasty creature! with no eye for the 
 beautiful, and awefully interesting to himself. 
 
 In xiiigiist Carlyle started on a round of visits — to Mr. 
 Ei'skine at Linlatlien, to Sir Willirm Stirling at Keir, to 
 Edinburgh, to Lord and Lady Lothian at j^ewbattle, and 
 then again to Scotsbrig. At Linlatlien as wherever he 
 went, he was a most welcome guest ; but he was slightly 
 out of humour there. 
 
 The good old St. Thomas, he wrote, seemed to me sometinaes 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 in- 
 clined 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 favom*, either for 
 himself or his theories, and his own allusion to Carlyle's 
 visit shows- that the differences had not been much accentu- 
 ated. He had hoped that Mrs. Carlyle would have come 
 with her husband. As she could not, he wrote her an 
 affectionate letter, in which some of the offending theories 
 will perhaps be found. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 Linlathen : August 18, 1865. 
 
 Beloved Mrs. 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 this 
 earth. One might ask what good would come of it if I had. I 
 o[in 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 get- 
 ting better, and recovering a little strength after that long suf- 
 fering. 
 
 I have a paternal feeling towards you, a tender feeling, as for a 
 child, 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, seemed 
 to say that you almost expected such a feeling. 
 
Linlathen. 249 
 
 The way in which I should like to express that feeling would be 
 by telling you things which I have myself found to be helpful and 
 supporting in trouble and darkness and confusion ; but the diffi- 
 culty of saying the thing in the right way always stops both mouth 
 and pen. I hope God will sj^eak it to you in his own right way. 
 There is an expression in the 28th Psalm that often comes to me : 
 • Be not silent unto me, lest I become like those that go down into 
 the pit.* If there be anything that I have a perfect assurance of, 
 it is this, that God is indeed a Father, and that His unchangeable 
 imrpose towards me, and you, and all, is to make us right ; to train 
 us into the capacity of a full sympathy with Himself, and thus to 
 unite us to each other in righteous love. I require such a confi- 
 dence, and I cling to it, in spite of manifold contradictions. 
 
 I am glad to see Mr. Carlyle so well, after passing through such 
 a process. He sits under the same rowan tree that he sate under 
 when here before, in accordance with his conservative fidelity. I 
 have a fellow-feeling with him iu many things, and love his single- 
 ness of heart and purpose more than I can express. 
 
 Ever youi*8, with true affection, 
 
 T. Ebskine. 
 
 Carlyle, for his part, was happy to find himself under 
 his brother's roof again at Scotsbrig. 
 
 The truth is [he wrote to his wife], I have nowhere been so com- 
 fortably lodged as here just now. Silence, sleep procurable ; and, 
 indeed, a kind of feeling that I am a little better really since get- 
 ting home. All this, added to the loveliest skies I ever saw, clear 
 as diamonds this day, and an earth lying white to the harvest, vdih 
 monitions in it against human gloom — all this is here ; but, as 
 usual, it can only last for a day. My Edinburgh, Keir, &c., fort- 
 night was not without profit, perhaps, though the interest it could 
 have to me was only small ; not a single loved face there. Ah 
 me ! so few anywhere at this date. The physiognomies, all Scotch, 
 looked curious to me, the changed streets and businesses. The 
 horrors of the railway station called "Waverley, where John often 
 had me, are a thing to remember all one's life — perhaps the live- 
 liest emblem of Tartarus this earth affords. Newbattle is fine of 
 its kind, and finely Scotch. Nobody there but the two poor in- 
 mates ' and a good-humoured painter, doing portrait of the lady. 
 
 I Lord Ijothiiin had )>een already Atrnok, in the rDi<lRt of his brilliant prom- 
 ise, by the hIow, creeping malady which eventually killed him. 
 
250 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 The lady took me out to walk, talked like a sad, serious, enquir- 
 ing, and intelligent soul ; the saddest, thin, kindly, anxious face 
 you could anywhere see. The Marquis did not appear till lunch- 
 eon ; a truly beautiful young man, body and mind, weaker than 
 ever, hands now shaking, eyes beginning to fail, but heart as lively 
 as ever. We had a great deal of innocent, cheerfully reasonable 
 talk, and I daresay my advent might be a kind of relief, like a tree 
 in the steppe, in the melancholy monotony of such a life. Had you 
 and my lady been fairly acquainted, she wouM have liked you well. 
 
 The Slimmer ended, as summers do and summers will, 
 and autumn saw the Carlyles together once more in their 
 Chelsea home, which one of them was not again to leave 
 alive. The great outward event of Carlyle's own life, 
 Scotland's public recognition of him, was now lying close 
 ahead. This his wife w^as to live to witness as her final 
 happiness in this world. She seemed stronger, slept tol- 
 erably, drove about daily in her brougliam ; occasionally 
 even dined out. Once I remember meeting her and Car- 
 lyle this autumn at the Dean of Westminster's, and walk- 
 ing home with him. Once they dined with me to meet 
 Mr. Spedding of Mirehonse, Ruskin, and Dean Milman. 
 liuskin, I recollect, that night was particularly brilliant, 
 and with her was a special favourite. She was recovering 
 slightly the use of her right hand ; she could again write 
 with it ; and nothing visible on the surface indicated that 
 danger was near. 
 
 I had been at Edinburgh, and had heard Gladstone 
 make his great oration on Homer there, on retiring from 
 office as Rector. It was a grand display. I never recog- 
 nised before what oratory could do ; the audience being 
 kept for three hours in a state of electric tension, bursting 
 every moment into applause. Nothing was said which 
 seemed of moment when read deliberately afterwards ; 
 but the voice was like enchantment, and the street, when 
 we left the building, was ringing with a prolongation of 
 the cheers. Perhaps in all Britain there was not a man 
 
The Edinburgh Rectorship, 2o\ 
 
 whose views on all subjects, in Leaven and earth, less re- 
 sembled Gladstone's than those of the man whom this 
 same applauding multitude elected to take his place. The 
 students too, perhaps, were ignorant how wide the contra- 
 diction was ; but if they had been awaj-e of it they need 
 not have acted differently. Carlyle had been one of them- 
 selves, lie had risen from among them — not by birth or 
 favour, not on the ladder of any established profession, 
 but only by the internal force that was in him — to the 
 liighest place as a modern man of letters. In * Frederick ' 
 he had given the finish to his reputation ; he stood now 
 at the summit of his fame ; and the Edinburgh students 
 desired to mark their admiration in some signal svay. He 
 had been mentioned before, but he had declined to be nom- 
 inated, for a party only were then in his favour. 
 
 On this occasion the students were unanimous, or nearly 
 so. His own consent was all that was wanting, and the 
 question lay befoi-eliim whether, hating as he did all pub- 
 lic displays, he would accept a quasi-coronation from them. 
 
 On [November 7, 1865, he wrote to his brother : — 
 
 My Rectorate, it seems, is a thing settled, which by no means 
 oversets my composure with joy ! A young Edinburgh man came 
 liere two weeks ago to remind me that last tim^, in flatly refusing, 
 I had partly promised for this if my work was done. I objected to 
 the ' speech.' He declared it to be a thing they would dispense 
 with. Well ! if so ! I concluded ; but do not as yet see my way 
 through that latter clause, which is the sore one. Indeed, I have 
 yet heard noOiinq "official upon it, and did not even see the news- 
 paper paragraph till yesterday. Hat gar wenig zu becleuten, one 
 way or the other. 
 
 Hat wenig zu hedenten. So Carlyle might say— but it 
 was hedeutend to him nevertheless, and still more so to his 
 wife. It seemed strange to me, so strange as to be almost 
 incredible, that the Rectorship of a Scotch University 
 could be supposed to add anything to the position which 
 Carlyle had made for himself. But there were peculiar 
 
252 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 circumstances which gave to this one special form of rec- 
 ognition an exceptional attractiveness. Carljle's reputa- 
 tion was English, German, American — Scotch also — but 
 Scotch only to a certain degree. There had always in 
 Scotland been an opposition party ; and if the propliet 
 had some honour in his own country, it was less than in 
 other places. At least some feeling of this kind existed in 
 Cheyne Row, though it may have been partly fancy, and 
 due to earlier associations. Carlyle's Edinburgh memories 
 were almost all painful. His University days had been 
 without distinction. They had been followed by dreai-y 
 schoolmastering days at Kirkcaldy, and the scarcely less 
 dreary years of private tutoring in Edinburgh again. 
 When Miss Welsh, of Haddington, announced that she 
 was to be married to him, the unheard of mesalliance had 
 been the scoff of Edinburgh society and of her father's 
 and mother's connections there. It had been hoped af- 
 ter the marriage that some situation might have been 
 found for him, and they had settled in Comely Bank with 
 a view to it. All efforts failed, however, and nothing 
 could be done. At Graigenputtock he laid the foundation 
 of his reputation — but his applications for employment in 
 Scotland had been still refused invariably, and sometimes 
 contumeliously. London treated him, in 1831, as a per- 
 son of importance ; when he spent the winter following in 
 Edinburgh he was coldly received there — received with a 
 dislike which was only not contempt because it was quali- 
 fied wdth fear. This was all past and gone, but he had 
 always a feeling that Edinburgh had not treated him well. 
 The Eectorship would be a public acknowledgment that 
 his countrymen had been mistaken about him, and he had 
 an innocent satisfaction in the thought of it. She, too, 
 had a similar feeling. Among old friends of his family, 
 who knew little about literature, there was still an impres- 
 sion that ' Jeannie Welsh had throsvn herself away.' They 
 
The Ediiiburgh Rectorship, 25S 
 
 would be forced to say now that * Jeannie was right after 
 all/ She laughed when she talked about it, and I 
 could hardly believe that she was serious. But evidently 
 both in him and her some consciousness of the kind was 
 really working, and this perhaps more than anything else 
 determined him to go through with a business which, in 
 detail, was sure to be distressing to him. 
 
 Thus it was all settled. Carlyle was chosen Rector of 
 Edinburgh University, and was to be installed in the en- 
 suing spring. The congratulations which poured in all 
 the winter — especially from Mrs. C.'s Scotch kinsfolk — 
 ' amused ' them. Even a speech had been promised, and 
 so long as it was at a distance seemed not inexecu table. 
 
 The Rectorial office, he wrote on December 21 to his brother 
 John, is beginning to promise to be a highly pacific one ; and has 
 already shifted itself to a comer of the mind where I seldom re- 
 member it, and never almost with anything of anxiety or displeas- 
 ure. When the time for speaking approaches I shall have to be- 
 think me a little, and be bothered and tumbled about for a week 
 or so ; but that done I hoj^e essentially all will be done. 
 
 During the winter I saw much of him. He was, for 
 him, in good spirits, lighter-hearted than I had ever known 
 him. He would even admit occasionally that he was mod- 
 erately well in health. Even on the public side of things 
 he fancied that there were symptoms of a possibility of a 
 better day coming. In Ruskin he had ever-increasing 
 hope and confidence. 
 
 I have been reading (he says on the same day) a strange little 
 Christmas book of Ruskin's, called * Ethics of the Dust.**' It is all 
 about crystallography, and seems to be, or is, geologically well- 
 informed and connect ; but it twists symbolically in the strangest 
 way all its geology into morality, theology, Egyptian m}-thology, 
 with fiery cuts at political economy ; pretending not to know 
 whether the forces and destinies and behaviour of crystals are not 
 very like those of a man ! Wonderful to behold. The book ia 
 full of admirable talent, with such a faculty of expression in it, or 
 of pictunng out what is meant, as beats all living rivals. 
 
CHAPTEE XXYIII. 
 
 A.D. 1866. iET. 71. 
 
 Preparations for the Eectorship — Journey to Edinburgh — Tyndall 
 — The Installation — Carlyle's speech — Character of it — E£fect 
 upon the world — Cartoon in ' Punch ' — Carlyle stays at Scots- 
 brig to recover — Intended tea-party in Cheyne Eow — Sudden 
 death of Mrs. Carlyle — John Forster — Funeral at Haddington 
 — Letters from Erskine — Carlyle's answers. 
 
 The time approached for the installation and the delivery 
 of the speech in Edinburgh. Through the winter Car- 
 lyle had dismissed it from his mind as the drop of bitter 
 in his cup ; but it had now to be seriously faced. To read 
 would have been handiest to him, but he determined to 
 speak. A speech was not an essay. A speech written 
 and delivered, or even written and learnt by heart was 
 to him an imposture, or, at best, an insincerity. He did 
 not seem to be anxious, but anxious he was, and painfully 
 so. He had never spoken in public since the lecture days. 
 He had experienced then that he could do it, and could 
 do it eminently well if he had practised the art — but he 
 had not practised. In private talk he had no living equal ; 
 words flowed like ]^iagara. But a private room among 
 friends, and a hall crowded with strangers where he was 
 to stand up alone under two thousand pairs of eyes, were 
 things entirely different ; and Carlyle, with all his imperi- 
 ousness and high scornful tones, was essentially shy — one 
 of the shyest of men. He resolved, however, as his father 
 used to say, to 'gar himself go through with the thing,' or 
 
The Rectorship. 255 
 
 at least to try. If lie broke down, as he thought that he 
 probably would, he was old aud weak, and it could signify 
 little. Still, he says that he ' was very miserable,' ' angry 
 with himself for getting into such a coil of vanity,' pro- 
 voked that a performance which, to a vulgar orator would 
 be a pride and delight, should to him appear so dreadful. 
 Mrs. Carlyle kept up his spirits, made fun of his fears, 
 bantered him, encouraged him, herself at heart as much 
 alarmed as he was, but conscious, too, of the ridiculous 
 side of it She had thought of going with him, as she 
 had gone with him to his lectures, but her courage mis- 
 gave her. Among the fieaks of her imagination she 
 fancied that he might fall into a fit, or drop down dead in 
 the excitement. She had herself been conscious lately of 
 curious sensations and sharp twinges, which might mean 
 worse than she knew. A sudden shock might make an 
 end of her also, * and then there would be a scene.' There 
 would be plenty of friends about him. Huxley was going 
 down, and Tyndall, who, wide as his occupations and line 
 of thought lay from Carlyle's, yet esteemed, honoured, 
 loved him as much as any man living did. Tyndall made 
 himself responsible to Mrs. 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 
 him. The journey was to be broken at P'ryston, where he 
 would be received by Milnes, now Lord Houghton. There 
 he was to stay two nights, and then go on to Scotland. 
 
 Accordingly, on Thursday, the 29th of March, at nine 
 a.m., Tyndall appeared with a cab in Cheyne Kow, he 
 himself radiant — confident— or if he felt misgivings (I be- 
 lieve he felt none), resolute not to show them. Carlyle 
 submitted passively to his directions, and did not seem 
 outwardly disturbed, ' in the saddest sickly mood, full of 
 gloom and misery ; but striving to hide it.' She, it was 
 observed, looked pale and ill, but in those days she sel- 
 
256 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 dom looked otherwise. She had been busy providing 
 little comforts for his journey. Remembering the lecture 
 days she gave him her own small travelling flask, with a 
 single glass of brandy in it, that he might mix 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 with 
 her back to the parlom- door to bid me good-bye. She 
 kissed me twice, she me once, I her a second time.' The 
 cab drove away. They were never to meet again in this 
 world. ' Tyndall,' he says in his journal, ' was kind, 
 cheery, inventive, helpful. The loyallest son could not 
 have more faithfully striven to support his father under 
 every difficulty that rose, and they were many.' In a 
 letter he says, ' Tyndall's conduct to me has been loy- 
 alty's own self : no adoring son could have more faith- 
 fully watched a decrepit father.' Fryston was reached 
 without misadventure. ' Lord and Lady Houghton's 
 kindness was unbounded.' Tyndall wrote to Mrs. Carlyle 
 daily reporting everything on its brightest side, though 
 the omer;s did not open propitiously. ' My first night,' 
 he wrote himself, ' owing to railway and other noises, not 
 to speak of excitations, talkings, dinnerings, was totally 
 sleepless ; a night of wandering, starting to vain tobacco 
 and utter misery, thought of flying off next morning to 
 Auchtertool for quiet.' Morning light and reflection re- 
 stored some degree of composure. He was allowed to 
 breakfast alone — Tyndall took him 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 \vhich he w^as to proceed found 
 himself ' a new man.' 
 
 Huxley had joined the party at Fryston. Lord Hough- 
 ton w^ent with them as far as York. The travellino^ was 
 disagreeable. Carlyle reached Edinburgh in the evening, 
 
The Rectorship. 257 
 
 * the forlomest of all physical wretches.' There too the 
 first night was * hideous,' with ' dreadful feelings that 
 speaking would be impossible,' *that he would utterly 
 break down ; ' to which he in his mind said, * well then,' 
 
 * and was preparing to treat it with the best contempt he 
 could.' On Sunday, however, he found himself sur- 
 rounded with friendly faces. Mr. Erskine had come from 
 Linlathen. His two brothers were there from Scotsbrig ; 
 all Edinburgh was combining to do him honour, and was 
 hearty and warm and enthusiastic. His dispiritment was 
 not proof against a goodwill which could not but be agree- 
 able. He collected himself, slept well the Sunday night 
 (as felons sleep, he would himself probably have said, the 
 night before execution), and on the Monday was ready for 
 action. 
 
 The installation of a Rector is a ceremonious affair. 
 Ponderous robes have to be laid on, and there is a march- 
 ing in procession of officials and dignitaries in crimson 
 and ermine through the centre of the crowded Hall. Tlie 
 Rector is led to a conspicuous chair ; an oath is ad- 
 rainisteyed 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 Mr. 
 Gladstone — and perhaps the feeling of the students, as he 
 had been one of themselves — was more completely genu- 
 ine. I believe — for I was not present — that he threw off 
 the heavy academical gown. He had not been accustomed 
 to robes of honour. He had been only a man all his life ; 
 ho chose to be a man still ; about to address a younger 
 generation who had come together to hear something that 
 jnight be of use to them. He says of himself, * My speech 
 was delivered as in a mood of defiant despair, and under 
 the pressure of nightmare. Some feeling that I was not 
 speaking lies alone sustained me. The applause, <Src., I 
 took for empty noise, which it really was not altogether.' 
 Vol. IV.~17 
 
258 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 This is merely his own way of expressing that he was do- 
 ing what he did not like ; that, having undertaken it, he 
 became interested in what he was about, grew possessed 
 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. His voice was weak. There were 
 no more volleys of the old Annandale grape-shot ; other- 
 wise he was easy, fluent, and like himself in his calmest 
 mood. 
 
 He began with a pretty allusion to the time when he 
 had first come up (fifty-six years before) to Edinburgh 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 he 
 had made of hisJife, and was declaring that 'he had not 
 been an unworthy 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 might say a few 
 words to the students which might perhaps be of some 
 value to them. In soft, earnest language, with the plain- 
 est common sense, made picturesque by the form in which 
 it was expressed, he proceeded to impress on them the 
 elementary duties of diligence, fidelity, and honest exer- 
 tion, in their present work, as a preparation for their com- 
 ing life. Their line of study was, in the main, marked 
 out for them. So far as they could choose (after a half- 
 reverent, half -humorous allusion to theologj^-, exactly in 
 the right tone for a modern audience) he advised them to 
 read history — especially Greek and Roman history — and 
 to observe especially how, among these nations, piety and 
 awe of the gods lay at the bottom of their greatness ; that 
 witliout such qualities no man or nation ever came to 
 good. Thence he passed to British history, to Oliver 
 Cromwell, to their own Knox (one of the select of the 
 earth), to the Covenanters, to the resolute and noble effort 
 
Speech at Edinburgh. 259 
 
 of the Scotch people to make Clirisf s Gospel the rule of 
 their daily lives, lieligioii was the thing essential. The- 
 ology was not so essential, lie was giving in hrief a pop- 
 ular epitome of his own opinions and the growth of them. 
 In early life he had himself been a Radical. He was 
 a Radical still in substance, though no longer after the 
 popular type, lie was addressing students who were as ar- 
 dent in that matter as he had himself once been, and he 
 was going on dangerous ground as he advanced. But he 
 chose to speak as he felt. He touched upon democracy. 
 He showed how democracies, from the nature of things, 
 never had been, and never could be of long continuance ; 
 how essential it was, in such a world as ours, that the 
 noblest and wisest should lead and that the rest should 
 obey and follow. It was thus that Engjand and Scotland 
 had grown to be what they were. It ^-as thus only that 
 they could keep the place which they had won. We were 
 apt to think that through the spread of reading and knowl- 
 edge the conditions of human nature were changed, and 
 that inequalities no longer existed. He thought slightly 
 of the spread of knowledge as it was called, * maid-servants 
 getting instructed in the 'ologies,' and * knowing less of 
 brewing, and boiling, and baking, of obedience, modesty, 
 humility, and moral conduct.' Knowledge, wisdom, true 
 superiority was as hard to come at no\\r as ever, and there 
 were just as few that arrived at it. He then touched on 
 another branch of the same subject, one on which he was 
 often thinking, the belief in oratory and oi-ators which 
 was now so widely prevailing. Demosthenes might 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. He spoke of it then as he always did — as an era 
 of anarchy and disintegration, in which all things, not 
 made of asbestos, were on the way to being consumed. 
 
260 Carlyle^s Life in London, 
 
 He did not complain of this. He only bade his hearers 
 observe it and make the best of it. He told them to be 
 true and faithful in their own lives ; to endeavour to do 
 right, not caring whether they succeeded, as it was called, 
 in life ; to play their own parts as quietly and simply as 
 they could, and to leave the rest to Providence. ' Don't 
 suppose,' he said, 'that people are hostile to you, or bear' 
 you ill-will in the world. You may often feel as if the 
 whole world was obstructing you, setting itself against 
 you ; but yon will find that to mean that the world is trav- 
 elling in a different way, and, rushing on its own 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 well as good. Bnt he told them, too, that they 
 would find friends if they deserved them, and in fact 
 would meet the degree of success which tliey had on the 
 whole deserved. He wound up with Goethe's hymn, 
 w^hich he had called, to Sterling, ' The marching music of 
 the Teutonic nations ; ' and he finished with the words 
 which to the end were so often npon his own lips ; 
 
 ' Wir heissen euch hoffen.'' (We bid you to hope.) 
 
 He was long puzzled at the effect upon the Avorld's esti- 
 mate of him which this speech produced. There was not 
 a word in it which he had not already said, and said far 
 more forcibly a hundred times. But suddenly and 
 thenceforward, till his death set them off again, hostile 
 tongues ceased to speak against him, and hostile pens to 
 write. The speech was printed in full in half the news- 
 papers in the island. It was received with universal ac- 
 clamation. A low price edition of his works became in 
 demand, and they flew into a strange temporary popu- 
 larity with the reading multitude. Sartor, ' poor beast,' 
 had struggled into. life with difficulty, and its readers 
 
The Iitdi>nshij>, 261 
 
 since had been few, if select. 20,000 copies of the «liil- 
 ling edition of it were now sold instantly on its publica- 
 tion. It was now admitted universally that Carlyle was a 
 ' great man.' Yet he saw no inclination, not the slightest, 
 to attend to his teaching, lie hiujself could not make it 
 out, but the explanation is not far to seek. The Edinburgh 
 address contained his doctrines with the fire which had 
 provoked the animosity taken out of them. They were le- 
 duced to the level of church sermons ; thrown into general 
 propositions wliich it is pretty and i*ight and becoming to 
 confess with our lips, while no one is supposed to act on 
 them. We admire and praise the beautiful language, and 
 we reward the performance with a bishopric, if the speaker 
 be a clergyman. Carlyle, people felt with a sense of relief, 
 meant only what the preachers meant, and was a fine fel- 
 low after all. 
 
 The address had been listened to with delight by the 
 students, and had ended amidst rounds of applause. Tyn- 
 dall telegraphed to Mrs. Carlyle his ' brief but suflicient 
 message, 'A perfect triumph.' The maids in Cheyne 
 liow clapped their hands when it arrived. Maggie Welsh 
 danced for delight. Mrs. 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 good joy.' He meanwhile had escaped at his 
 best speed from the scene of liis exploit ; making for his 
 brother's lodgings in George Street, where he could smoke 
 a pipe and collect himself. Hundreds of lads followed 
 him, crowding and hurrahing. 
 
 I waved my hand prohibitively at the door (he wrote), perhaps 
 lifted my hat, and they gave but one cheer more— something in the 
 tone of it which did for the first time go into my heart. Poor 
 young men, so well affected to the poor old brother or grandfather 
 here, and in such a black whirlpool of a world, all of us. 
 
 * Letters and MemolH<;U*^ vol. ii p. 883. 
 
262 Carlifles Life in London, 
 
 He dispatched a few words home. 
 
 All is finished, and rather well, infinitely better than I often ex- 
 pected. You never saw such a tempest of enthusiastic 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 tum- 
 bler for cooling of the tongue. I had privately a kind of threap 
 that the brandy should be yours. 
 
 The note sent off, he had a qniet walk in the twilight 
 with Erskine and his brother James. 
 
 Some fragments of ornamental work had still to be gone 
 through ; invitations to tliis and that, and congratulations 
 to reply to ; ' Spedding's letter welcomer than any other.' 
 He slept tolerably in spite of excitement, but was ' like a 
 man killed with kindness, all the w^orld coming tumbling 
 on him. Do me this, see me that ! above all, dine, dine ! ' 
 He stayed four days in the middle of all this. On the, 
 Thursday he was worn out. ' Oh ! ' he cried, ^ there never 
 was such an eleinent — comparable to that of the three chil- 
 dren in the fire before Kebuchadnezzai". . . .' His 
 original plan had been to go straight home, but he was 
 tempted by the thought of a few peaceful days in Annan- 
 dale, before plunging into London again. On the Friday 
 he made for quiet Scotsbrig, there, with no company but 
 his brother and his sister Mary, to ' cool down and re- 
 cover his wits.' The newspapers, meanwhile, were sound- 
 ing his praises. ' Punch,' always affectionate, even in the 
 Pamphlet times, had a cartoon in which Carlyle was seen 
 speaking on one side, like a gently wise old patriarch, and 
 Bright on the other, with due contrast of face and senti- 
 ment. At the end of a week he was in his old condition 
 again. ' Seldom,' he said, ' have I been better in the last 
 six months, so blessed is the country stillness to me, the 
 purity of sky and earth, and the absence of all babble 
 and annoyance.' He would then have hastened back, but 
 he met with an accident, a slight sprain on one of his 
 
Ills Nru.jnt^^r.^. 263 
 
 ankles, sent, he supposed, ' to keep him in the level of 
 common humanity, and take any undue conceit out of 
 him.' Thus he lingered on, not sorry, perhaps, for the 
 excuse. * Punch ' came to Scotsbrig, and * gave every- 
 body heai-ty entertainment.' * The thing,' he said, * is 
 really capital, and has been done by some thoroughly 
 well-wishing man. Tlie portrait, too, is not bad, though 
 comical a little, and the slap directed on Bright is per- 
 fectly suitable.' Mill wrote as warmly as he could about 
 an address which must have been wholly unpalatable, Mrs. 
 Carlyle sending the letter down to him, and expecting 
 he * would scream at sucli a frosty nothingness.' lie did 
 not scream, he answered, because he had ceased to care 
 what Mill might do* or forbear to do. 'Mill essentially 
 was made of saw^dust, he and his " great thinking of the 
 Age," and was to be left lying, with good-bye and peace 
 to him for evermore.' 
 
 The ankle was long in mending, and the return was still 
 delayed. On the 19th of April he wrote — 
 
 Nothing from Goody to-day — well, you have been handsomely 
 diligent of late, and have given me at least one sunny blink among 
 the great dreary mass I get on awaking to a new day. I am very 
 well in health here, sleep better than for a month past, in spite of 
 the confusion and imperfect arrangements. The rides do me good. 
 Yesterday it was as if pumping on me, and Dirty Swift (the Scots- 
 brig pony) and I, under the mackintosh, were equal or sujjerior 
 to the Trafalgar fountains in dramatic effect. But the silence, the 
 clearness of the air and world, the poor old solitary scene too — all 
 do me good ; and if I had an Oberon to attend me, to pick a fur- 
 nished tent from his waistcoat pocket, and blow it out to perfec- 
 tion, I should be tempted to linger a good while perhaps. But 
 nothing of that is the arrangement in esse here, and I still think 
 of Monday, the 23d, as the day of retuni. At any rate mark that 
 Jean and I are to go for Dumfries to-morrow ; so for Saturday 
 morning do you aim towards Dumfries, and hit me like a good 
 bairn. 
 
 No more, except my blessing and adieu. 
 
264 Carhjle^S Life In Lvndun. 
 
 One more letter lie was to write to hei*, wliicli he was 
 to find on his table in London, with the seal unbroken, and 
 which stands endorsed by him, 'never read. Alas! alas!' 
 The presentiment of evil which it contains mav have been 
 natural, for the post had again brought him nothing from 
 her ; but it deserves to be noticed. 
 
 Scotsbrig : April 20. 
 I had said, it is nothing, this silence of hers ; but about 1 a.m., 
 soon after going to bed, my first operation was a kind of dream ; 
 an actual introduction to the sight of you in bitterly bad circum- 
 stances, and I started broad awake with the thought, ' This was 
 her silence, then, poor soul ! ' Send better news, and don't re- 
 duce me to dream. Adieu, dearest. Send better news, clearer 
 any way. What a party is that of Saturday evening — unexampled 
 in modern society, or nearly so. My regards to Froude. 
 
 Your ever affectionate 
 
 T. Caelyle. 
 
 This was the last letter he ever wrote to her, and the 
 last word in it was my own name. The ' party ' spoken 
 of will be explained immediately. 
 
 Anxietyabout the speech and its concomitants had, as 
 Mrs. Carlyle expressed it, ' tattered her to fiddlestrings.' 
 The sudden relief, when it was over, was scarcely less try- 
 ing. She had visitors to see, who came with their con- 
 gratulations. She had endless letters to receive and answer. 
 To escape from part of this she had gone to Windsor, to 
 spend two days with her friend Mrs. Oiiphant, and had 
 greatly enjoyed her visit. On coming back she had dined 
 with Lady William Russell, in Audle}- Square, and had 
 there a smart passage of words with Mr. Hayward, on tlie 
 Jamaica disturbances, the news of which, and of Governor 
 Eyre's action, had just arrived. The chief subject of con- 
 versation everywhere was her husband's address, and of 
 this there was nothing said but good. Tyndall came back. 
 She saw him, heard all particulars from him, and was 
 made perfectly happy about it. Carlyle himself would 
 
Intended Tea Party in Cheyne Row, 265 
 
 be home in a day or two. For Saturday the 2l8t, pur- 
 posely that it might be got over before his arrival, she had 
 invited a small party to tea. 
 
 Principal Tulloch and his wife were in London ; they 
 wished to meet me or else I to meet them. I forget which 
 it was. I hope the desire was mutual. I, the Tulloch , 
 Mr. and Mrs. Spottiswoode, and Mrs. Oliphant were to 
 be Mrs. Carlyle's guests in Cheyne Row that evening. 
 Geraldine Jewsbury, who was then living in Markham 
 Square, was to assist in entertaining us. That morn- 
 ing Mi-8. Carlyle wrote her daily letter to Carlyle, and 
 took it herself to the post. In the afternoon she went out 
 in her brougham for the usual drive round Hyde Park, 
 taking her little dog with her. Nero lay under a stone in 
 the garden at Cheyne Row, but she loved all kinds of ani- 
 mals, dogs especially, and had found another to succeed 
 him. Near Victoria Gate she had put the dog out to run. 
 A passing carriage went over its foot, and, more frightened 
 than hurt, it lay on the road on its back crying. She 
 sprang out, caught the dog in her arms, took it with her 
 into the brougham, and was never more seen alive. The 
 coachman went twice round the drive, by Marble Arch 
 down to Stanhope Gate, along the Serpentine and round 
 again. Coming a second time near to the Achilles statue, 
 and surprised to receive no directions, he turned round, 
 saw indistinctly that something was wrong, and asked a 
 gentleman near to look into the carriage. The gentleman 
 told him briefly to take the lady to St. George's Hospital, 
 which was not 200 yards distant. She was sitting with 
 her hands folded on her lap dead. 
 
 I had stayed at home that day, busy with something, 
 before going out in the evening. A servant came to the 
 door, sent by the housekeeper at Cheyne Row, to say that 
 something had happened to Mrs. Carlyle, and to beg me 
 to go at once to St. George's. Instinct told me wliat it 
 
266 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 must be. I went on the way to Geraldine ; she was get- 
 ting ready for the party, and supposed that I had called to 
 take her there. I told her the message which I had re- 
 ceived. She flung a cloak about her, and we drove to the 
 hospital together. There, on a bed in a small room, we 
 found Mrs. Carlyle, beautifully dressed, dressed as she 
 always was, in quietly perfect taste. Nothing had been 
 touched. Her bonnet had not been taken oif. It was as 
 if she had sate upon the bed after leaving the brougham, 
 and had fallen back upon it asleep. But there was an 
 expression on her face which was not sleep, and which, 
 long as I had known her, resembled nothing which I had 
 ever seen there. The forehead, which had been contracted 
 in life by continued pain, had spread out to its natural 
 breadth, and I saw for the first time how magnificent it 
 was. The brilliant mockery, the sad softness with which 
 the mockery alternated, both were alike gone. The feat- 
 ures lay composed in a stern majestic calm. I have seen 
 many faces beautiful in death, but never any 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. Geraldine knew every- 
 thing. Mrs. Carlyle, in her own journal, calls Geraldine 
 her ConsuelOy her chosen comforter. She could not speak. 
 I took her home. I hurried down to Cheyne Kow, where 
 I found Forster half-distracted, yet, with his vigorous 
 sense, alive to what must immediately be done. Mr. 
 Blunt, the Hector of Chelsea, was also there ; he, too, 
 dreadfully shaken, but collected and considerate. Two 
 points had immediately to be considered : how to com- 
 municate the news to Carlyle ; and how to prevent an in- 
 quest and an examination of the body, which Forster said 
 would kill him. Forster undertook the last. He was a 
 lunacy commissioner, and had weight with official persons. 
 Dr. Quain had attended Mrs. Carlyle in her illness, and 
 
Death of Mrs, Carlyle. 267 
 
 from him I believe Forster obtained a certificate of tljc 
 probable cause of the death, which was received as suffi- 
 cient. As to Carlyle, we did not know precisely where he 
 was, whetlier at Dumfries or Scotsbrig. In the uncer- 
 tainty a telegram was sent to John Carlyle at Edinburgh, 
 another to Dr. John Brown, should John Carlyle be ab- 
 sent. By them the news was forwarded the same night 
 to Dumfries; to his brother-in-law, Mr. Aitkcn, with whom 
 he was staying, to be communicated according to Mr. Ait- 
 ken'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 Monday, 
 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 stunning effect upon me. Not for above 
 two days could I estimate the immeasurable depths of it, or the 
 infinite sorrow which had peeled my life all bai*e, 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 from my sick heart 
 the ejaculation, * My poor little woman ! ' but no full gust of tears 
 came to my relief, nor has yet come. Will it ever? A stony 
 Woe's me, woe's me ! sometimes with infinite tenderness and pity, 
 not for myself, is my liabitual mood hitherto. I had been hitch- 
 ing 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 her at breakfast that morning, was 
 not put in till after 6 a.m. at Ecclefechan, negligence excusable 
 but unforgetable ; had not left Ecclefechan till 10 p.m., nor ar- 
 rived till 2 p.m., and lay unopened. 
 
 Monday morning, John set off with me for London. Never, for 
 1,000 years, should I forget that arrival here of ours, my first un- 
 
268 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 welcomed by her. She lay in her coffin, lovely in death. Pale 
 death, and things not mine or ours, had possession of onr 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 everybody'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 efforts 
 that I am indebted for escape from this sad defilement of my feel- 
 ings. Indeed, his kindness then and all through, in every partic- 
 ular and detail, was taicxampled, of a cordiality and assiduity 
 almost painful to me. Thanks to him, and perpetual recollection. 
 Next day wander over the fatal localities in Hyde Park, Forster 
 and brother John settling, apart from me, everything for the mor- 
 row. Mon-ow, Wednesday 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. Edward Irving had brought me out walking to Had- 
 dington, she the first thing I had to see then ; the beautifuUest 
 young creature I had ever beheld, sparkling with grace and talent, 
 though sunk in sorrow ' and speaking little. I noticed her once 
 looking at me. Oh heavens, to think of that now ! 
 
 The Dodds,^ excellent people, in their honest, homely way, had 
 great pity for me, patience with me. I retired to my room, slept 
 none all night, little sleep to me since that telegram night, but lay 
 silent in the great silence. Thursday, April 26, wandered out into 
 the churchyard, &c., at 1 p.m. came the funeral, silent, small, only 
 twelve old friends and two volunteers besides us there. Veiy 
 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 
 
 ' She had lately lost her father. 
 
 ^ Old friends of the Welshes, at whose house he was received at Hadding- 
 ton. 
 
Death of Mrs, Carlyle. 269 
 
 Bleeps my little Jeannie, and the light of her face will never shine 
 on me more. 
 
 We withdrew that afternoon ; posted np by Edinburgh, with it« 
 many confuKions, 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 doing all which I could imagine 
 she would have liked me to do. . . . The first awakening in 
 the morning, the reality of all, stripped so hare before me, is the 
 ghastliest half-hour of the day. A kind of leaden weight of sorrow 
 has come over all my universe, with sliarp poignancy of memory 
 every now and then. I cannot weep ; no relief yet, or almost 
 none — of tears. God enable me to live out my poor remnant of 
 days in a manner she would have applauded. Hers — as known to 
 me only — were all veiy noble, a life of liidden beauty, all given to 
 me as part of my own. How had I deserved it ? I, unworthy ! 
 Beautiful, exceedingly I Oh, how mournfully beautiful now ! I 
 called her and thought her my Schiitzen ; but my word was shal- 
 low as compared to the fact, and I never thought of losing her. 
 Vaguely, always, I reckoned that I as the elder should be the first, 
 such a vivacity and brightness of life I noticed in her, in spite of 
 her perpetual burden of infirmities and sufferings day by day. 
 Twice, perhaps thrice, during her honible illness of 1864, the 
 thought rose in me, ghastly and terrible, that I was about to lose 
 her ; but always my hope soon revived into a strange kind of con- 
 fidence ; and very rarely was my work interrupted, but went on 
 steadily up in the garret, as the one thing salvatory to both of us. 
 And oh, her looks as she sate in the balcony at St. Leonards ! 
 Never, never shall I forget that tenderness of love, and that depth 
 as of misery and despair. 
 
 In these days, with mournfnl pleasure, Carlyle com- 
 posed the beautiful epitaph which is printed in the * Let- 
 ters and Memorials,' ' * a word,' he said, * true at least, and 
 coming from his heart, which felt a momentary solace 
 from it.' A few letters, too, he wrote on the subject, two 
 especially to Mr. Erskine, one while the wound was 
 freshly bleedirlg, another a few months after, which I give 
 together ; — 
 
 > Vol. ii. p. 393. 
 
270 Carlyys Life in London, 
 
 To Thomas Ershine, Esq, 
 
 Chelsea : May 1, 1866. 
 
 Dear Mr. Erskine, — Your little word of sympathy went to my 
 heart, as few of the many others could do. Thanks for it. Thanks 
 also, and many of them, for your visit to poor Betty, ^ to whom I 
 have yet written nothing, though well aware that of all liviiif^; 
 hearts but one, hers is the saddest on this occasion. Pray go oui 
 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 fall on her, to ask myself what I can do to be of help to that 
 good soul. 
 
 Hitherto I write to nobody, see nobody but my brother and Mag- 
 gie "Welsh, of Auchtertool. Indeed, I find it is best when I do 
 not even speak to anybody. The stroke that has fallen on me is 
 immeasurable, and has shattered in pieces my whole existence, 
 which now suddenly lies all in ruins round me. In her name, 
 whom I have lost, I must try to repair it, rebuild it into some- 
 thing 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 histoiy on earth now lies before 
 me, all bathed in son'ow, but beautiful exceedingly, nay, of a kind 
 of epic grandeur and heroic nobleness, known only to one heart 
 now. God bless you, dear Mr. Erskine. You will not forget me, 
 Mrs. Stirling and you; nor will I either of you. 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 T. Caelyle. 
 
 Chelsea : October 27, 1866. 
 Dear Mr. Erskine, — Your word of remembrance was very wel- 
 come to me, and has gone ringing through my solitude here with a 
 gentle, pleasant, and friendly sound ever since. I have had many 
 thoughts since I last saw you, silent nearly all, and mostly beyond 
 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 expected 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 stfll voices as dwell 
 there. I have been and am very sad, sad as death I may well say ; 
 » Mrs. Carlyle's old Haddington nurse, often mentioned in her letters. 
 
Death of Mrs. Carlyle. 271 
 
 but not miserable either ; nothing of the mean wretchedness which 
 has defaced other long portions of my life. This is all noble, ten- 
 der, solemn to me. I might define it as a time of divine worship 
 rather, perhaps the only j^eriod of real worship I have known for a 
 great while past. I have tried considerably to be busy, too, and 
 am still trying. Much has to be set in order, and rest is not i^r- 
 mitted till I follow wliither 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 forever. 
 
 For several weeks there was absolutely no speech or company. 
 Now there is occasionally an hour of rational discourse, which is 
 worth something. Vain, idle talk, which is always rife enough, I 
 find much sadder than any form of silence. My bodily health is 
 not worse, perhaps even a shade better than what you last saw of 
 it. My arrangements 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 
 Mr. Erskine ! Here has F. come in upon me, who is my nearest 
 neighbor and a good man. I must say farewell. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 T. Casltul 
 
CHAPTEE XXIX. 
 
 A.D. 1866. MT. 71. 
 
 Message of sympathy from the Queen — John Carlyle — Ketro- 
 spects — A future life — Attempts at occupation — Miss Daven- 
 port Bromley — The Eyre Committee — Memories — Mentone — 
 Stay there with Lady Ashburton — Entries in Journal. 
 
 The installation at Edinburgh had drawn the world's 
 eyes on Carlyle. His address had been in everyone's 
 hands, had been admired by the wise, and had been the 
 fashion of the moment with the mnltitude. The death 
 of his wife following immediately, in so sudden and start- 
 ling a manner, had given him the genuine sympathy of 
 the entire nation. His enemies, if enemies remained, had 
 been respectfully silent. The Queen represented her 
 whole subjects and the whole English-speaking race when 
 she conveyed to Cheyne Row, through Lady Augusta 
 Stanley, a message delicate, graceful, and even affection- 
 ate. John Carlyle had remained there after the return 
 from Haddington to London. To him Lady Augusta 
 wrote, at her Majesty's desire, and I will not injure the 
 effect of her words by compressing them. 
 
 To Dr. Carlyle. 
 
 Osborne : April 30, 1866. 
 Dear Dr. Carlyle, — I was here when the news of the terrible 
 calamity with which your brother has been visited reached Her 
 Majesty, and was received by her with feelings of sympathy and 
 regret, all the more keen from the lively interest with which the 
 Queen had so recently followed the proceedings in Edinburgh- 
 
Death of Mrs. Carlyle. 273 
 
 Her Majesty expressed a wish that, as soon as I conid do so, I 
 should convey to Mr. Carlyle the exi)re88ion of these feelings, and 
 the assurance of her sorrowful understanding of a grief which she 
 herself, alas ! knows too well. 
 
 It was with heartfelt interest that the Queen heard yesterday 
 that Mr. Carlyle had been able to make the effort to return to hi 
 desolate home, and that you are with him. 
 
 Personally Carlyle was unknown to the Queen. He had 
 never been presented, had never sought admission within 
 the charmed circle which surrounds the constitutional 
 crow^n. Perhaps, in reading Lady Augusta's words, he 
 thought more of the sympathy of the ' bereaved widow ' 
 than of the notice of his sovereign. He replied : — 
 
 Chelsea: May 1, 1866. 
 Dear Lady Augusta, — The gracious mark of Her Majesty's 
 sympathy touches me with many feelings, sad and yet beautiful 
 and high. Will you in the proper manner, with my humblest re- 
 spects, express to Her Majesty my profound sense of her great 
 goodness to me, in this the day of my calamity. I can vrnie to 
 nobody. It is best for me at present when I do not even speak to 
 anybody. 
 
 Believe me yours, with many gi-ateful regards, 
 
 T. Cablylb. 
 
 What he was to do next, how he was to live for the 
 future, who was to live with him and take care of him, 
 were questions which his friends were anxiously asking 
 among themselves. Circumstances, nature, everything 
 seemed to point to his brother John as the fittest com- 
 panion for him. From early years John had been the 
 nearest to his heart of all his brothers. John was the 
 correspondent to whom he wrote with the most absolute 
 undisguise ; f i*om whom alone — and this was the highest 
 proof of affection which he could give — he had once been 
 prepared to accept help in money, if extremity had over- 
 taken him. After a good many years of experience as a 
 family physician, after some fitful independent practice. 
 Vol. IV.-18 
 
274 Caflyle^s Life hi London. 
 
 Jolin Carlyle had retired from his profession with an am- 
 ple fortiire. He had married, but had been left a child- 
 less widower, and was using his means in adding to the 
 comfoi'ts of his sisters' families. He had a sound intel- 
 lect, which he had diligently cultivated. He was a fine 
 Italian scholar. His translation of Dante was of admitted 
 excellence. In face, in voice, in mind, he was like his 
 brother. Though with less fire and capacity, he was his 
 equal in singleness of character, essentially true, genuine, 
 and good — with occasional roughness of manner, occasional 
 heedlessness of other people's feelings — but with an honest 
 affectionateness, with an admiration and even adoration 
 of his brother's grander qualities. He, of all others, was 
 the one who was best qualified to relieve, by residing there, 
 ' the gaunt solitude of Cheyne Eow.' 
 
 Some thoughts of the kind, as will be seen, had been in 
 the minds of both of them. Meanwhile, somewhere about 
 in the first week in May, Carlyle, who had hitherto de- 
 sired to be left alone, sent me a message that he would 
 like to see me. He came down to me into, the library in 
 his dressing gown, haggard and as if turned to stone. He 
 had scarcely slept, he said, since the funeral. He could 
 not ^ cry.' He was stunned and stupefied. He had never 
 realised the possibility of losing her. He had settled that 
 he would die first, and now she was gone. From this 
 time and onwards, as long as he was in town, I saw him 
 almost daily. He was looking through her papers, her 
 notebooks and journals ; and old scenes came mercilessly 
 back to him in vistas of mournful memory. In his long 
 sleepless nights, he recognised too late what she had felt 
 and suffered under his childish irritabilities. His faults 
 rose up in remorseless judgment, and as he had thought 
 too little of them before, so now he exaggerated them to 
 himself in his helpless repentance. For such faults an 
 atonement was due, and to her no atonement could now 
 
Death of Mrs, Carlyle. 275 
 
 be made. He remembered, however, Johnson's penance 
 at Uttoxeter ; not once, but many times, lie told me tliat 
 .something like that was required from him, if he could 
 6ee his way to it. * Oh I ' 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 
 again I ' His heart seemed breaking as he said it, and 
 through these weeks and months he was often mournfully 
 reverting to the subject, and speculating whether such 
 future meeting might be looked for or not. He would 
 not let himself be deluded by emotion. His intellect was 
 vigorous as ever, as much as ever on its guard against 
 superstition. The truth about the matter was, he admitted, 
 absolutely hidden from us ; we could not know, we were 
 not meant to know. It would be as God willed. * In my 
 Father's house are many mansions ! ' ' Yes,' he said, * if 
 you are God, you may have a right to say so ; if you are 
 man, what do you know more than I or any of us ? ' Yet 
 then and afterwards when he grew calm, and was in full 
 possession of himself, he spoke always of a life to come, 
 and the meeting of friends in it as a thing not impossible. 
 In spite of science he had a clear conviction that every- 
 thing in this universe, to the smallest detail, was ordered 
 with a conscious pui-pose. Nothing happened to any man 
 which was not ordained to happen. No accident, no bullet 
 on battle-field, or sickness at home, could kill a man till 
 the work for which he was appointed was done, and if 
 this was so, we were free to hope that there was a purpose 
 in our individual existence which was not exhausted in 
 our earthly condition. The spirit, the sonl of man, was 
 not an accident or mere result of the organisation of pro- 
 toplasm. Intellect and moral sense were not put into man 
 by a being which had none of its own. At no time of 
 Carlyle'fi life had such a conclusion as this been credible 
 
276 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 to him. Again it was unlike nature so to waste its ener- 
 gies 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 more weight to these argu- 
 ments than he would otherwise have been able to allow 
 them. At any rate it was round this hope and round his 
 own recollections and remorse that our conversations 
 chiefly turned when we took up our walks again ; the 
 walks themselves tending usually to the spot where Mrs. 
 Carlyle was last seen alive ; where, in rain or sunshine, 
 he reverently bared his head. 
 
 By degrees he roused himself, as he said in his letters 
 to Erskirie, to think of trying some work again. He could 
 still do something. Politics, philosophy, literature, were 
 rushing on faster than ever in the direction which he most 
 disliked. He sketched a scheme for a journal in which 
 there was to be a running fire of opposition to all that. I 
 and Ruskin w^ere to contribute, and it might have come to 
 something if all three of us had been willing, which it 
 appears we were not. In a note of the 2nd of August, 
 this year, he says to me : — 
 
 Has Euskin 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 project ; 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 by whom or how, 
 which of us can say ? 
 
 John Carlyle stayed on in Cheyne Eow, with no fixed 
 arrangement, but as an experiment to see how it would 
 answer. We all hoped it might continue ; but struck 
 down as Carlyle had been he was still himself, and his 
 self-knowledge made him amusingly cautious. John, 
 good-natured though he might be, had his own ways and 
 
AUernpta at Occupation. 277 
 
 humours, and his own plainness of speech ; and to live 
 easily with Oarlyle required that one must be prepared to 
 take stormy weather when it came in silence, lie would 
 be penitent afterwards ; he knew his brother's merits and 
 his own faults. * Your readiness,' he said, 'and eagerness 
 at all times to be of help to me, you may depend upon it 
 is a thing I am always well aware of, at the bottom of all 
 my impatiences and discontents.' But the impatiences 
 and discontents were there, and had to be calculated upon. 
 John was willing to go on, and Carlyle did not absolutely 
 refuse, but both, after some months' trial, doubted if the 
 plan would answer. 
 
 I felt (Carlyle wrote to him, during a short sepai'ation) that in 
 the practical substance of the thing you are probably right. 
 Noises are not the rock it need split on. Eveiything might be 
 I)eaceably deafened, if that were all ; but it is certain you and I 
 have given one another considerable annoyance, and have never 
 yet been able to do together. That is the nature of the two beasts. 
 They cannot change that, and ought to consider it well in their 
 eagerness to be near one another, and get the benefit of mutual 
 affection, now that each 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 
 with the utmost cliearness you have, and gradually come to some 
 decision which the facts will correspond to. The facts will be 
 very rigid when we try them. 
 
 The wish to live together was 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, and 
 they would agree best if they did not see each other too 
 often. John went back to Scotland ; Carlyle was left 
 alone: and other friends now claimed the privilege of 
 being of use to him, especially Miss Davenport Bromley, 
 the * flight of sky larks,' and Lady Ashburton. They 
 had been both /ler friends also, and were, therefore, in his 
 present mood, especially dear to him. Miss Bromley was 
 
278 Carlyle^s Life in London, 
 
 then living at Ripple Court, near Walmer. She invited 
 Carljle to stay with her. He went in the middle of 
 August, and relates his visit in his journal. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 Ripple Court) August 15, 1866. — Arrived here the day before 
 yesterday — beautiful sunny day in the midst of wet and windy 
 ones. Sohtude and green country, spotted with autumn colours, 
 and labours, mournfully welcome to me after the dreary sadness 
 and unwelcome interruptions to my poor labours at Chelsea which, 
 alas ! were nothing more than the sorting, labelling, and tying up 
 in bundles all that is now left me of her that is gone. Was in this 
 country once, now 42 years ago, and remember a Sunday of wan- 
 dering between Dover and here with Edward Irving and Mr. 
 Strachey. What a flight of time / My 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 16. — Had a beautiful ride yesterday, a tolerable bathe, 
 plenty of walking, driving, &c., and imagined I was considerably 
 improving myself ; but, alas ! in the evening came the G.'s, and a 
 dinner amounting to total wreck of sleep to me. Got up at 3 a.m., 
 sate reading till 6, and except a ride, good enough in it itself, but 
 far from * pleasant ' in my state of nerves and heart, have had a 
 day of desolate misery, the harder to bear as it is useless too, and 
 results from a visit which I could have avoided had I been skilful. 
 Oh, my lost one! oh, my lost one! irrecoverable to my lonely 
 heart for ever. 
 
 ' Miss Bromley's hospitality and genuine beautifully 
 simple politeness and kindness were beyond all praise,' he 
 said when his visit was over. But the time at Bipple 
 Court had been spent, ' as in Hades,' the general com- 
 plexion of his thoughts, and he was glad to get back to 
 his ' gloomy dwelling.' The Hades, in fact, was in him- 
 self, and was therefore everywhere. The hopgardens and 
 woods had given him a faint pleasure on his way up 
 through Kent on the railway. ' After Sydenham it be- 
 came unspeakable, abominable, a place fitter for demons and 
 
Ifmtaiion to MenUme, 279 
 
 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 home,' he said, ' is very gaunt and lonesome ; but 
 8uch is my allotment henceforth in this world. 1 have 
 taken loyally to my vacant circumstances, and will try to 
 do my best with them.' 
 
 Another invitation was awaiting him. Lady Ashburton 
 had taken a house at Mentone, and pressed him to spend 
 the winter months with her there. She asked Miss 
 Welsh to accompany him, ' to screen him, and pad every- 
 thing into softness in the new scene.' She was so Nvarm, 
 so eager in her offers, showed so clearly that his consent 
 would be rather for her pleasure than his own, that he re- 
 sisted his natural impulse to refuse on the spot. He let 
 his decision wait till he had disposed of a matter which had 
 become immediately pressing. 
 
 The affair of Governor Eyre had blown into white heat. 
 In submission to general clamour Eyre had been recalled 
 in disgrace. He had applied for other employment and had 
 been refused. He had several children, and was irretriev- 
 ably ruined. It was, Carlyle said to me, as if a ship had 
 been on fire ; the captain, by immediate and bold exer- 
 tion, had put the fire out, and had been called to account 
 for having flung a bucket or two of water into the hold 
 beyond what was necessary. He had damaged some of the 
 cargo, perhaps, but he had saved the ship. The action 
 of the Government, in Carlyle's opinion, was base and un- 
 generons, and when the recall was not sufficient, but Eyre 
 was 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 grossly injured 
 man. 
 
280 Caiiyle^s Life in London, 
 
 To Miss Davenport 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 enfans perdus. We 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. O. Hall of the Art Union, a well-meaning man ; 
 only these, with a secretary who had bright swift eyes, but showed 
 little knowledge of his element. ... In short, contrary 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 committee, the probable chief cause 
 was that my old 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 6,000/. a 
 year into almost zero, and has a large family and needy kindred 
 dependent on him. Such his reward for saving the West Indies, 
 and hanging one incendiary mulatto, well worth the gallows, if I 
 can judge. 
 
 I was myself one of the cowards. I pleaded that I did 
 not understand the matter, that I was editor of ' Fraser,' 
 and sliould disturb the proprietors ; mere paltry excuses to 
 escape doing what I knew to be right. Ruskin was braver 
 far, and spoke out like a man. Carlyle sent Miss Bromley 
 a copy of what he had said. 
 
 The Eyre Committee, he wrote on September 15, is going on 
 better, indeed is now getting fairly on its feet. Buskin's speech — 
 now don't frown upon it, but read it again till you understand it 
 — is a right gallant thrust I can assure you. While all the world 
 stands tremulous, shilly-shallying from the gutter, impetuous 
 Euskin plunges his rapier up to the very hilt in the abominable 
 belly of the vast blockheadism, and leaves it staring very consider- 
 ably. 
 
 The monster, alas ! was an enchanted monster, and ' as 
 the air invulnerable.' Its hour had not come, and has not 
 
The Eyre Committee, 281 
 
 yet, in spite of Ruskiii's rapier. Carlyle gave his money 
 and his name, but he was in no condition for rough strug- 
 gling with the * blatant beast.' lie soon saw that he could 
 make no impression upon the Government, and that Eyre 
 was in no personal danger from the prosecution. lie 
 wrote a few words to one of the newspapers, expressing 
 briefly his own feeling about the matter, and so left it. 
 
 Journal 
 
 September 26, 1866. — Eyre Defence Committee — small letter of 
 mine — has been raging through all the new8pai>er8 of the empire, 
 I am told ; for I have carefully avoided everything pro or contra 
 that the foolish populace of scribblei*s in any form put forth upon 
 it or me. Indifferent in very deed. What is or can be the value 
 to any rational man of what these empty insincere fools say or 
 think on the subject of Eyre's Jamaica measures, or of me that 
 approve them. Weather veiy wet. Wettest harvest I have seen 
 since 1816. Country very base and mad, so far as I survey its 
 proceedings. Bright, Beales, Gladstone, Mill, and Co. , bring on 
 the suffrage question, kindling up the slow canaille what they can. 
 This, and * Oh, make the niggers happy ! ' seem to be the two 
 things needful with these sad people. Sometime I think the tug 
 of revolution struggle may be even near for poor England, much 
 nearer than I once judged — very questionable to me whether Eng- 
 land won't go quit« to siwish under it (perhaps better that it do, 
 having reached such a pitch of spiritual heggari/)^ and whether 
 there is much good likelihood that England can ever get out of 
 such Medea's Caldron again, "made new," and not rather be boiled 
 to slushy rags and ended ? My pleasure or hope in looking at the 
 things round me, or talking of them to almost any person, is not 
 great 
 
 The world was going its way, and not Carlyle's. Ho 
 was finding a morfe congenial occupation for himself, in 
 reviving the history of his own young days, of the life at 
 Ecclefechan and Mainhill, with the old scenes and the old 
 companions. He had begun * languidly,' as he said, to write 
 the * Reminiscences of Edward Irving,' which were more 
 
282 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 about himself than his friend ; and to recall and write 
 down fragments of his mother's talk/ 
 
 While thus employed, he did not encourage visitors. 
 
 Strange [he said] how little good any, even the best of them can 
 do me. Best, sad best, is that I be left to myself and my sorrows. 
 My state is then much more supportable and dignified. My 
 thoughts, all sad as death, but also calm and high, and silent as 
 Eternity, presided over by her, and my grief for her, in which there 
 is something of devout and inexpressibly tender — really my most 
 appropriate mood in the condition I am got to. Eemedy must be 
 had against such intrusions of the impertinent and kind ; but how ? 
 
 A note in the ' Journal ' says that my visits and Eus*- 
 kin's were not regarded as impertinent. He allowed me 
 to see as much of him as I liked. He did not tell me 
 what he was doing, but talked much on the subject of it. 
 
 1 One of these fragments, as it had special reference to himself, besides 
 being curious in itself, I preserve in a note. 
 
 Journal. 
 '■ September 26.— Ghyouw — a name my mother had for any big ill-shaped 
 awkward object — would sometimes call me, not in ill-humour, half in good, 
 "Thou Ghyouw." Some months ago I found, with great interest, that in old 
 Icelandic the same word— sound the same, spelling slightly different— was, 
 and perhaps is, their term for the huge volcanic crack or chasm that borders 
 their old Parliament-place or Thing valla, still well known. My mother, bred 
 not in a country of chasms, never used it except for solid bodies ; but with 
 her, too, it completely meant a thing shapeless, rude, awkwardly huge ; the 
 huger the fitter for its name. I never heard the word from any other mouth. 
 Probably now there is no other Scotchman alive that knows the existence of 
 it in his mother tongue — proof positive, nevertheless, and indisputable, that 
 the Lowland Scots spoke an Icelandic or old Norse language a thousand 
 or thousands of years ago. My mother" s natal place was the Water of Ae 
 (little farm of Whitestanes, or Hazelly Bray afterwards), pleasant pastoral 
 green hill region at the N. W. nook of Annandale, just before Annandale, reach- 
 ing the summit of the watershed, closes, and the ground drops rapidly down 
 to Closelinn, Kil Osbem, and is Nithsdale, which you can still see, then and 
 long afterwards, was a part of Galloway, most of the names in it still Celtic ; 
 and the accent of the wild Scots of Galloway rapidly, almost instantly, ex- 
 changing itself for that of the Teutonic Annandalers. Perhaps this of Giaou 
 or Ghyo^iw is written down somewhere else (nowhere that I know of. — J. A. 
 F.). I did not wish it forgotten, being now sole depositary of it— pretty little 
 fact — clear and dear to me. — T. C 
 
Menione. 283 
 
 He often said — the wish no doubt suggesting tbe expecta- 
 tion — that he thought his own end was near. He was 
 endeavouring to preserve the most precious parts of his 
 recollections, before they and lie should pass away together. 
 The Irving memories were dear to him, but there was 
 something else that was still dearer. Putting these aside 
 for the time, he set himself to write a memoir of the 
 beautiful existence which had gone at the side of his own, 
 a record of what his wife had been to him, and a testi- 
 mony of his own appreciation. At their first acquaintance, 
 it was she who was to make a name in literature, and he 
 was to have supported and stood by her. It was a conso- 
 lation to hi'm. to describe the nature and the capabilities 
 which had been sacrificed to himself, that the portrait of 
 her might still survive. He was not writing it for the 
 world. He finished it just before he went abroad, when 
 he was expecting that in all probability he would never 
 see England again. He left it sealed up, with directions 
 to those into whose hands it might fall, that it was not to 
 be published, no one being capable of properly editing it 
 after he should be gone. 
 
 He had decided that he would try Mentone. Lady Ash- 
 hurton had entreated. His friends believed that change 
 would be good for him. He himself, languid, indifferent, 
 but having nothing of special consequence to retain him 
 in England, had agreed to go. Miss Welsh could not ac- 
 company him. He was not equal to the journey alone. 
 The same friend who had taken charge of him to Edin- 
 burgh undertook to place him safely under Lady Ash- 
 burton's roof, an act of respectful attention which Carlyle 
 never foi*got, * So chivalrous it was.* For Tyndall was 
 not an idle gentleman, with time on his hands. He had 
 his own hard work to attend to in London, and would be 
 obliged to return on the instant. But he was accustomed 
 to travelling. He was as good a courier as Keuberg, and 
 
284 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 to sacrifice a few days to Carlyle was an honour and a 
 pleasure. 
 
 They started on the 22nd of December, and in two 
 days were transported from the London fogs to the sunny 
 shores of the Mediterranean. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 Mentone, January 20, 1867. — Am actually here ; came the day 
 before Christmas, Professor Tyndall triumphantly bringing me. 
 The heroic Tyndall would hear ho whisper of my paying his ex- 
 penses, though hither and thither they must have exceeded 20/., 
 and he came purely on my account. Christmas Day, a strange 
 contrast to English experience, being hot and bright, the gracious 
 lady took us all on asses by the rugged cliffs and sierras to a village 
 and peak called St. Agnes, strangest village in the world, with a 
 strange old castle, perched on the veiy point of the cliff, where we 
 lunched in sight of the population. In the evening we dined with 
 Lady Marion Alford, not known to me before, but elegant, gifted, 
 and blandly high in her way, who, with her two sons, Lord Brown- 
 low and Mr. Cust, are the only interesting people I have met here. 
 Tyndall set off homeward the second day after. 
 
 Thus was Carlyle left in a new environment; nothing 
 save the face of his hostess not utterly strange to him, 
 among olive groves and palms and oranges, the mountains 
 rising behind into the eternal snow, and the sea before his 
 windows — Llomer's violet sea at last under his eyes. Here 
 he got his papers about him. Lady Ash burton left him 
 to himself. He went on with his Reminiscences, and in 
 the intervals wandered as he pleased. Everyone feels 
 well on first reaching the Eiviera. Carlyle slept soundly, 
 discovered ' real improvement ' in himself, and was almost 
 sorry to discover it. 
 
 My poor life [the ' Journal ' continues] seems as good as over. 
 I have no heart or strength of hope or of interest for further work. 
 Since my sad loss I feel lonesome in the earth (Oh, how lonesome !) 
 and solitary among my fellow-creatures. The loss of her comes 
 daily home to me as the irreparable, as the loss of all ; and the 
 heart as before knows its own sorrow, if no other ought to do so. 
 
MerUone. 285 
 
 Wliat can any other help, even if he wished it ? . . . I have 
 finished Edward Ii-ving's Beminiscences, and yesterday a short 
 paper of JeftVey's ditto. It was her connection with them that 
 chiefly impelled me. Botli are superficially, ill, and iK)orly done, 
 especially the latter. But there is something of value for oneself 
 in re-awakening the sleep of the past, and bringing old years care- 
 fully to survey by one's new eyes. A certain solemn tenderness too, 
 in these two cases, dwells in it for me ; and, in fine, doing any- 
 thing not wicked is better than doing nothing. 
 
 Distinguished visitors called in passing on tlieir way to 
 or from Italy ; among otliers, Mr. Gladstone, ' on return- 
 ing from Rome and the Man of Sin,' ' intending for Paris, 
 and an interview with M. Fould.' 
 
 Journal, 
 
 Januaiy 23. — Gladstone, en route homewards, called on Monday, 
 and sate a long time talking, principally waiting for Madame Bun- 
 sen, his old friend, whom it was his one chance of seeing, as he 
 had to leave for Paris the next day. Talk copious, ingenious, but 
 of no worth or sincerity — pictui*es, literature, finance, prosperities, 
 greatness of outlook for Italy, &c. — a man ponderous, copious, of 
 evident faculty, but all gone irrecoverably into House of CJommons 
 shape — man once of some wisdom or possibility of it, but now 
 possessed by the Prince, or many Princes, of the Power of the 
 Air. Tragic to me rather, and far from enviable ; from whom 
 one felt oneself divided by abysmal chasms and immeasurabilities. 
 He went next morning ; but it seems, by the journals, will find 
 his M. Fould, &c., suddenly thrown out by some jerk of their in- 
 sciTitable Ck)pper Captain, and unable to do the honours of Paris 
 in the way they wished. 
 
 His chief pleasure at Mentone was in long walks about 
 the neighbourhood. lie was the best of literary landscape 
 painters, and his jonrnal, with his letters to myself and 
 others, are full of exquisite little sketches, like the pictures 
 of the. old masters, where you liave not merely a natural 
 scene before you, but the soul of the man who looks 
 upon it. 
 
286 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 Mentone, January 21. — I 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 in some nook at the bottom, nothing 
 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 faith- 
 ful to take view of the bits of idols inside, and try if prayer was 
 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, re- 
 gret for the inevitable and inexorable, there was nothing of thought 
 present to me. 
 
 To Miss Davenport Bromley. 
 
 Mentone : January 23. 
 
 You heard of my safe arrival in these parts, that the promises 
 they made me seemed to be good. I am lucky to 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 moments it almost seems as if I might 
 perhaps recognise some actual vestige of better health in these 
 favoured latitudes, and be again a little more alive than of late. 
 But that is only for moments. In what is called ' spirits' I don't 
 seem to improve much, or, if improvement means increase of buoy- 
 ancy or levity, to improve at all. How should I ? In these wild 
 silent ravines one's thoughts gravitate towards death and eternity 
 with more proclivity than ever, and in the absence of serious hu- 
 man discourse, go back to the vanished past as the one profitable 
 or dignified company. There has been no glimpses of what one 
 would call bad weather ; for the most part brilliant sunshine, 
 mixed with a tingling briskness of air. 
 
 In beauty of situation, of aspect and prospect by sea and land, 
 
MenUme. 287 
 
 nothing can exceed ns in the world. Mentone, old town and new, 
 latter perhaps a hundred years old, former several thousands, is 
 built principally as a single street by the sea-shore, along the diam* 
 eter of two beautiful semicircular little hollows, or half-amphi- 
 theatres, formed by the mountains which are the airiest wings of 
 rocky peaks and clifiSs, all terraced and olive-clad, with sometimes 
 an old castle and village. Castle visible like a bird-cago from the 
 shore here, six miles off. I never saw so strangely beautiful a 
 ring of peaks, especially this western one, which is still new to me 
 every morning on stepping out. Western ring and eastern form 
 in the middle, especially form at each end, their bits of capes and 
 promontories and projections into the sea, so that we sit in the 
 hollow of an alcove, and no wind from the north can reach us at 
 all ; maritime Alps intercepting all frost and snow. Mentone prop- 
 er, as diameter or street along the sea, is perhaps three-quarters 
 of a mile long ; a fair street of solid high houses, but part of it 
 paved all through with big smooth whinstones, on which at even- 
 ing all the population seem to gather ; many asses, &c., passing 
 home with their burdens from the mountains, and many women, 
 young and old vrith them, and thriftier, quieter, more cheer- 
 fully serious and innocent-looking set of poor people you never 
 saw. 
 
 Old Mentone, thousands of years old (for there are caves of the 
 troglodytes still extant near by), sprawls up like a huge herring- 
 bone of lanes, steep against the cliff — by way of defence against the 
 Saracens, it is thought ; at some distance from the sea, and only 
 hangs by New Mentone as a shoulder or fin would. Most of the 
 poor people live there. There also in her fine church, the Deipara 
 misericordiarum Mater, so called. And finally the ruins of an old 
 castle, now mostly made into a churchyard. 
 
 English travellers went and came, all eager to have a 
 talk with Carlyle. Lady Marian Alford and her family 
 were a real acquisition to him ; shaded over, however, un- 
 fortunately, by the deatli of Lord Browulow, which oc- 
 curred while he was at Mentone. Carlyle often spoke to 
 me of this young nobleman, and of the fine promise which 
 he had observed in him. His own spirits varied ; declin- 
 ing slightly as the novelty of the scene wore off. To Miss 
 Jewsbury he gave a tolerable account of himself. 
 
288 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 I seem to be doing rather well here [he wrote], seem to have es- 
 caped a most hideous winter for one thing, if other griefs were but as 
 easy to leave behind. The weather, ever since I awoke at Marseilles, 
 has been superb ; not only bright, sunny, and not wintry, but to 
 my feeling more agreeable than any summer, so elastic, diy, 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 brill- 
 iancy, about ten times as numerous, these stars, as yours. The 
 sceneries all around, too, these wild and terrible Alpine peaks, all 
 gathered to rear of us like a Sanhedrim of witches of Endor, and 
 looking blasted, naked rock to the waist, then all in greenish and 
 ample petticoats of terraced olive woods, orange groves, lemon 
 groves ; very strange to me. 
 
 Shadows of the great sorrow, however, clung to him. 
 Even the beauty was w^eird and ominous, and his Journal 
 gives tx^e picture of what was passing in him. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 Mentone, February 13, 1867. — My thoughts brood gloomily, 
 sometimes with unspeakable tenderness, too, over the past, and 
 what it gave me and took from me. I am best off when I get into 
 the brown olive woods, and wander along by the rugged paths, 
 thinking of the one, or of the many who are now there, safe from 
 all sorrow, and as if beckoning to me : * Hither friend, hither ! 
 thou art still dear to us if we have still an existence. We bid thee 
 hope.' The company of nearly all my fellow-creatures, here, and 
 indeed elsewhere, is apt to be rather a burden and desecration to 
 me. Their miserable jargoning about Ephemera and insignifi- 
 cances, their Eeform Bills, American Nigger questions, unex- 
 ampled prosperities, admired great men, &c., are unspeakably 
 wearisome to me, and if I am bound to make any remark in an- 
 swer, 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 sedulously avoid, but too much of it comes in spite of 
 me, though fairly less here than in Chelsea. Let me be just and 
 thankful. Surely the kindness everybody shows me deserves 
 gratitude, too. Especially the perfect hospitality and honestly- 
 affectionate good treatment I experience in this house, and from 
 the wildly-generous mistress of it, is worthy of the heroic ages. 
 
Mentone. 289 
 
 That I do not quite forget, let ub hope, nor shall. Oh, tliere have 
 been noble exceptions among the vulgar, dim-eyed, greedy mill- 
 ions of this age ; and I may say I have been well loved by my 
 contemporaries — taken as a body corporate — thank God I And 
 these exceptions I do perceive and admit to have been the very 
 flower of their generation, to be silently proud of and loyal tp 
 while I live. 
 
 Maixh 8, 1867. — Health very bad, cough, et cetera, but princi- 
 pally indigestion— can have no real improvement till I see C'helsea 
 again. Ck)urage I get through the journey laliter qualiier, and 
 don't travel any more. I am very sad and weak, but not discon- 
 tented or indignant as sometimes. I live mostly alone with van- 
 ished shadows of the Past. Many of them rise for a moment 
 inexpressibly tender. One is never long absent from me. Gone, 
 gone, but very beautiful 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, impossible to liv- 
 ing 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 ! 
 
 Vol. IV.— 19 
 
CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 A.D. 1867. iET. 72. 
 
 Ketum to England — Intruders in Cheyne Eow — Want of employ- 
 ment — Settlement of the Craigenputtock estate — Charities — 
 Public affairs — Tory Reform Bill — ' Shooting Niagara ' — A 
 new horse — ^Visits in country houses — Meditation in Journal — A 
 beautiful recollection. 
 
 The party at Mentone broke up in the second week in 
 March. Lady Ashburton went to Rome and Xaples, hav- 
 ing tried in vain to induce Carlyle to accompany her. He 
 prepared for home again, and, shrinking from the solitude 
 waiting him in Cheyne Row, he wrote, before leaving, to 
 ask his brother to meet him there, with some conscious- 
 ]^ss that he had not received, as graciously as he might 
 have done, his brother's attempts to live with him. 
 
 I am often truly grieved [he said] to think how unreasonable 
 and unmanageable I was with you last time. Surely your sympa- 
 thy 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 efibrt at regulating my Chelsea affairs a little ; especially 
 sweeping my premises clean of the intolerable intrusions that tor- 
 ment me there. I fancy, too, I should not try again the gaunt, 
 entirely solitary life I led latterly ; but am not certain as to get- 
 ting back Maggie Welsh, or whom I should get. (!)n 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. 
 
Tntniders in Chetjne How, 291 
 
 Tyndall's escort was not needed a seSond time. He 
 fonnd his way back to Chelsea without misadventure. 
 John Carlyle was waiting as he desired, and he settled in 
 with more composure than lie had felt since his bereave- 
 ment. The * intnisions ' had to be dealt with, but were 
 not easily disposed of. Mrs. Carlyle once said she had the 
 faculty of attracting. all miserable people that wanted con- 
 solation. Carlyle seemed to attract everyone who wanted 
 help for body or soul, or advice on the conduct of life. 
 The number of people who worried him on such matters, 
 most of them without a form of introduction, is hardly to 
 be believed. Each post brought its pile of lettere. One 
 admirer wanted a situation under Government, another 
 sent a manuscript to be read and recommended to a pub- 
 lisher, another complained that Nature had given him a 
 hideous face; he had cursed his life, and cursed his 
 mother for bearing him ; what was he to do ? All a§ked 
 for interviews. Let them but see him, and thej' would 
 convince him of their deserts. He was marvellously pa- 
 tient. He answered most of the letters, he saw most of 
 the applicants. He gave advice. He gave money, infi- 
 nitely too much. Sometimes, when it was beyond endur- 
 ance, he would order the servant to admit no strange face 
 at all. In such cases men would watch in the street, and 
 pounce upon him when he came out for his walk. I have 
 been with him on such occasions, and have been aston- 
 ished at the efforts which he would make to be kind. 
 Once I recollect a girl, an entire stranger, wrote to him to 
 say that in order to get books she had pawned some plate 
 of her grandmother's. She was in danger of discovery 
 and ruin. Would Carlyle help her to redeem it? He 
 consulted me. A relation of mine, who lived in the 
 neighbourhood, made inquiiy, saw the girl, and found that 
 the story was true. He replied to her letter as the kind- 
 est of fathers might have done, paid the money, and saved 
 
292 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 lier from sliame. Sometimes tlie homage was more dis- 
 interested. I liad just left liis door one day, when a 
 bright eager lass of seventeen or eighteen stopped me in 
 the Row, and asked me if Thomas Carljle lived there. I 
 sliowed her the house, and her large ejes glowed as if she 
 was looking upon a saint's shrine. This pleased him when 
 I mentioned 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.' Worse than all, there was no 
 work cut out for him, and he .could make none for him- 
 self. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 Chelsea, April 4, 1867. — Idle ! Idle ! My employments mere 
 trifles of business, and that of dwelling on the days that culmi- 
 nated on the 21st of last year. How sudden was that bereavement 
 to me ! how pathetic, touchingly and grandly fateful ; in extent of 
 importance to me how infinite ! Perhaps my health is slightly 
 mending ; don't certainly know, but my spirits don't mend appa- 
 rently at all. Interest, properly, I have in no living person, in no 
 present thing. Their ' Eef orm Bill,' their &c., &c. Acli Gott ! I 
 am disgusted if by chance I look into my newspaper, or catch a 
 tone of the insane jargon which seems to be occupying everybody. 
 
 April 20.— rWhat 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 oftenesfc 
 crushed down into contemptibility as well as sorrow. All of sun- 
 shine 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 pious, childlike hope in the eternity before us — my 
 last fortnight has been the saddest, dreariest, sordidly idle, with- 
 out dignity, satisfaction, or worth. I have tried, too, twice over, 
 for something of work, but all in vain. Will it be for ever in vain 
 then ? Better be silent than continue thus. . . . Were it per- 
 mitted, I could pray — but to whom ? I can well understand the 
 
Iff//// nt' j-:u,j.: -'ju,, ,,:. 293 
 
 Invocation of Saints. One's prayer now has to be voifolcss, dtjne 
 with the heaii still, but also with the hands still more. 
 
 April ^\. — Abundantly downcast, dreaiy, sorrowful ; nothing in 
 me but sad thoughts and recollections ; ennobled in i>art by a ten- 
 derness, a love, a pity, Kteei)etl as if in tears. Regrets also rise in 
 me ; bits of remorse which are very pungent. How death the inex- 
 orable, unalterable, stem s<?para/w, alters everything ! . . . But 
 words are of no value, and, alas ! of acts I have none, or as good as 
 none. The question, WTiy am I left behind thee ? as yet nearly 
 altogether wwanswered. Can I ever answer it? God help mo to 
 answer it. That is earnestly my prayer, 'and I "will tiy and again 
 tiy. Be that the annual sacrifice or act of Temple worship, on this 
 "the holiest of my now days of the year. 
 
 April 24. — Idle, sick, companionless ; my heart is very heavy, as 
 if /till and no outlet appointed. Trial for employment continues, 
 and shall continue ; but a^et in vain. Writing is the one thing I 
 can do ; and at present what to 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 ri.se with something into the limit- 
 less Ideal, and disburden myself in rounded hannony and what 
 poets call song — a fond wish indeed ! But this crabbed Earth with 
 its thunder rods and dog grottoes, is become homeless to me, and 
 too mean and contradictory. 
 
 May 26.— 
 
 To die ia landing on some silent shore. 
 Where billows never break nor temi>e6t8 roar ; 
 Ere well you feel the friendly stroke, 'tis o'er. 
 
 Such a life as I now lead is painful and even disgraceful ; the life 
 of a vanquished slave, who at best, and that not always, is silent 
 nnder his i)enalties and sores. 
 
 In this tragic state Carlyle found one little thing to do 
 which gave him a certain consolation. By his wife's death 
 lie had become the absolute owner of the old estate of the 
 Welshes at Craigenputtock. An nnuli miiiL^ itiiility 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 
 whom it could be bequeathed. He thought that it ought not 
 
 / 
 
294 Cadyle's Life in JjnuJon. 
 
 to lapse to his own family ; and he determined to leave it 
 to his eountry, not in his own name, but as far as possible 
 in hers. With this intention he had a deed drawn, by 
 which Craigenputtock, after his death, was to become the 
 property of the University of Edinbui-gh, the rents of it 
 to be laid out in supporting poor and meritorious students 
 there, under the title of ' the John Welsh Bursaries.' Her 
 name he could not give, because she had taken his own. 
 Therefore he gave her father's. 
 
 Journal. 
 June 22, 1867. — Finished off on Thursday last, at three p.m.,' 
 20th of June, my poor bequest of Craigenputtock to Edinburgii 
 University for bursaries. All quite ready there, Forster and 
 Froude as witnesses ; the good Profes^r Masson, who had taken 
 endless pains, aHke friendly and wise, being at the very last ob- 
 jected to in the character of ' witness,' as 'a party interested,' said 
 the Edinburgh lawyer. I a little regretted this circumstance ; so 
 I think did Masson 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 — Masson 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 have done with ; never, except 
 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 Ab- 
 bey,' * Cor Dulce,' or New Abbey, a sacred casket and tomh 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 fol- 
 lows : — • 
 
 July 14. — Her birthday. She not here — I cannot keep it for her 
 now — send a poor gift to poor old Betty, who, next to myself, re- 
 members her in lifelong love and sacred sorrow. This 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 smug- 
 gled a small anonymous dole — most poor, most ineffectual, sorrow- 
 ful, are all our resources against the gate that is for ever shut. 
 
CharUus. 295 
 
 This is another instance of Carlyle's cliarities. He re- 
 menil)ered his wife's pensioners : but he had as long or a 
 longer list of his own. No donation of his ever appeared 
 in printed lists ; what he gave he gave in secret, anony- 
 mously as here, or else with his own hand as one human 
 being to another ; and of him it may be truly said that 
 the left hand did not know what the right was doing. 
 Tlie undeserving were seldom wholly refused. The de- 
 serving were never forgotten. I recollect an old man, past 
 eighty, in Chelsea, who had refused parish help, and as 
 long as he could move earned his living by wheeling cheap 
 crockery about the streets. Carlyle had a germine respect 
 for him, and never missed a chance of showing it. Money 
 was plentiful enough now, as he would mournfully ob- 
 serve. Edition followed edition of the complieted works. 
 He had more thousands now than he had hundreds when 
 he published ' Cromwell ' — but he never altered his thrifty 
 habits, never, even in extreme age, allowed himself any 
 fresh indulgence. His one expensive luxury was charit}'. 
 
 The sad note continues to souikI through the Journal. 
 The shadow of his lost wife seemed to rise between him 
 and every other object on which he tried to fix his 
 thoughts. If anything like duty called to him, however, 
 he could still respond — and the political state of England 
 did at this thne demand a few words from him. Through- 
 out his life he had been studying the social and political 
 problems of modern Europe. For all disorders moilern 
 Europe had but one remedy, to abolish the subordination 
 of man to man, to set every individual free, and give him 
 a voice in the government, that he might look after his 
 own interests. This once secured, with free room and no 
 1 IV- 111, all w^ould compete on equal terms, and might be 
 expected to fall into the places which naturally belonged 
 to them. None at any rate could then complain of in- 
 justice ; and peace, prosperity, and universal content would 
 
296 Carhjles Life in London. 
 
 follow. Such was and is the theory ; and if the human 
 race, or the English race, were all wise and all good, and 
 had unbounded territorial room over which to spread, 
 something might be said for it. As the European world 
 actually w'as, in the actual moral and material condition of 
 European mankind, with no spiritual convictions, no sin- 
 cere care for anything save money and what money could 
 buy, tliis notion of universal liberty in Carlyle's opinion 
 could end in nothino^ save universal wreck. If the Eno^- 
 lish nation had needed governing when they had a real 
 religious belief, now, when- their belief had become con- 
 ventional, they needed it, he thought, infinitely more. 
 They could bear the degree of freedom which they had 
 already, only in virtue of ancient habits, contracted under 
 wiser arrangements. They would need the ^^ry best men 
 they had among them if they w^ere to escape the cataracts 
 of which he heard the approaching thunder. Yet it was 
 quite certain to him that, with each extension of the 
 franchise, those whom they would elect as their rulers 
 would not be fitter men, but steadily inferior and more 
 unfit. Under any conceivable franchise the persons chosen 
 would represent the level of character and intelligence in 
 those who chose them, neither more nor less, and there- 
 fore the lower the general average the worse the govern- 
 ment 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. He knew how many fine qualities the 
 English still possessed. He did not believe that the 
 majority w^ere bent of themselves on these destructive 
 courses. If the wisest and ablest would come forward 
 with a clear and honorable profession of their true convic- 
 tions, he had considered it at least possible that the best 
 part of the nation would respond before it w^as too late. 
 The Tories bad just come into office. He had small con- 
 
I'ubl'ic Ajf'au'S. 29T 
 
 fidence in them, but they at least repudiated tlio 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 
 measures and adulterated goods, that the eternal war should 
 cease l)etween employers and employed, and the profits 
 of labour should be apportioned by some nile of equity; 
 that the splendid colonial inheritance which their fore- 
 fathers had won should be opened to the millions who 
 were suffocating in the foetid alleys of our towns ; that 
 these poor people should be enabled to go where they 
 could lead hmnan lives again. Here, and not by ballot- 
 boxes and anarchic liberty, lay the road to salvation. 
 Statesmen who dared to try it would have Nature and her 
 laws fighting for them. They might be thrown out, bnt 
 they would come back again — come in stronger and 
 stronger, for the good sense of England would be on their 
 side. 
 
 With a languid contempt, for he half-felt that he had 
 been indulging in a dream, Carlyle in this year found the 
 Tories preparing to outbid their rivals, in their own arts 
 or their own folly, courting the votes of the mob by the 
 longest plunge yet ventured into the democratic whirlpool ; 
 and in the midst of his own grief he was sorry for his 
 country. 
 
 There is no spirit in me to write [he notes in his Journal J, 
 thongh I try it sometimes ; no topic and no audience that is in 
 the least dear or great to me. Reform Bill going its fated road, 
 i.e. England getting into the Niagara rapicU far sooner than I ex- 
 pected ; even this no longer much irritates me, much affects me. 
 I say rather, Well ! why not ? Is not national death, with new 
 birth or without, perhaps preferable to such utter rottenness of 
 national life, so called, as there has long hopelessly been. Let it 
 come when it likes, since there are Dizzies, Gladstones, Bnsselln, 
 &c., triumphantly prepared to bring it in. Providenee truly is 
 skilful to preiMure its instrumental men. . Indeed, all England, 
 
^98 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 heavily though languidly averse to this embarking on the Niagara 
 rapids, is strangely indifferent to whatever may follow it. ' Niag- 
 ara, or what you like, we will at least have a villa on the Mediter- 
 ranean (such an improvement of climate to this), when Church and 
 State have gone,' said a certain shining countess to me, yesterday. 
 Newspaper editors, in private, I am told, and discerning people 
 of every rank, as is partly apparent to myself, talk of approaching 
 * revolution,' ' Common wealth,' ' Common illtli,' or whatever it may 
 be, with a singular composure. 
 
 Disraeli had given the word, and his party had sub- 
 mitted to be educated. Political emancipation was to be 
 the road for them — not practical administration and war 
 against lies and rognery. Carlyle saw that we were in the 
 rapids, and could not any more 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 ? ' 
 When Frederick Maurice published his heresies about 
 Tartarus, intimating that it was not a place, but a condi- 
 tion, and that the wicked are. in Tartarus already, James 
 Spedding observed to me that ' one was relieved to know 
 that it was no worse.' Carlyle's I^iagara, now that we 
 are in the middle of it, seems to ns for the present 
 nothing very dreadful, and we are preparing with much 
 equanimity, at this moment, to go down the second cata- 
 ract. The broken water, so far, lies on the other side of 
 St. George's Channel. The first and immediate effect of 
 the Reform Bill of 1867 was the overthrow of Protestant 
 ascendency in Ireland. After five centuries of failure in 
 that country, the English Protestants succeeded in plant- 
 ing an adequate number of loyal colonists in the midst of 
 an incurably hostile population, and thus did contrive to 
 exercise some peaceful influence there, and make constitu- 
 tional government in that island not wholly impossible. 
 The English Democracy, as soon as they wei'e in posses- 
 sion of power, destroyed that influence. The result we 
 have partly seen, and we shall see more fully hereafter. 
 
*^ Shooting Nldgara.* 299 
 
 Carlyle, however, did not anticipate, as the consequence 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 regard money- 
 making as the business of life, and the more rapid degra- 
 dation of the popular moral character — at the end of whieli 
 perhaps, but still a long way off, would be found some 
 ' scandalous Copper Captaincy.' The believers in progress 
 on these lines, therefore, may breathe freely, and, like 
 Spedding, be ' glad that it is no worse.' The curious feat- 
 ure in the pamphlet is that Carlyle visibly underrated 
 the disturbance to be looked for in our actual arrange- 
 ments. He thought that, after the complete triumph of 
 democracy, the aristocracy would be left in possession of 
 their estates, and be still able to do as they pleased with 
 them ; to hunt and shoot their grouse ; or, if the moors 
 and coverts failed them, at least to subside into rat-catch- 
 ing. In his Journal, September IT, 1867, there is a quo- 
 tation from the ' Memoirs of St. Palaye ' : — ' Louis XI 
 aima la chasse jusqu'a sa mort, qui arriva en 1483. Du- 
 rant sa maladie a Plessis-les-Tours, comme il ne pouvait 
 plus prendre ce divertisement, on attrapait les plus gros 
 rats qd'on pouvait, et on les faisait chasser par les chats 
 dans ses appartements, pour I'amuser. * Had a transient 
 thought,' he says, * of putting that as emblematic 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 them to retain 
 the necessary power over their properties, they might form 
 their own domains into circles of order and cosmos, ban- 
 ishing the refraetitnj, and thus, by drill and discipline and 
 ,wise administration, introduce new elements into the gen- 
 eral chaos. *A devout imagination' on Carlyle's part; 
 but an imagination merely. If it were conceivable, as it 
 is not, that the aristocracy would prefer such an occupation 
 
300 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 to rat-catching, their success would depend on that very 
 power of ' banishing the refractory,' of wliich it is certain 
 that they wonld be deprived if they showed a disposition 
 to create, in using it, an influence antagonistic t6 a ruling 
 democracy. The Irish experiment does not indicate that 
 the rights of landowners would be treated with mucli for- 
 bearance wdien the exercise of those rights was threaten- 
 ing a danger to ' liberty.' 
 
 ' Shooting Is iagara ' appeared first in ' Macmillan's Mag- 
 azine' for August, 1867. It was corrected and republished 
 as a pamphlet in September, and was Carlyle's last public 
 utterance on English politics. He thought but little of it, 
 and was aware how useless it would prove. In his Jour- 
 nal, August 3, he says ; — 
 
 An article for Masson and ' Macmillan's Magazine ' took up a 
 good deal of time. It came out mostly from accident, little by voli- 
 tion, and is very fierce, exaggerative, ragged, unkempt, and de- 
 fective. 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 Works ' was 
 now to be issued, and, conscientious as ever, Carlyle set 
 himself to revise and correct the whole series. He took 
 to riding again. Miss Bromley provided "him with a 
 horse called Cornet^ between whom and himself there w^as 
 soon established a personal attachment, and on Comet's 
 back, as before, he sauntei-ed about the London environs, 
 lie described himself to Miss Bromley as very solitary, 
 the most silent man not locked into the solitary system, to 
 be found in all her Majesty's dominions. 'Incipient au- 
 thors, 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 bothera- 
 tions ; ' on the whole, however, the trouble was not much. 
 
Daily Worriea, 301 
 
 I find that solitnde [he said] and one's own mA and Sdriona 
 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, sorrowful, and tembly diflS- 
 cult 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 aie now three railways on that 
 poor road since I was last there, and apparently 3,000 new dig- 
 gings, lumber heaps and new villas rising^ dirty shops risen^ and 
 costermongera' carts, &c. — a road, once the prettiest I knew for 
 liding, 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 sjxjiled Addiscome 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 oflf the froth from the Progress Pot,* as one correspon- 
 dent phrased it. 
 
 He worked hard on the * revising' business, bnt felt no 
 enthnsiasra about the interest which * his works ' were ex- 
 citing ; * nothing but languor, contempt, and indifference 
 for said works — or at least for their readers and them.' 
 *The works had indeed cost Iiiin li is life, and were in 
 some measure from the lieart, and all h6 could do. But 
 the readers of them were and had been — what should he 
 say ? ' and in fact ' no man's work in this world could de- 
 mand for itself the smallest doit of wages, or were intrin- 
 sically better than zero. That was the fact, when one 
 had arrived where he had arrived.' The inoTiey which 
 was now coming in was actually painful. 
 
 Vanished, vanished, they that should have taken pleasure from 
 '\\. Ah me ! ah me I The more I look back on that thirteen years 
 of work [over * Frederick '], the more appalling, huge, unexampled 
 it appears to me. Sad pieties aiise to think that it did not A*i7/me, 
 that in spite of the world I got it done, and that my noble uncom- 
 plaining 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 bolievo is i>artly silence and pre- 
 occnpancy ; and were it wholly stupidity, didn't I already know 
 
302 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 how ' stupid ' the poor English now are. Book is not quite zero I 
 perceive, but will be good for something by-and-by. , . . My 
 state of health is very miserable, though I still sometimes think 
 it fundamentally improving. Such a total wreck had that ' Fred- 
 erick ' reduced me to, followed by 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 un- 
 spoken thoughts — or things not yet thought or thinkable — som- 
 bre, solemn, cloudy-moonlit, infinitely sad, but full of tenderness 
 withal, and of a love that can now be noble, — this, thank God, is 
 the element I dwell in. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 Gielsea, 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 theniselves entitled to intrude with 
 any or without any cause, upon the busiest, saddest, sacredest, or 
 most important of their fellow-mortals. Fire mostly delivers us 
 from the common run of these. . . . There is nothing of joy- 
 ful in my life, nor ever likely to be ; no truly loved or loving soul — 
 or practically as good as none — left to me in the earth any more. 
 The one object that is wholly beautiful and noble, and in any sort 
 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, aUd veritably acts as a kind of high and sacred con- 
 solation to me amidst the intrusive basenesses and empty bothera- 
 tions that otherwise each day brings. I feel now and then, but 
 repress 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 icish to be there ? This is very ungrateful to some of 
 my friends I still have, some of whom are boundlessly 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 have more. But, alas ! 
 I cannot be helped — that is the melancholy fact. 
 
 Chelsea, October 1. — Inconceivable are the mean miseries I am in 
 just now, about getting new clothes — almost a surgical question 
 with me latterly — about fitting this, contriving 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. 
 
Weariness of Life, 303 
 
 ... In fact my skin is naturally far too thin, for this ' age of 
 progress ' especially. 
 
 CheUeOy October 8. — Solitary since Thursday last altogether. 
 Maggie 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 gro^t-n and 
 growing very weak, as is natural at these years. Natural, but not 
 joyful — life without the power of living — what a misery I 
 
 Chelsea^ October 30. — Am of a sadness, and occasionally of a ten- 
 derness which surprises even myself in these late weeks— «eem8 as 
 if the spirit of my loved one were, in a i)oor 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 complain of as dan- 
 gerous or the like — and probably am too old ever to recover. Life 
 is verily a weariness on these tei*ms. Oftenest I feel \Nilling to go, 
 were my time come. Sweet to rejoin, were it only in Etenial 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 an- 
 nihilation or eternal sleep ? ' I ask too. They and I are alike in 
 the will of the Highest. Amen. 
 
 'Niagara,' seventh thousand printed, Forster told me — well, 
 well ! Though what good is in it either ? 
 
 Clielsea, November 15. — Went to Belton ' 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 reception, the nobleness 
 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, and oftenest \*'a8 in secret supremely sad and miser- 
 able 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 dress- 
 ing, stripping and again dressing, the * witty talk ' — Ach GoU !— 
 especially as crown and summary of all, the dining at 8-9 p.m., all 
 this is fairly unmanageable by me. Disce JtistUiam, monite. Don't 
 go back if you be wise, except it be fairly unavoidable. . . . 
 Oh, the thoughts I liad in those silent, solitary days, and how, in 
 
 1 Lady Marian Alford**, near Grantham. 
 
304 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 the wakeful French bed there, the image of another bed far away 
 in the Abbey Kirk of Haddington, in the still infinitude of Eter- 
 nity, 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 Redcliffe to see Woolsthorpe, the 
 birthplace of Sir Isaac I^ewton. 
 
 Newton (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 Principia, 
 often up till three a.m., without outlook or wish almost, except to 
 master it^ the loneliest and among the most triumphant of all 
 young men. Newton is quite dead to me since that ; and I rec- 
 ognise hundreds and thousands of ' greater men.' Nevertheless, 
 he remains great in his kind, and has always this of supremely 
 notable that he made the grandest discovery in science which 
 mankind ever has achieved or can again achieve. Wherefore even 
 I could not grudge the little pilgrimage to him. 
 
 The loneliness in Cheyne Row was not entirely un- 
 broken this autumn. He had a visit from his broth igr 
 James, 'whose honest, affectionate face enlivened the 
 gloomy solitude for him.' James Carlyle had been rarely 
 in London, and had ' the sights ' to see, had he cared about 
 them. It seemed that he cared nothing for any of them, 
 but very much for his forlorn and solitary brother, show- 
 ing signs of true affection and sympathy, which were very 
 welcome. Carlyle spoke of him as 'an excellent old 
 Annandale specimen ; my father's pupil, formed 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 Reform Bill was 
 producing its fruits, clianges of ministry, Clerkenwell ex- 
 plosions, &c. &c., which brought tlie Irish question 
 ' within the range of practical politics.' Carlyle observed 
 
it all with his old contempt, no longer at white heat, Imt 
 warming occasionally into red. 
 
 No Feniau has yet blown us up (he wrote to Miss Bromley). I 
 sit in . speechless admiration of our English treatment of these 
 Fenians first and last. It is as if the rats of a house had decided 
 to expel and ext^iminate the human inhabitants, which latter 
 seemed to have neither rat-catchers, tmp^, nor arsenic, and arc 
 trying to prevail by the * method of love.' Better s})eed to them a 
 great deal ! If Walpole were to weep to the head-centres a little, 
 perhaps it might help. 
 
 He had an old interest in Ireland. He had studied it 
 once, with a view to writing on the subject, and was 
 roused into disgust and scorn with this new fruit of 
 Liberalism. But he was haunted by ghosts, and neither 
 Ireland nor English politics could drive his sorrow out of 
 his mind. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 Novemher 30, 1867. — Have been remembering vividly all morn- 
 ing, with inexpressible emotion, how my loved one at Craigenput- 
 tock, 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 woii, 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, lovo, and i>erfect unity 
 of heart this indicated in her. The figure of her bright, cheery, 
 beautiful face mirrored in the glass beside my own nigged, soapy 
 one answering curtly to keep up her cjieeiful, 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 I Not quite till this morning did I ever see what 
 a perfect love, and under such conditions too, this little bit of 
 simple 8]>ontaneity betokened on my dear Jeannio's jiart. Never 
 till her death did I sc^e how much she loved me. . . . Nor, I 
 fear, did she ever know (could she have seen across the stormy 
 clouds and eclipsing miseries) what a love I bore A«r, and shall 
 always, how %'ainly now, in my inmost heart. These things are 
 Vol. IV. —20 
 
3i>6 Carhjlvs Life m London. 
 
 beautiful, but they are unutterably sad, and have in them some- 
 thing considerable of remorse as well as sorrow. Alas ! why does 
 one first see fully what worth the soul's jewel had when it is gone 
 without return ? Most weak creatures are we ; weak, perverse, 
 wayward, especially weak. . . . Sometimes I call myself weak, 
 morbid, wrong, in regard to all this. Sometimes again I feel it 
 sordid, base, ungrateful, when all this gets smothered up in vul- 
 gar interruption, and I see it as if frozen away from me in dull 
 thick vapour for days together. So it alternates. I pretend to no 
 regulation of it ; honestly endeavour to let it follow its own law. 
 That is my inile in the matter. Of late, in my total lameness and 
 impotency for work (which is a chief evil for me), I have some- 
 times thought, ' One thing you could do — write some record of 
 her — make some selection of her letters w^hich you think justly 
 among the cleverest ever written, and which none but yourself 
 can quite understand. But no ! but no ! How speak of her to 
 such an audience ? What can it do for her or for me ? 
 
 This is the first sign of the intention which Carljle 
 afterwards executed. How it ripened will be seen pres- 
 ently. Meanwliile tlie Journal continues : — 
 
 December 6. — I 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. . . . My out- 
 look 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 I take 
 it always to be a place of rest) is the only prospect of being fairly 
 better than I have been. My work being all done, as I more and 
 more fear it is, w hy should I wish to linger here ? My 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 unfathomable 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 w^hat a paltiy dog-kennel of a world — now rushing 
 fast to total anarchy and self-government by the basest — this must 
 1 His birthday was December 4. 
 
Journal. '^>r»7 
 
 be ; and that I am a i)oor old man, liable to be bored, provoked, 
 and diHtressed, rather than helped any way, by his fellow-creat* 
 urea. In every condition under God's sky is there not a right 
 way of behaving under it ? And is 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.' Neither is this 
 altogether true for me. II sadness and sorrow tend to loosen ua 
 from life, they make the place of rest desirable. If incurable 
 grief be love all steeped in tears, and lead us to pious thoughts 
 and longings, is not grief an earnest blessing to us? Alas! that 
 one is not pious always : that it is anger, bitterness, imjmtience, 
 and discontent that occupies one's ix)or weak heart so much 
 oftener. S(Hiie mornings ago I said to myself, ' Is there no book 
 of piety you could still write ? Forget the basenesses, miseries, 
 and abominations of this fast-sinking world — its punishment come 
 or at hand ; and dwell among the x>oor straggling elements of 
 pity, of love, of awe and worship you can still discern in it ! Bet- 
 ter so. Bight, surely, far better. I wish, I wish I cuuld. Was 
 my great grief sent to me perhaps for that end ? In rare better 
 moments I sometimes strive to entertain an imagination of that 
 kind ; but as to doing anything in consequence, alas ! alas I ' 
 
 ' All England has taken to stealing,' says a certain newspaper 
 for the last two Weeks. Very serious, means mil way swindling, 
 official jobbery, &c. Remedy, he thinks, will be that we shall all 
 grow as poor as Hindoos, and then be as fiercely vigilant. Would 
 it not be I'easonabler to find now your small remainder of honest 
 people, and arm them with authority over your multitudinous 
 knaves ! Here and there we are beginning to see into the meaning 
 of self-government by the hungry rabble. 
 
 The last stage of life's journey is necessarily dark, sad, and car- 
 ried on under steadily increasing difficulties. We are alone ; all 
 our loved ones and cheering fellow-pilgrims gone. Our strength 
 is failing, wasting more and more ; day is sinking on us ; night, 
 coming, not metaphorically only. The road, to our growing weak- 
 ness, dimness, injurability of every kind, becomes more and more 
 obstructed, intricate, diffi^cult to feet and eyes ; a road among 
 brakes and brambles, swamps and stumbling places ; no welcome 
 shine of a humcm cottage with its hospitable candle now alight for 
 us in these waste solitudes. Our eyes, if we have any light, real 
 
308 Cavlyle\^ J^it<' '/< London. 
 
 only on the eternal stars. Tims we stagger on, imiDediments in- 
 creasing, force diminishing, till at length there is equality between 
 the terms, and we do all infallibly arrive. So it has been from 
 the beginning ; so it will be to the end — forever a mystery and 
 miracle before which human intellect falls dumb. 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 hrinlx: in 
 that instance, and our liome thenceforth an infinite Inane ? God, 
 our Eternal Maker, alone knows, and it shall be as He wills, not 
 as we would. His mercy be upon us ! '^\'T.iat a natural human as- 
 piration ! 
 
 December 30. — Ah me ! Am I good for nothing then ? Has my 
 right hand — head rather — altogether lost its cunning ? It is my 
 heart that has fallen heavy, wrapt in endless sadness and a mist of 
 stagnant musings upon death and the grave. Nothing now, no 
 person now is beautiful to me. Nobleness in this world is as a 
 thing of the past. I have given uj) England to the deaf stupidi- 
 ties, and to the fatalities that follow, likewise deaf. Her struggles, 
 I perceive, under these nightmares, will reach through long sor- 
 did centuries. Her actual administerings, sufferings, performings, 
 and attemptings fill me unpleasantly with abhorrence and con- 
 tempt, 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 think 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 din- 
 nel' was not good for me. ' Lie on the sofa there,' said she — the 
 ever kind and graceful, herself refusing to do so — * there, but don't 
 sleep,' and I, after some 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 mind finely wandering 
 through the realms of memory and romance, and effectually pre- 
 vented sleep. That evening I had lain but a few minutes when 
 she turned round to her piano, got out the Thomson Burns book, 
 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 my 
 old favourites : * Banks and Braes,' ' Flowers of the Forest,' * Gil- 
 
Journal, 309 
 
 deroy/ not forgetting 'Duncan Gray,* *Cauld Kail/ * Irish Coolen,* 
 or any of my favouiites tmgic or comic ; all which she did with a 
 modest neatness and completeness — I might say with an honest 
 geniality and unobtrusively beautiful perfection of heart and liand 
 — which I have never seen equalled by the most brilliant players, 
 among which sort she was always humbly far from ranking her- 
 self ; 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 since, very likely the pleasantcst 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 especially, 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 joiano and answered 
 nothing. That piano has never again Sounded, nor in my time will 
 or shall. In late months it has grown clearer to me than ever 
 that she had said to herself 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. So like her ; so like 
 her. Alas, alas ! I was very blind, and might have known better 
 how near its setting my bright sun was. 
 
CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 A.D. 1868. MI. 73. 
 
 The Eyre Committee —Disestablishment of the Irish Church — A 
 lecture by Tyndall— Visit to Stratton — S. G. O. — Last sight 
 of the Grange — 'Letters and Memorials of Mrs. Carlyle ' — 
 Meditations in Journal — Modern Atheism — Democracy and 
 popular orators — Scotland — Interview with the Queen — Por- 
 traits—Modern Atheism — Strange applications — Loss of use 
 of the right hand — Use§ of anarchy. 
 
 The persecution of General Eyre had been protracted with 
 singular virulence. He had been recalled from Jamaica. 
 His pension was withheld, and he was financially a ruined 
 man. The Eyre Committee continued, doing what ■ it 
 could for him. Carhde was anxious as ever. I never 
 knew him more anxious about any tiring. It had been 
 resolved to present a petition in Eyre's behalf to tlie 
 Government. Carlyle drew a sketch of one ' tolerably to 
 his own mind,' and sent it to the Committee. It appeared, 
 however, not to be to t/ieir minds. They thanked him, 
 found what he said '^fine and true ;' but, in short, they did 
 not like it, and he acquiesced. His interest was not al- 
 tered. 
 
 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 per- 
 ceptible. That is his limiting condition. 
 
DiscstcMlshmeivt of the Irish Church, 311 
 
 Occasionally and at longish intervals he allowed himself 
 to be tempted into London society. lie made acquaintance 
 with Lord and Lady Salisbury (the father of the present 
 lord, who died soon after), both of whom he nmch liked. 
 He went one evening to the Dean of Westminster's. 
 
 Lion entertainment to Princess Helena and her Prince Christian 
 Innocent little Princess, has a kind of heauty, &c. One little flash 
 of jjretty pride, only one, when she rose to go out from dinner, 
 shook her bit of train right, raised her pretty head (fillet of dia- 
 monds sole ornament round her hair), and sailed out. 'A prin- 
 cess bom, you know ! _' looked really well, the exotic Uttle soul. 
 Dinner, evening generally, was miserable, futile, and cost me si- 
 lent insomnia the whole night through. De8er\'ed 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 beneficent. Carlyle had long known that the 
 Irish Church was an anomaly, but he did not rejoice in 
 its overthrow, each step which weakened English authority 
 in Ireland bringing nearer the inevitable fresh conflict for 
 the sovereignty of the island. 
 
 Irish Church Resolution passed by a great majority. Nonjlocci 
 facio. In my life I have seen few more anarchic, factious, unpa- 
 triotic achievements than this of Gladstone and his Parliament in 
 regard to such an Ireland as now is. Poor Gladstone ! Poor old 
 decayed Church and ditto State ! But once more, non flocci facio^ 
 him or it. If they could abolish Parliamentary eloquence it would 
 be worth a hundred abolitions of the Irish Church, poor old creat- 
 ure ! 
 
 Time hung heavily at Chelsea, and the evenings were 
 dreary. Tyndall was to lecture at the Royal Institution 
 on Faraday. Carlyle was not enthusiastic about science 
 and the blessings to be expected from it ; yet he was 
 gratefully attached to Tyndall, and was pereuaded to at- 
 tend. 
 
312 Carlyles Life in London. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 January 27, 1868. — Attended Tyndall's lecture (on Faraday, his 
 genius and merits), which Tyndall treated as quite heroic. A full 
 and somewhat distinguished audience, respectful, noiseless, atten- 
 tive, but not fully sympathetic, I should say ; such, at least, was 
 my own case, feeling rather that the eulogy was perhaps overdone. 
 As to myself, ' 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 degi-ee. In sad fact, 
 I cared but little for these discoveries — reckoned them uncertain — 
 to my dark mind, and not by any 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 posses- 
 sion of my own. Saw a good many people there, ancient friends 
 of mine, to whom I wished right well, but found it painful to 
 speak beyond mere salutations. Bishop Thirlwall, Sir Henry Hol- 
 land, Dean Stanley and his wife. Lecture done, I hurried away. 
 Joined by Conway, American nigger friend, innocent and patient. 
 
 February 6. — Nothing yet done, as usual. Nothing. Oh, me 
 misermn ! Day, and days past, unusually fine. Health in spite of 
 sleeplessness, by no means very bad. Stand to thyself, wretched, 
 mourning, heavj^-laden creature. For others there is no want of 
 work cut out for me. Yesterday, by our beautiful six posts, I had 
 the -following demands made upon me : To write about Sir William 
 Hamilton ; item about Stirling, candidate for Edinburgh Profes- 
 sorship ; item to write about poor Clough. Have as good as noth- 
 ing to say either about Clough or Hamilton, though I love them 
 both. Just before bedtime, news from a young man, son of a Mr. 
 
 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 con- 
 vert myself or else be ; which latter sort, especially which 
 
 last, I i3urn after reading the first line. So profitable have my 
 epistolary fellow-creatures grown to me in these years, so that 
 when the postman leaves nothing it may be well felt as an escape. 
 I will now send young C— — 5/. from a 50/f. I am steward to. 
 
L(u^t Siijht of thp Grange. 313 
 
 In April Tx)rd Nortlibrook wrote to invite Carlyle to 
 spend a few days with him at Stratton. lie liad known 
 Lord Northbrook in tlie old Grange time. Stratton was 
 not far from the Grange, and there was a sort of pleasure 
 in the thought of seeing it again, though now in new 
 hands. He was unwell, suffering from son-ow 'at once 
 poignant and impotent.' In agreeing to go he forgot the 
 approaching anniversary, the fatal April 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 I would have walked that day. I 
 did not recollect in consenting, or perhaps I should have refused — 
 certainly should have paused first. But alas ! that is very weak 
 too. The place, which no stranger knows of, is already quite 
 
 changed : drink fountains, &c. I was there yesterday, but 
 
 was in company. I could only linger one little instant. Ah me I 
 how weak we are ! Yesternight I read in the newspapers of an 
 old man who had died of grief in two or three months for the loss 
 of his wife. They had been wedded fifty-five years. And of an- 
 other 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 
 among.' The anniversary came and went. ' All passes ;' 
 ' time and the hour wear out the gloomiest day.' 
 
 JoumaL 
 
 April 27, 1868. — I was at the Grange twice over ; all vacant, si- 
 lent, 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 wliile. 
 Church is all decorated, new-imved in encaustic, painted, glazed 
 in coloured figures, inscribed, &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 afiection of the now Dow- 
 ager Lady Ashburton. I sat in silence, looking and remembering. 
 The ride thither and back was peacefully soothing to me. An- 
 
314 Carlyle'S L'^fe in London. 
 
 otlier day the two boys (Northbrook'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 pain- 
 fully sorrowful to me. It is again something as if solemnly sooth- 
 ing to have seen all this for probably the last time. 
 
 My principal or almost sole fellow-guest at Stratton was ' the 
 strange Rev. Lord Sidney,' named above, the famous S. G. O. of 
 the newspajjers, and one of the strangest brother mortals I ever 
 met ; a most lean, tall, and perpendicular man, face palj)ably aris- 
 tocrat, but full of plebeian mobilities, free and easy rapidities, nice 
 laughing little dark grey eyes, careless, honest, full of native in- 
 genuity, sincerity, innocent vanity, incessant talk, anecdotic, per- 
 sonal, distractedly speculative, oftenest purposely distracted, 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.^ 
 
 Proof-sheets of the new edition of his works were wait- 
 ing for liim on his return home. He ' found himself 
 w^illing to read those books and follow the printer through 
 them as ahnost the one thing lie was good for in his down- 
 pressed and desolate years.' The demand for tliem ' was 
 mainly indiiferent' to him. What were his bits of works? 
 What was anybody's work ? ' Those whom he wished to 
 please were sunk into the grave. The works and their 
 praises and successes had become more and more "re- 
 miniscences " merely.' On the other hand, ' the thought 
 of a selection from Jier letters had not yet quitted him, 
 nor should. Could he but execute it well, and leave it 
 legible behind him, to be printed after twenty years.' ^ 
 
 The selection and the copying was taken in hand. His 
 
 ^ A letter to Miss Bromley contains a second description of the great S.G O. 
 ' One of the cheeriest, airiest, and talkingest lean old gentlemen I over met 
 with in my life ; tall as a steeple, lean as a bundle of flails, full of wild in- 
 genuity, of good humour and good purpose ; a perfectly honest, human, 
 headlong, and yet strictly aristocratic man. We smoked a great deal of to- 
 bacco together.' 
 
 2 In his will of 1873 Carlyle says ten or seven years, and finally leaves the 
 time of publication to me. Vide infra, p. 351. 
 
Passing Meditations. 315 
 
 passing meditations continued meanwhile to be entered in 
 his Journal, and are increasingly interesting. 
 
 Chelsea : June 8, 1868. — One was bragging to me the other day 
 that surely, for an item of progress, there was a visibly growing 
 contempt for titles, aristocmtic and other. ' I answered him yes, 
 indeed ; and a visible decay of resj)ect or reverence for whatever 
 is above one's own paltiy self, xi]) and np to the top of the universe 
 even, up to Almighty God Himself even, if you will look well, 
 which is a more frightful kind of * progress ' 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 Numen withal — has be- 
 come as if obsolete to the most devout of us ; and it is, to the 
 huge idly impious million of writing, preaching, and talking 
 people as if the /act too had quite ceased to be certain. ' The 
 Eternities,' * the Silences,' &c. I myself have tried various shifts 
 to avoid mentioning the * Name ' to such an audience — audience 
 which merely sneers in return — and is more con^^nced of its de- 
 lusion than ever. * No more humbug ! ' * Let us go ahead ! * 
 * All descended from gorillas, seemingly.* ' Sun made by collision 
 of huge masses of planets, asteroids, &c., in the infinite of space.* 
 Very possibly say I ! ' Then where is the place for a Creator ? * 
 The/oo/ hath said in his heart there is no God. From the begin- 
 ning it has been so, is now, and to the end will be so. The fool 
 hath said it— he and nobody else ; and with dismal results in our 
 days — as in all days ; which often makes me sad to think of, com- 
 ing nearer myself and the end of my own life than I ever expected 
 they would do.* Tliat 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 grad- 
 ually perceived that there was actual scientific basis for it — ^I sup- 
 pose the finest stroke that * Science,* poor creature, has or may 
 have succeeded in making during my time — welcome to me if it 
 be a truth — honourably welcome I But what has it to do with the 
 
 * The Parliamentary Whips on both sides are, perhaps, of a different opinion 
 as to tliis supposed contempt. 
 
 * Carlyle did not deny his own rcHponsibilities in the matter. In his de- 
 sire to extricate the kernel from the shell in which it was rotting, he had 
 •haken existing beliefs as maoh as any man, and, tie admitted to me, ' had 
 give a oousiderable shove to all that' 
 
316 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 existence of tlie Eternal Unnameable? Fools! fools ! It widens 
 tlie horizon of my imagination, fills me with deeper and deeper 
 wonder and devout awe. 
 
 No i)rayer, I find, can be more aj^propriate still to express one's 
 feelings, ideas, and wishes in the highest direction than that uni- 
 versal one of Pope : — 
 
 Father of all in every age 
 
 In every clime adored, 
 By saint, by savage, and by sage, 
 
 Jehovah, Jove, or Lord. 
 
 Thou great First Cause, least understood^ 
 
 Who 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-stnick 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 con- 
 struable to this hour? All that is good, generous, wise, right — 
 whatever 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 beats against this, like idle wind on an adamantine rock. 
 The antique first-thinker naturally gave a human personality and 
 type to this supreme object, yet admitted too that in the deepest 
 depths of his anthropomorphism, it remained 'inconceivable,' 'past 
 finding out.' Let us cease to attempt shaping it, but at no moment 
 forget that it veritably is — in this day as in the first of the days. 
 
 It was as a, ray of everlasting light and insight this, that had 
 shot itself zenithward from the soul of a man, first of all truly 
 ' thinking ' men, struggling to interpret for himself the mystery of 
 his as yet utterly dark and unfathomable world ; the heghimng 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 con- 
 sider 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. What else is it in all times that ' giveth men un- 
 
Modem Atheiarn, 317 
 
 derstanding ' ! Tliis * aperture zenithward,* as I like to express it, 
 has gone on slowly widening itself, with troublings and conf risings 
 of itself sad to witness, at intervals in the process all along — very 
 witnessable even now. But it has steadily gone on, and is essen- 
 tially, under conditions ever widening, our /(tithy 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, &o. — these are things which, much as I have struggled with 
 the mysteries surrounding me, never broke a moment of my rest. 
 Mysterious ! be it so if you will. But is not the fact clear and 
 certain ! Is it a * mystery * you have the least chance of ever get- 
 ting to the bottom of ! Canst tJiou by searching find out God ? I 
 am not surprised thou canst not, vain fool. 
 
 These things are getting to be veiy rife again in these late years. 
 ' Why am /, the miraculously meritorious "/," 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, scrannel pipings of poor men, verging towards apehood 
 by the Dead Sea if they don't stop short. 
 
 June 29. — The other morning a pamphlet came to me from some 
 orthodox cultivated scholar and gentleman — strictly anonymous. 
 Pamphlet even is not published, only printed. The many excerpts, 
 for I read little of the rest, have struck me much. An immense 
 development of Atheism is clearly proceeding, and at a rapid rate, 
 and in joyful exultant humour, both hero and in France. Some 
 book or pamphlet called 'The Pilgrim and the Shrine' was 
 copiously quoted from. Pilgrim getting delivered out of his He- 
 brew old clothes seemingly into a Hottentot costume of putrid 
 tripes hugely to his satisfaction, as appeared. French medical 
 prize essay of young gentleman, in similar costume or worse, de- 
 claring * we come from monkeys.' Virtue, vice are a product, like 
 vitriol, like vinegar ; this, and in general that human nature is 
 rotten, and all our high beliefs and aspirations mud ! See it, be- 
 lieve it, ye fools, and proceed to make yourselves happy upon it ! 
 I had no idea there was so much of this going on ! The Logic of 
 Death (English pami)lilct) had already sold to 50,000 copies. An- 
 other English thing was a parody on tlie Lord's Prayer : — * Instead 
 of praying to the Lord for daily bread, ask your fellow-workmea 
 why wages are so low,' &c., kc. 
 
 This is a very serious omen, and might give rise to endless 
 
318 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 meditation. If tliey do abolish * God ' from their own poor be- 
 wildered hearts, all or most of them, there will be seen for some 
 length of time (perhaps for several generations) 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 gener- 
 ally 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 our 
 fathers said. For the rest I can rather welcome one symptom 
 clearly traceable in the phenomenon, viz., that all people have 
 awoke and are determined to have done with cants and idolatries, 
 and have decided to die rather than live longer under that hate- 
 fullest and bnitallest of sleepy Upas trees. Eiige I euge ! to begin 
 with. And there is another thing I notice, that the chosen few 
 wjbo do continue to believe in the ' eternal nature of duty,' and 
 are in all times and all places the God-appointed rulers of this 
 world, will know at once who the sla-Ge kind are ; who, if good is 
 ever to begin, must be excluded totally from ruling, and in fact, be 
 trusted only with some kind of collars round their necks. Cour- 
 age ! courage always ! But how deep are we to go ? Through 
 how many centuries, how many abject generations will it probably 
 last? 
 
 September 8. — I wish Stirling ^ would turn the whole strength of 
 his faculty upon that sad question, ' What 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 
 veiy gallows, 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 metajyhysics 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 
 
 1 Edinburgh Stirliag, author of the ' Secret of HegeL* 
 
OraUyry. 319 
 
 this : the vnoKpitris — actio of Demosthenes ' — ter optimum — is the 
 second question intimately conuocted 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. Wish indeed ! "Wishing is very 
 eheap, and at bottom neither of these two questions is what I am 
 most like tiying at present. 
 
 Tliis matter of the power of * oratory ' was much in 
 Carlyle's mind at this time ; for since ' Niagara' his chief 
 anxiety centred there. As democracy grows intensified, 
 the eloquent speaker who can best please the ears of the 
 multitude on provincial platforms will more and more be 
 the man whom they will most admire and will choose to 
 represent them. The most eloquent will inevitably, for 
 some time to come, be the most powerful minister in this 
 country. It becomes of supreme importance therefore to 
 understand what oratory is, and how far the presence of 
 those other faculties of intellect and character which can 
 be trusted with the administration of the Empire may be 
 inferred from the possession of it. It was the sad con- 
 viction of Carlyle that at no time in the world's history 
 had famous orators deserved the name of statesmen. 
 Facts had never borne them out. They had been always 
 on the losing side. 
 
 Victrix causa Deis placuit, sed victa Catoni. 
 Kor had they been themselves true men, but men who 
 had lived in the show and outsides of things, not in the 
 heart and essence of things. The art of speech lies in bring- 
 ing the emotions to influence the judgment — to influence 
 it by * assuming a feeling if you have it not,' by persona- 
 tion, by uTTo/fpKTt?, the art of the stage-player. I do not 
 
 ' Demosthenes, wh«n asked what was the fir<it quaHfioation of orators, ia 
 said by Cicero to have answered Artio. What the Booond? Actio. What the 
 third ? Artio. It is asnaily translated action, geHture. But it means all the 
 funotiona of an actor^ geaiure included. Cicero, De Oratore^ paggitn. 
 
320 Cai'lyle^s Life in London, 
 
 suppose that Carlyle had ever read either Plato's * Goi'gias ' 
 or Aristotle's ' Politics.' But, on his own grounds, he had 
 come to the same conclusion. Plato, Aristotle, had seen 
 in the Greek republics the same ascendency of popular 
 orators with which England was now menaced. It was 
 only rarely and by accident that the power in purely dem- 
 ocratic communities fell into the hands of men fit to hold 
 it. The mobs of the cities chose almost invariably men 
 of two kinds, and neither a good one ; either knaves who 
 played upon them and led them by the nose for personal 
 or party objects, or men who were themselves the victims 
 of the passions to which they appealed, who lived intoxi- 
 cated with their own verbosity, who had no judgment, and 
 no criterion of truth, save that it must be something which 
 they could persuade others to believe, and had therefore 
 no power of recognising truth when it was put before 
 them. ProTn this cause more than from any other the 
 Greek constitutions went to ruin, as the Poman did after 
 them. The ascendency of the ' orator ' was the unerring 
 sign of the approaching catastrophe. Plato compared 
 oratory to the art of the fashionable cook who flavoured 
 his poisonous messes to tempt the palate. Aristotle says 
 that all forms of government have their special pai-asites, 
 which are bred by them, and destroy them. Kings and 
 emperors are misled by favourites who flatter them. The 
 orator is the parasite of the mob ; he thrives on its favour, 
 and therefore never speaks unpleasant truths to it. A 
 king may be wnse and may choose prudent councillors. 
 A democracy from 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 arms, 
 and able to use them, either for good purposes or for bad. 
 Antonius, the first master of the art in Rome, discusses 
 the qualifications for success in Cicero's ' Dialogue ' with 
 
Oratory, 321 
 
 delicate hnmonr. He supposes a case where he has to 
 persuade an audience of something whicli he knows to be 
 false. Fire, he says, can only be kindled by fire. The 
 skilfullest acting cannot equal the lire of real conviction. 
 But so happily, Antonius says, is the orator's nature con- 
 stituted that when he has taken up a cause with eagerness 
 he cannot help believing in it. He surrounds himself 
 with an atmosphere of moral sentiments and common- 
 places, and, being possessed with these sublime emotions, 
 he pours them out in the triumphant confidence of a con- 
 viction, for the moment sincere.' 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 democratic 
 constitutions. He leads the majority along with him, and 
 rules by superior numbers ; while to men of understanding, 
 who are not blinded by his glowing periods, he appears, 
 as he really is, a transparent charlatan. Demosthenes 
 himself admitted that if he was speaking only to Plato his 
 tongue would fail him ; and it is a bad augury for any 
 country when matters of weight and consequence are de- 
 termined by arguments to which only the unintelligent 
 can listen. The ominous ascendency of this quality, illus- 
 trated as it was in the persons of the two rival chiefs of 
 the political parties in, England, was a common topic of 
 Carlyle's talk in his late years, and appears again and 
 again in his diary. 
 
 Meantime his life fell back into something like its old 
 routine. While his strength lasted he went annually to 
 Scotland ; never so happy as among his own kindred. Yet 
 even among them he was less happy than sadly peaceful. 
 
 I ' Maf[na vis est earum sententiarum atque corum locorum, quos agas traot- 
 esque dioendo, nihil lit opu8 sit aimulationc ct fallaciis. Ipsa enim natura 
 orationia ejus, quae suscipitnr ad alionim anitnos permovendos, oratorem 
 ipsom ma^M ctiain, quam quemqoam eorum qui audiunt, permovet.' Dt Ora- 
 tore^ lib. ii. cap. 46. 
 
 Vol. IV.^31 
 
3^ Carlyle^s Life in London, 
 
 ' Pity me,' he writes to Miss Bromlej, September 8, 1868, 
 from Dumfries : — - 
 
 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 
 Mirza with its river and bridge. The charm of sauntering about 
 here like a disembodied 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. His feeling and 
 purpose about them, as it stood then, is thus expressed in 
 his journal : — 
 
 To be kept unprinted for ten or twenty yeai*s 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 shall be left legible to such as they do concern, and 
 shall be if I live. To her, alas ! it is no service, absolutely none, 
 though -my poor imagination represents it as one, and I go on with 
 it as something pious and indubitably right ; that some memory 
 and image of one so beautifvd and noble should not fail to survive 
 by my 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 Comet and Carlyle's riding were both 
 near their end. 
 
 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 carefullest, the glorious Comet splashed 
 
Riding Accident. 323 
 
 utterly down — cnt eye, brow, and both knees — horse and rider 
 fairly ti-aciug out their united profile on the soil of Middlesex in 
 the Holland House region. Silent, elegant new street, hardly any- 
 one 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 Ck)met. 
 
 The marvel was that he had been able to continue rid- 
 ing to so advanced an age, and had not met long before 
 with a more serious accident. He rode loosely always. 
 His mind was always abstracted. He liad been fortunate 
 in his different horses. They had been *very clever creat- 
 ures.' This was his only explanation. 
 
 Another incident befell him in the beginning of 1869, 
 of a more pleasing kind. He received an intimation from 
 Dean Stanley that her Majesty would like to become per- 
 sonally acquainted with a man of whom she had heard so 
 mucli, and in whose late sorrows she had been so inter- 
 ested. He was not a courtier ; no one could suspect him 
 of seeking the favour of the great of this world, royal or 
 noble. But for the Queen throughout his life he had en- 
 tertained always a loyal respect and pity, wishing only 
 that she could be less enslaved by * the talking apparatus' 
 at Westminster. He had felt for her in her bereavement, 
 as slie had remembered him in his own. 
 
 The meeting 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 every- 
 thing that hapi^ened ; 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 woiUd it have cheered her, bright 
 Boul, for my sake, had she been there ! ' 
 
 A less flattering distinction was Watts's portrait of him, 
 lately finished for .T(»hn Forster, and the engraving of it, 
 which was now being proceeded with. Of the picture 
 itself his opinion, as conveyed to his brother, was not flat- 
 
324r Cm^lyWs Life in London. 
 
 tering. The failure may have been dne to the subject, for 
 no painter, not even Millais, ever succeeded with Carljle. 
 This particular performance he calls 
 
 Decidedly the most insuiferable piettire that has yet been made 
 of me,' a delirions-looking mountebank full of violence, awkward- 
 ness, atrocity, and stupidity, without recognisable likeness to any- 
 thing I have ever known in any feature of me. Fuit in fatis. 
 What care I, after all ? Forster is much content. The fault of 
 Watts is a j)assionate 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 ' Let- 
 ters,' and by the recollections which they called up. Pub- 
 lic opinion, politics, the tone of the press, of literature 
 generally, the cant of progress, daily growing louder, all 
 tended too to irritate him. Some scientific article, I think 
 in the ' Fortnightly,' was ' disgusting and painful ' to him ; 
 ' tells me nothing new 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 ! needless 
 too. " A little lower than the angels," said Psalmist Da- 
 vid ; " A little higher than the tadpoles," says Evangelist 
 
 ."' 'These people,' he said to me, 'bring yon what 
 
 appears the whitest beautifullest flour to bake your bread 
 with, but when you examine it you find it is jpoxodered 
 glass^ and deadly poison.' 
 
 The ' Letters,' however, and his own occupation with 
 them, were the absorbing interest, although- to me at this 
 time he never mentioned the subject. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 April 29, 1869. — Perhaps this mournful, but pious, and ever in- 
 teresting task, escorted by such miseries, night after night, and 
 month after month — perhaps all this may be wholesome punish- 
 ment, purification, and monition, and again a blessing in disguise, 
 
 * Not excepting the flayed horse ! 
 
Mrs, Carlyya Letters. 325 
 
 I have had many such in my life. Some strange belief in an actual 
 pai'ticular Providence riaes always in me at intervals, faint but in- 
 destructible belief in spite of logic and arithmetic, which does me 
 good. If it be true and a fact, as Kant and the clearest scientitic 
 people keep asserting, that there is no Time and no Space, I say 
 to myself sometimes all minor * Logic ' and counting by the lingers 
 becomes in such provinces an incompetent thing. Believe what 
 thou must, that is a rule that needs no enforcing. 
 
 July 2-t, 1869.— In spite of impediments we aie now getting done 
 with that sacred task. In a month more, if permitted still, I can 
 hope to see the whole of those dear letter.< lying legible to good 
 eyes, with the needful commentaries, for which ought not I to be 
 thankful as for a chosen mercy. . . . My impediments, how- 
 ever, have been almost desperate ; ignorance, unpunctuality, 
 sluggish torpor on the part of assistants, all hanging about my 
 weak neck, doi>ending on me to push it tlirough or to leave it stick- 
 ing. 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. 
 
 Addiscombe seems to have been again offered to him, 
 as an escape this summer from London, if he cared to go 
 thitlier. 
 
 September 28, 1869. — The old story. Addiscombe and Chelsea 
 alteraating, without any result at all but idle misery and want of 
 sleep, risen lately to almost the intolerable pitch. Dreary boring 
 beings in the lady's time tised 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 bpdily thither.' 
 Try it for three weeks, said we, and did. Nothing but insomina 
 there, alas ! Yesterday morning gone a week, we struck flag again 
 and removed all home. Enteiprise to me a total failure. . . . 
 The Uisk in a sort done, Mary finishing my notes of 1860 this very 
 day ; I shrinking for weeks past from any revisal or interference 
 liere as a thing evidently hurtful, evidently antisomnial even, in 
 my present state of nerves. Essentially, however, her * Letters 
 and Memorials ' are saved, thank God ! and I hope to settle the 
 details calmly, too. 
 
 > ' TV' ' mcanH himtielf, his brother, and his nieoe, Ifiu Mary Aiiken, who 
 was now with him. 
 
5^ Carlyl^s Life in London, 
 
 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 some way with 
 his autobiography, I had no conjecture as to what it was. 
 Finished in a sort the 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 come wdien he felt himself 
 equal to taking it up again. It was tied together and laid 
 aside for the present, and no resolution was then formed 
 as to what was to be done with it. 
 
 This subject being off his mind, he was able to think 
 more calmly of ordinary things. Ruskin was becoming 
 more and more interesting to him. Ruskin seemed to be 
 catching the fiery cross from his hand, as his own strength 
 was failing. Writing this autumn to myself, he said, 
 ' One day, bj^ express desire on both sides, I had Ruskin 
 for some hours, really interesting and entertaining. He 
 is full of projects, of generous prospective activities, some 
 of which I opined to him would prove chimerical. There 
 is, in singular environment, a ray of real Heaven in R. 
 Passages of that last book " Queen of the Air" went into 
 my heart like arrows.' 
 
 The Journal during the same month becomes soft and 
 melodious, as if the sense of a duty heroically performed 
 had composed and consoled him. 
 
 October^. — For a week past I am sleeping better, which is a 
 special mercy of Heaven. I dare not yet believe that sleep is 
 regularly coming back to me ; but only tremulously hope so now 
 and then. If it does, I might still write something. My poor in- 
 tellect seems all here, only crashed down under a general ava- 
 lanche of things /om(7n to it. Men have at one time felt that they 
 had an immortal soul, have they not ? Physical obstruction, tor- 
 ture of nerves, &c., carried 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 always achieve even that, 
 
Journal. 327 
 
 "which I can't almost ever — is to be silent, to be inert and patient 
 under it. The sonrs sorrow that I have, too, is notable, pcrha])8 
 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 Uni- 
 verse dead to me. Morbid ? 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 I Yes. But 
 what hast thou to do with it ? Nothing. Pass on. Still save 
 thy poor self from it if possible. . . . Am reading Versti- 
 gan's ' Decayed Intelligence ' night after night, with wonder at the 
 curious bits of correct etymology and real sense and insight, float- 
 ing 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 Moses, in fact, which surely was no very sublime 
 achievement either. I often think, however, it is pretty much cdL 
 that science in this age has done, or is doing. 
 
 October 14. — Three nights ago, stepping out after midnight, with 
 my final pipe, and looking up into the stars, which were clear and 
 numerous, it stnick me with a strange new kind of feeling. Hah ! 
 in a little while I shall have seen you also 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 shall never behold that either any more. And I knew so little 
 of it, real as was my effort and desire to know. The thought of 
 this eternal deprivation — even of this, though this is such a nothing 
 in comparison — was sad and jminful to me. And then a second 
 feeling rose on me, * What if Omnii>otence, which has developed 
 in me these pieties, these reverences and infinite affections, should 
 actually have said, Yes, poor mortals.' Such of you as liave gone 
 so far shall be peraiitted to go farther. Hope. Despair not ! I 
 have not had such a feeling for many years back as at that mo- 
 ment, and so mark it here. 
 
 With his thoughts thus travelling into the far Infinities, 
 Carlyle could scarcely care long, if he could care at all, for 
 tlie details of the progress of English political disintegra- 
 tion. Yet he did observe with contemptuous indignation 
 
328 Carlyle's Life in London, 
 
 the development of the Irish policy bj the Pi*ime Minis- 
 ter, and speculated on the construction of a mind which 
 could persuade itself and others that such a policy was 
 right. It was the fatal oratorical faculty. 
 
 Journal 
 
 November 11th, 1869. — If vnoKpKTis^ * hypocrisy ' ' be the first, 
 second, and third thing in eloquence, as I think it is, then why 
 have it at all ? Why not insist, 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 dictum, this inference, this, were there nothing 
 else urging it, inexorably follows as the very -next. Experience, 
 too — e.g., Oliver Cromwell's speeches. So soon as by long scan- 
 ning you can read them clearly, nowhere in the world did I find 
 such persuasion, such powers of compelling belief, there and then, 
 if you did really hear with open ear and heart. Duke of Wellington ! 
 I heard him just once for a quarter of an hour. The whole House 
 of Lords had spoken in Meliboean strains for two or three hours ; 
 might have spoken so for two or three centuries without the least 
 result to me. vnoKpia-is not good enough. Wellington hawking, 
 haing, humming — the worst speaker I had ever heard — etched and 
 scratched me out gradually a recognisable portrait of the fact, and 
 was the only noble lord who had spoken at all."^ These are 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 past — can Longinus, Demosthenes, Cicero, and 
 all the imiversities, parliaments, stump oratories, and spouting 
 places in this lower w^orld be unanimously wearing, instead of 
 aureoles round their heads, long ears on each side of it ? Unani- 
 mously sinning against Nature's fact, and stultifying and confiscat- 
 ing themselves and their sublime classical labours. I privately 
 have not the least doubt of it, but possess no means of saying so 
 with advantage. Time, I believe, will say so in the coui'se of cer- 
 tain centuries or decades emphatically enough. 
 
 November ISth. — A second thing I will mark. 
 
 ^ ujTOKpiT^s is the Greek word for ' actor.' 
 
 2 This is precisely what Plato means. Truth, however plainly spoken, con- 
 vinces the intelligent. The orator speaks fv rots ova eiSoos among the not in- 
 telligent, and requires sonneting else than truth. 
 
Modem Atheism. 329 
 
 The qnaniities of potential and even consciously increasing 
 Atheism, sprouting out everywhere in these days, is enormous. 
 In every scientific or quasi-scientific periodical one meets it. By 
 the last American mail I had two eloquent, 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 this world, 
 who, for their time, bear practical rule in the world's affairs. Not 
 only all Christian churches but all Christian religion are nodding 
 towaids speedy downfall in this Europe that now is. Figure the 
 residuum : man made chemically out of UrscUeim, or a ceiiain 
 blubber coMedi prot(^l(mn. Man 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 pass her, and be the vanguard of progress. 
 What I had to note is this only : that nobody need argue with 
 these people, or can 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 God in 
 the world of matter — mere circlings oi force there, of iron regula- 
 tion, of universal death and merciless indifferency. Nothing but 
 a dead steam-engine there. It is in the soul of man, when rever- 
 ence, love, intelligence, magnanimity have been develoi)ed there, 
 that the Highest 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 viind. To Mind, all questions, especially 
 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 perhaps others will. 
 
 December Uhy 1869. — This is my seventy-fourth birthday. 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 often not improbable to me, may 
 the Eternal Father grant that I be ready for it, fi-ail worm that I 
 am. Nightly I look at a certain photograph — at a certain toTnb * — 
 
 * Photograph of the interior of Haddington Church and Hrs. Garlyle's rest- 
 ing-place th«ra. 
 
330 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 the last thing I do. Most 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 is no harm. The fast-increasing flood of Atheism on me 
 takes no hold — does not even wet the soles of my feet. I totally 
 disbelieve it ; despise as well as abhor it ; nor dread that it ever 
 can prevail as a doom of the sons of men. Nay, are there not 
 perhaps temporary necessities for it, inestimable future uses in it ? 
 Patience ! patience ! and hope ! The new diabolic school of the 
 French is really curious to me. Beaudelaire for example. Ode 
 of his in ' Fraser ' the other night. Was there ever anything so 
 bright infernal ? Fleurs du Mai indeed ! 
 
 January list, 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 
 the 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 open- 
 ing word or two, and then the signature, as prologue 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 looking into it, I find to be a hallelujah on the 
 advent and discovery of atheism ; and in particular, a crowning 
 
 — with cabbage or I know not what — of this very . The real 
 
 joy of Julian was what surprised me — sincere joy you would have 
 said — like the shout of a hysena on finding that the whole uni- 
 verse was actually carrion. In about seven minutes my great 
 Julian was torn in two and lying in the place fit for him. 
 
 The ' Diabolic ' sometimes visited Carljle in actual form. 
 One day in IS^ovember this year, an apparently well -con- 
 ditioned gentleman waited upon him with a request for 
 help in some local Chelsea charity. A sovereign was at 
 
Strange Ajfplicatiofts, 88t 
 
 once forthcoming. Tlie man went, and ten minutes after 
 he <li8covered that the plausible stranger was a ticket-of- 
 leave man, and that lie himself had been a * nose of wax.' 
 Too late he remembered an air of * varnished devilry ' in 
 the fellow. * Well ! well ! ' he reflected, * jou nmst just take 
 your just wages whatever mortification there is.' The hand- 
 some scandalous face came back to him at night in a half- 
 waking dream. ' Hah I ' he thought, ' I had a personal visit 
 of the Devil too, as poor St. Culm had many ; and slept 
 oif with something of real pity for this miserable Devil of 
 mine.' 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 marks of respect,' he 
 said, *of loving regard and praise in all forms of it, that 
 come to me here, are a surprise, an almost daily aston- 
 ishment and even an embarrassment to me, though I an- 
 swer uniformly nothing ; so undeserved they seem, so 
 excessive, so wildly overdone.' One letter I insert here 
 from 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 Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 1860. 
 
 Sir, — As I learned from the note that Mrs. 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 fol- 
 lowing account of my wretched state. It is not without horrible 
 misgivings that I do it. But you miist know the nature of my com- 
 plaint 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 abnost said hideous — to behold. Oh what a 
 devilish misfortune to be sent into the world ugly. How oft«»n 
 do I curse the day of my birth. How often do I curse the mother 
 that brought mo into this world out of nothingness into hellish 
 misery — aye, and often do more tlian curse her. 
 
 I have no frionds or companions ; all shun and despise nie. 
 As I cannot share iXiii pleasures and enjoyments of those around 
 
332 Carlyle's Life m London. 
 
 me, I have sought to beguile away my time with books. My 
 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 some- 
 times), 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 world ; 
 if it is, I must say I am a God-forgotten mortal. You talk of big 
 coming Eternities ; 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 twenty-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 misan- 
 thropical. 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. 
 
 Among the infirmities of age, a tremulous motion began 
 to show itself in his right hand, which made writing 
 difficult and threatened to make if impossible. It was a 
 twitching of the muscles, an involuntaiy lateral jerk of 
 the arm when he tried to use it. And no misfortune 
 more serious could have befallen him, for ' it came,' he 
 said, * as a sentence not to do any more work while thou 
 livest' — a very hard one, for he had felt a return of his 
 energy. In brighter hours he saw many things which he 
 might write, were the mechanical means still there.' He 
 
Riifid Hand nisahluL 333 
 
 could expand tlie thoughts which lay scattered in liis Jour- 
 nal, lie could occupy himself at any rate, in itself so 
 necessary to so restless a spirit. He tried ' dictation,' but 
 it resulted only in * diluted nioonsliine.' Letters he could 
 dictate, but nothing else, and the case was cruel. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : May 26, 18T0. 
 Gloomy, moumfnl, musing, silent, looking back on the unalter- 
 able, and forward on the inevitable and inexorable. That, I 
 know, is not a good employment, but it is too generally mine, 
 especially since I lost the power of penmanship, ' and have prop- 
 erly no means of working at my own trade, the only one I ever 
 learned to work at. A great loss this of my right hand. Dicta- 
 tion I try sometimes, but never with any success, and doubt now 
 I shall never leam it. Corn-age nevertheless ; at least, silence in 
 regard to that I 
 
 Another sorrow, aggravating the rest, was the death, 
 March 20, 1870, of his dear friend Mr. Erskine of Lin- 
 lathen. Erskine, * one of the most religious men ' left in 
 Scotland, had been among the first of his countrymen to 
 recognise Carlyle, and to see in him, across his hetero- 
 doxies, the intense * belief ' which is the essence of gen- 
 uine piety. Erskine's orthodoxy, on the other hand, had 
 been no impediment to Carlyle's affection for him. 
 
 On Sunday (he writes), Thomas Erskine, nearly my last Scotch 
 friend, except my own kindred, died, weary and heavy-laden, but 
 patient, true, and reverently peaceable to the veiy last. Another 
 of my few last links severed, about which and whom the flutter to 
 me has not yet ceased wiOiout or within. Night before last, just as 
 I was falling asleep, vision of him in Princess Street, as if face to 
 face ; clear discernment of what a pure and beautiful and brother- 
 ly soul he had been, and that he too was away for ever, which at 
 once awoke me again, usefully for some minutes. . . . Four 
 y(^ai*s all but thirteen days I have stood contemplating my (own) 
 calamity. Time was to bring relief, said everybody ; but Time 
 has not to any extent, nor in truth did I much wish him. No. 
 
 ' H« wrote now, and as long a* he could write at all, with a penoii 
 
334 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 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 talk that I carry on, little, as my collocutors suspect. 
 Sometimes I reflect, Is not this morbid, weak, improj)er? but 
 cannot bring myself to regret it at any time, much less to try alter- 
 ing it, even if I could. The truth is, I am unable to work. "Work 
 is done. Self am done. My life now has nothing in it but the 
 shadow, sad, grand, unfathomable, of what is coming — coming. 
 
 Time and sorrow had softened the angry tones of Car- 
 Ijle's earlier days. The Geyser spring rarely shot up the 
 hot stones and steam, and his talk generally was as cahn 
 as the entries in his Journal. He would still boil up 
 under provocation, but he was sorry for it afterwards. 
 'Walk with Spedding last week,' he notes on the 1st of 
 May. ' My style of talk to him so fierce, exaggerative, 
 scornful of sui-rounding men 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 most detested, the action of something good. 
 Thus— 
 
 Journal. 
 
 April 16, 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 Wil- 
 lielm, your wisest Frederic, by the strictest government, by any 
 conceivable skill in the art of charioteering, guide America forward 
 in what is its real task at present — task of turning a savage im- 
 mensity into arability, utility, and readiness for becoming human ^ 
 as fast and well as America itself, with its very anarchies, gascon- 
 adings, vulgarities, 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 increas- 
 ing hatred of mendacities, the gradually and now rapidly spreading 
 conviction that there can be no good got of formulas and shams ; 
 that these are good only to abolish, the sooner the better, toss into 
 the fire and have done with him. Ti-ue — most true ! This also I see. 
 
Uses of A narchy. 835 
 
 From this point of view even tlie speculative anarcliy was 
 
 not witiiout its uses. 
 
 Journal. 
 June 23, 1870.— Book (posthumous) by a Professor Grote, sent 
 to me. Anxious remonstrance against J. S. Mill and the Utilita- 
 rian Theory of Morals. Have looked through it seriously intent, 
 this Grote meaning esadently well, but can't read it, nor get any 
 good of it, except see again and ever again what the infinite l>e- 
 wilderment 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 sense of right and wrong is a revelation from the Most High, 
 I would recommend him to keep silence, 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 sanctuaiy — the victorious summit — and 
 see with your own eyes. The prize of heroic labour, suffering, 
 and performance this, and not a feat of dialectics or of tongue ar- 
 gument with yourself or with another, I 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. ' Re- 
 ligion,' this, too, God be thanked, I perceive to be again possible, 
 to be again here, for whoever will piously struggle upwards, and 
 sacredly, sorrowfully refuse to speak lies, which indeed will mostly 
 mean refuse to speak at all on that topic. No words for it in our 
 l)ftse time. In no time or epoch can the Highest be spoken of in 
 words — not in many words, I think, ever. But it can even now be 
 silently beheld, and even adored by whoever has eyes and adora- 
 tion, i.e. reverence in him. Nor, if he must be for the present 
 lonely and ' ... in such act, will that always be the case ? 
 
 > This passage, written in pencil, has been so corrected and altered as to bt 
 in parts illegiblsi 
 
336 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 No, probably no, I begin to perceive ; not always, nor altogether. 
 But in the meanwhile Silence. Why am I writing this even here ? 
 The beginning of all is to have done with Falsity ; to eschew Fal- 
 sity as Death Eternal. 
 
 - December 28. — I wish I had strength to elucidate and write down 
 intelligibly to my fellow- creatures what my outline of belief about 
 God essentially is. It might be useful to a poor protoplasm gen- 
 eration, 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 providence.' Sincerely I do, as it were, 
 believe this, to my own surprise, and could perhaps reconcile ii 
 with a higher logic than the common draught-hoard kind. There 
 may further be a chess-board logic, says Novalis. That is his dis- 
 tinction. 
 
CHAPTER XXXn. 
 A.D. 1870. ^T. 75. 
 
 Anne Boleyn — ' Ginx's Baby ' — The Franco-Gterman war — Eng- 
 lish sympathy with France — Letter to the ' Times ' — Effect 
 of it — Inability to write — ' Letters and Memorials of Mrs. 
 Carlyle ' — Disposition made of them. 
 
 I BEGIN this chapter with an opinion of Carlyle on an in- 
 tricate liintorical problem. In studying the history of 
 Henry VIII.. I had been uncertain what to think about 
 tlie trial and execution of Anne Boleyn. The story of 
 her offences was on the face of it monstrous, and the 
 King's marriage, following instantly on her execution, was 
 at least strange and suspicious. On the other hand, it was 
 hard to believe that Commissions of Enquiry, Judges, ju- 
 ries, the Privy Council, and finally, Parliament, which was 
 specially summoned on the occasion, could have been the 
 accomplices of a wanton crime ; and the King in ordinary 
 prudence would have avoided insulting the common sense 
 and conscience of the realm, if he knew that she had been 
 falsely accused, and would have at least waited a decent pe- 
 riod before taking a new wife. I did not know till I had 
 finished my book, that the despatches of Eustace Chapuys, 
 the Imperial Ambassador resident at the time in London, 
 had been preserved at Vienna. I went thither to examine 
 them in the spring of 1870, and I published extracts from 
 them afterwards in * Eraser's Magazine.' Chapuys's ao- 
 
338 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 count, tliougli it leaves the question of Anne's guilt still 
 uncertain, yet reveals a mass of intrigue, political and per- 
 sonal, in Henry's court, which made it seem possible, for 
 the first time to me, that the poor Queen might have been 
 innocent, yet that the King and Parliament might have 
 honestly believed her guilty. During violent revolutions, 
 men can believe anything that falls in with their prevailing 
 passions. I talked the subject over with Carlyle after my 
 return. In • the summer he went to Scotland, where the 
 magazine, with the letters in it, reached him ; and he wrote 
 thus to me : — 
 
 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 dialogne we had one day before 
 Chapuys came out. Chapuys rather sent nie 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 illu- 
 minative lamp of the transaction, both as to her conduct and to 
 every one's . . . and such in fact it still continues, on the faith 
 of what you said, and inclines me to believe, on all the proba- 
 bilities I have, that those adulterous abominations, even the 
 caitiff lute-player's part,^ are most likely altogether lies upon 
 the poor lady. 
 
 This was Carlyle's judgment, formed on such data as I 
 could give him on this difficult matter. I added what more 
 I had to say upon it in an appendix to the next edition of 
 my work. 
 
 Carlyle enjoyed Scotland this year. He described his 
 life to me as ' encircled in cotton, such the unwearied kind- 
 ness and loving patience of his sister's household with him.' 
 To Miss Bromley he wrote : ' The incomparable fresh- 
 ness, the air on the hillside, and the luxurious beauty of 
 
 ^ Mark Smetou, who confessed to the adultery. 
 
' Gina's Baby: 889 
 
 these old hills and dales all round, so silent, yet so full of 
 foices, strange and sacred, mournfully audible to one's 
 poor old heart, are evidently doing me day by day some 
 little good ; though I have sad fighting with the quasi-in- 
 fernal ingredient — the railway whistle, namely — and have 
 my difficulties and dodgings to obtain enough of sleep.' 
 Miss Bromley had sent him a book which pleased him. 
 
 To Miss Bromley. 
 
 The Hill : July 11. 
 
 ' Ginx's Baby' is capital in its way, and has given great satis- 
 faction here. The writing man is rather of penny-a-liner habits 
 and kind, but he slashes along swift and fearless, sketching at 
 arm's length, as with a burnt stick on a cottage wall, and 
 sketches and paints for us some real likeness of the sickening 
 juid indeed horrible anarchy and godless neghgence and stupor 
 that pervades British society, especially the lowest, largest, and 
 most neglected class ; no legislator, people's William or official 
 person, ever casting an eye in that direction, but pi'eferring to 
 beat the wind instead. Grod 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 Will- 
 iam upon it. This poor penny-a-liner is evidently sincei-e in his 
 denunciation and delineation, and, one hopes, may awaken hei*e 
 and there some torpid soul, dilettante M.P. or the like, to serious 
 I'eflection 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 Condition of 
 England question as well worthy of considering, but was met 
 with nothing but angry howls and Eadical Ha, ha's 1 And hei-e 
 the said question stiQ is, untouched and ten times more unman- 
 ageable than then. Well, well I I return you Ginx, and shut 
 up my lamentations. 
 
 To me he wrote something in the same strain, a prapos 
 of some paper of mine on the colonies : — 
 
 People's WUliam and all the parties to so unspeakable a plan 
 of ' management ' and state of things, to me are unendurable 
 
340 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 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. 
 What a hase, pot-bellied blockhead this our heroic nation has 
 become ; sunk in its own dirty fat and offal, and of a stupidity 
 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 summer, in the French and 
 German war, an exhibition of Divine judgment wliich was 
 after Carlyle's own heart. So suddenly too it came ; the 
 whole sky growing black witH storm, and the air ablaze 
 with lightning, ' in an hour when no man looked for it.' 
 France he had long known was travelling on a bad road, 
 as bad as England's, or worse. The Hterature there was ' a 
 new kind of Phallus-worship, with Sue, Balzac, and Co. 
 for prophets, and Madame Sand for a virgin.' The Church 
 getting on its feet again, with its Pope's infallibility, &c., 
 was the re-establishment of exploded lies. As the people 
 were, such was their government. The ' Copper Captain,' 
 in his eyes, was the abomination of desolation, a mean and 
 perjured adventurer. He had known him personally in 
 his old London days, and had measured his nature. Prince 
 Napoleon had once spent an evening in Cheyne Pow. 
 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 was clearer-sighted than Imperial cun- 
 ning. He regarded the Emperor's presence on a throne 
 which he had won by so evil means as a moral indignity, 
 and had never doubted that in the end Providence would 
 in some way set its mark upon him. When war was de- 
 clared, he felt that the end was coming. He had proph- 
 esied, in the ' Life of Frederick,' that Prussia would be- 
 come the leading State of Germany, perhaps of Europe. 
 
The Franco-Geiincm War. 841 
 
 Half that prophecy had been fuliilled already through the 
 war of 1866. The issue of the war with France was never 
 for a moment doubtful to him, though neither he nor any 
 one could foresee how complete the Gennan 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. — Of outward events the war does interest 
 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 occuiTed in my time. 
 Paris city must be a wonderful place to-day. I believe the 
 Prussians will certainly keep for Germany what of Ellsass and 
 Lorrame is still German, or can be expected to re-became suc^ 
 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 governing, 
 and of fighting enemies to said art. Grermany, from of old, has 
 been the peaceablest, most pious, and in the end most valiant 
 and terriblest of nations. Grermany ought to be President of 
 Europe, and will again, it seems, be tried with that office for 
 another five centuries or so. 
 
 In September Carlyle came back to Chelsea, still eagerly 
 watchmg the events of the war. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 October 3. — State of France, lying helpless, headless even, 
 but still braggart in its ignominy under the heel of Prussia, is 
 full of interest even to me. What will become of the mad 
 country next ? Paris, shut up on every side, can send no news 
 except by balloon and carrier-pigeons. The country is without 
 any visible government. A country with its head cut off; 
 Paris undertaking to 'stand siege; ' the voice of France a con- 
 fused babblement fi-om the gutters, scarcely human at all, you 
 would say, so dark, ignorant, mad do they .seem. This is her 
 first lesson poor France is getting. It is probable she will re- 
 <iuii-c many such. For the last twenty yeai*s I have been pre 
 
342 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 dieting to myself that there might lie ahead for a nation so full 
 of mad and loud oblivion of the laws of this universe, a destiny- 
 no better than that of Poland. Its strongest bond, I often 
 guess, is probably the fine and graceful language it has got to 
 speak, and to have so many neighbours learn ; one great advan- 
 tage over Poland, but not an all-availing one. Peace with 
 Prussia, by coming in Prussia's ' will,' as the Scotch say, is the 
 first result to be looked for ; after which Due d' Aumale or d'Or- 
 leans for a while? Eepublic for a while? None knows, except 
 that it can only be for a while ; that ' anarchies ' are not permitted 
 to exist in this universe, and that nothing not anarchic is pos- 
 sible in such a France as now is. NHmporte ; nHmporfe. Poor 
 France ! Nay, the state of England is almost still more hideous 
 to me ; base exceedingly, to all but the flunkey and the penny 
 editors, and given up to a stupidity which theologians might call 
 judicial ! 
 
 It will be remembered that Russia took advantage of 
 the state of Europe and tore the article in the Treaty of 
 Paris which limited her Black Sea fleet. When the article 
 was drawn, the essentially temporary character of it was 
 well understood ; but England bristled up when the tro- 
 phies of her Crimean glories were shattered and flung in 
 her face so cavalierly ; for a week or two there was talk of 
 war ag-ain between us and Russia. 
 
 Quarrel (Carlyle said) mad as a March hare, if it don't con- 
 fine itself to the able editors, which who can be sure of? Never 
 thou mind. England seems to be all pretty mad. Perhaps God 
 will be merciful to her ; perhaps not, too ; for her impious stu- 
 pidities are and have been many. . . . 
 
 Ten days ago read Gladstone's article in the ' Edinburgh Re- 
 view ' with amazement. Empty as a blown goose-egg. Seldon^ 
 have I read such a ridiculous solemn addle-pated Joseph Sur- 
 face of a thing. Nothingness or near it conscious to itseK of 
 being greatness almost unexampled. Thanks to ' parliamentary 
 eloquence' mainly, and its value to oneself and others. Ac- 
 cording to the People's William, England, with himself atop, 
 is evidently even now at the top of the world. Against bot- 
 
Ehase and Lorrmne. 343 
 
 tomlesB 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 Will- 
 iam. He would ask you, with imfeigned astonishment, ' What 
 else?' 'The sovereign'st thing in nature is parmaceW {read 
 ballot) 'for an inward bruise.' That is evidently his belief, 
 what he finds believable about this universe, in England a.D. 
 1870. Parmaceti I Parmaceti ! Enough of him and of it. 
 
 France had so clearly been the aggressor in the war with 
 Germany that the feeling in England at the outset had 
 been on the German side. The general belief, too, had 
 been that France would win. Sympathy, however, grew 
 with her defeats. The English are always restive when 
 other nations are fighting, and fancy that they ought to 
 have a voice in the settlement of every quarrel. There is 
 a generous disposition in us, too, to take the weaker side ; 
 to assume that the stronger party is in the wrong, especially 
 if he takes advantage of his superiority. When Germany 
 began to formulate her terms of peace, when it became 
 clear that she meant, as Carlyle foretold, to take back El- 
 sass and Lorraine, there was a cry of spoliation, sanctioned 
 unfortunately in high Liberal quarters where the truth 
 ought to have been better known. A sore feehng began 
 to show itself, aggravated perhaps by the Russian business, 
 which, if it did not threaten to take active form, encour- 
 aged France to prolong its refeistance. The past history of 
 the relations between France and Germany was little un- 
 derstood in England. Carlyle perhaps alone among us 
 knew completely how France had come by those essentially 
 German provinces, or how the bill was now being presented 
 f jr payment which had been running for centuries. To 
 allay the outcry which was rising he reluctantly buckled 
 on his armour again. With his niece's help he dictated a 
 long letter to the 'Times,' telling his story simply and 
 
344 CarlyWs Life in London. 
 
 clearly, without a trace of mannerism or exaggeration. It 
 appeared in the middle of November, and at once cooled 
 the water which might otherwise have boiled over. We 
 think little of dangers escaped ; but wise men everywhere 
 felt that in writing it he had rendered a service of the 
 highest kind to European order and justice. His own allu- 
 sions to what he had done are sHght and brief. As usual 
 he thought but little of his own performance. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 November 12, 1870. 
 
 Poor Mary and I have had a terrible ten days, properly a 
 ' Much Ado about Nothing.' It concerned only that projected 
 letter to the newspapers about Germany. With a right hand 
 valid and nerves 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 Mary had endless patience, endless assiduity ; 
 wrote like a little fairy ; sharp as a needle, and all that could be 
 expected of her when it came to writing : and before that there 
 was such a hauling down of old forgotten books, &c., in all 
 which my little helpmate was nimble and unwearied. In fine, 
 we have got the letter done and fairly sent away last night. I 
 do not reckon it a good letter, but it expresses in a probably too 
 emphatic way what my convictions are, and is a clearance to 
 my conscience in that matter whether it do good or not, whether 
 it be good or not. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 November 21. — ^Wrote, 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 news- 
 papers seemingly, and many scrubby notes knocking at this 
 door in consequence. Must last still for a few days — in a few 
 days will pass away like a dust-cloud. 
 
 Not scrubby notes only, but 'a rain of letters, wise, 
 foolish, sane, mad,' streamed in upon Cheyne Kow during 
 the next few weeks. Some were really interesting, coming 
 
Count Bernai/jrff, 344) 
 
 from German soldiers sen'ing in tlie trenches before Paris, 
 grateful to the single Englishman who could feel for them 
 and' stand up for them. On the 25th a telegram was for- 
 warded to him by the Prussian Ambassador, with a note 
 from himself. The terms of the message I do not know, 
 nor by whom it was sent. The nature of it, however, may 
 be inferred from the words of Count Bemstorff. 
 
 Prussia House, Carlton House Terra<», 
 November 25, 1870. 
 
 Sir, — ^I received yesterday evening the enclosed telegram for 
 you from Hamburg, and I am mucli gratified to be able to avail 
 myself of the opportunity of forwarding it to you, and of ex- 
 pressing to the celebrated historian my entire concurrence in 
 the thankfulness of my countrymen. 
 
 I have the honour to be, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 Bernstorff. 
 
 In fact Carlyle's letter had most effectually answered its 
 purpose. There was no more talk of English interposition. 
 M. Thiers came over to beg for help ; if not material, at 
 least moral. We had to decline to interfere, and France 
 was left to its fate — a fate terrible beyond Carlyle's expec- 
 tation, for Paris, after being taken by the Germans, had to 
 be recovered again out of the hands of the French Com- 
 mune amidst the ashes of the Tuileries, and a second * Sep- 
 tember' massacre, to be avenged by a massacre in turn. 
 On these horrors there is a pregnant passage in a letter of 
 his to his bro'ther. He saw, when no one else saw it, the 
 coming greatness of Prussia. Perhaps he saw other things 
 equally correctly which no one else can see. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 May 29, 1871. 
 
 I am much in the dark about the real meaning of all these 
 quasi-infernal Bedlamisms, upon which no newspaper that I 
 
346 CarlyWs Life in London, 
 
 look into has anything to say except 'horrible,' 'shameful,' and 
 ' O Lord, I thank thee that we Englishmen 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 proclama- 
 tion to the upper classes in all countries : ' Our condition, af- 
 ter eighty-two years of struggling, O ye quack upper classes, 
 is still unimproved ; more intolerable from year to year, and 
 from revolution to revolution; 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 modern cities, if their affairs 
 were allowed to drift on under laissez-faire and' so-called 
 Liberty. 
 
 But the world and its concerns, even Franco-German 
 wars and Paris revolutions, could not abstract his mind, ex- 
 cept fitfully, from the central thoughts which occupied liis 
 heart. His interest had essentially gone from 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 her once more, if 
 only for five minutes ? By the side of this the rest was 
 nothing. 
 
 In the midst of the echoes from the battlefields he 
 writes : — 
 
 Journal. ' 
 
 October 11, 1870. — ^Very sad, sunless, is the hue of this now 
 almost empty world to me. World about to vanish for me 
 in Eternities that cannot be known. Infinite longing for my 
 loved ones — towards Her almost a kind of mournful worship 
 — this is the one celestial element of my new existence ; otherwise 
 in general ' wae and weary ' — ' wae and weary.' Not even the 
 amazing German-French war, grandest and most beneficent of 
 Heavenly providences m the history of my time, can kindle me, 
 except for a short while. 
 
The Bight Hand *M7 
 
 Again, soon after Count Bernstorfifs note : — 
 
 Journal. 
 
 December 15, 1870. — How pungent is remorse, when it turns 
 upon the loved dead, who cannot pardon us, cannot hear us now 1 
 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 carelessly or cruelly 
 stabbed into thy heart. Oh, forgive him ! Think how, when 
 thou art dead, he will punish himself. True precepts — clear 
 dictates of prudence both, yet how often neglected ! 
 
 In the following spring there are the saddest notices of the 
 failure of his hand, as if he was still eager to write some- 
 thing, but could not : — 
 
 Loss of my right hand for writing with — a terrible loss. 
 Never shall I learn to write by dictation, I perceive. Alas 1 alas ! 
 for I might still work a little if I had my hand, and the night 
 Cometh wherein no man can work. 
 
 And a fortnight later : — 
 
 June 15, 1871. — Curious to consider the institution of the 
 Right hand among luiiversal mankind ; probably the very old- 
 est human institution that exists, indispensable to all human 
 co-operation whatsoever. He that has seen three mowers, one 
 of whom is left-handed, trying to work together, and how im- 
 possible it is, has witnessed the simplest form of an impossibility, 
 which but for the distinction of * right hand ' would have per- 
 vaded all human things. Have often thought of all that — 
 never saw it so clearly as this morning while out walking, im- 
 slept and dreary enough in the windy sunshine. How old ? 
 Old ! I wonder if there is any people barbarous enough not to 
 have this distinction 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. 
 
 Why tliat particular hand was chosen is a question not to be 
 
348 Carlyle's Life vn London. 
 
 settled, not worth asking except as a kind of riddle : probably 
 arose in fighting- ; most important to protect your heart and its 
 adjacencies, and to carry the shield in that hand. 
 
 This is very characteristic of Carljle, who went always 
 to the heart of every subject which occupied him. But his 
 particular occupation with it at that moment, and his im- 
 patience with his inability to write, perhaps arose from an 
 eagerness to leave complete, with a fitting introduction, 
 the letters and memorials of his wife, before making a final 
 disposition of the manuscript. He could not do it. He 
 was conscious that he would never be able to do it, and 
 that he must decide on some other course. I was still his con- 
 stant companion, but up to this time he had never mentioned 
 these memoirs to me. Of her he spoke continually, always 
 in the same remorseful tone, always with bitter self-re- 
 proach ; but of the monument which he had raised to her 
 memory he had never spoken at all. One day — the middle 
 or end of June, 1871 — ^he brought, himself, to my house a 
 large parcel of papers. He put it in my hands. He told 
 me to take it simply and absolutely as my own, without 
 reference to any other person or persons, and to do with it 
 as I pleased after he was gone. He explained, when he saw 
 me surprised, that it was an account of his wife's history, 
 that it was incomplete, that he could himself form no opin- 
 ion whether it ought to be published or not, that he could 
 do no more to it, and must pass it over to me. He wished 
 never to hear of it again. I must judge. I must publish 
 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 limit of time. I was to wait only till he was dead, 
 and he was then in constant expectation of his end. Of 
 himself he desired that no biography should be written, 
 and that this Memoir, if any, should be the authorised 
 
^Letters a/nd Memorwh,^ 349 
 
 record of him. So extraordinary a mark of confidence 
 touched me deeply, but the responsibility was not to be 
 hastily accepted. I was then going into the country for 
 the simimer. I said that I would take the MS. with me, 
 and would either write to him or would give him an 
 answer when we met in the autumn. 
 
 On examining the present which had been thus singu- 
 larly made to me I found that it consisted of a transcript 
 of the * Reminiscence ' of Mrs. Carlyle, which he had writ- 
 ten immediately after her death, with a copy of the old 
 direction of 1866, that it was not to be published ; two 
 other fragmentary accounts of her family and herself ; and 
 an attempt at a preface, which had been abandoned. The 
 rest was the collection of her own letters, &c. — almost twice 
 as voluminous as that which has been since printed — with 
 notes, commentaries, and introductory explanations of his 
 own. The perusal was infinitely affecting. I saw at once 
 the meaning of his passionate expressions of remorse, of his 
 allusions to Johnson's penance, and of his repeated declara- 
 tion that something like it was due from himself. He had 
 never properly understood till her death how much she had 
 suffered, and how much he had himself to answer for. She, 
 it appeared, in her young days had aspired after literary 
 distinction. He had here built together, at once a me- 
 morial of the genius which had been sacrificed to himself, 
 and of those faults in himself which, though they were 
 faults merely of an irritable temperament, and though he 
 extravagantly exaggerated them, had saddened her married 
 life. Something of this I had observed, but I had not 
 known the extent of it ; and this action of Carlyle's struck 
 me as something so beautiful, so unexampled in the whole 
 history of literature, that I could but admire it with all my 
 heart. Faults there had been ; yes, faults no doubt, but 
 Buch faults as most married men commit daily and hourly, 
 
350 Carlyle^s Life in London, 
 
 and never think tliem faults at all : yet to him his conduct 
 seemed so heinous that he could intend deHberately that 
 this record should be the only history that was to survive 
 of himself. In his most heroic life there was nothing more 
 heroic, more characteristic of him, more indicative at once 
 of his humility and his intense truthfulness. He regarded 
 it evidently as an expiation of his own conduct, all that he 
 had now to offer, and something which removed the shadow 
 between himself and her memory. The question before me 
 was whether I was to say that the atonement ought not to 
 be completed, 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 uncovered the errors of the best friend that I had 
 ever had. Carlyle himself could not direct the pubHcation, 
 from a feeling, I suppose, of deHcacy, and dread of ostenta- 
 tion. I could not tell him that there was nothing in his 
 conduct to be repented of, for there was much, and more 
 than I had guessed ; and I had again to reflect that, if I 
 burnt the MS., Mrs. Carlyle had been a voluminous letter- 
 writer, and had never been reticent about her grievances. 
 Other letters of hers would infallibly in time come to light, 
 telling the same story. I should then have done Carlyle's 
 memory irreparable wrong. He had himself been ready 
 with a frank and noble confession, and the world, after its 
 first astonishment, would have felt increased admiration for 
 the man who had the courage to make it. I should have 
 stepped between him and the completion of a purpose which 
 would have washed his reputation clear of the only reproach 
 which could be brought against it. Had Carlyle been an 
 ordinary man, his private life would have concerned no one 
 but himself, and no one would have cared to inquire into 
 it. But he belonged to the exceptional few of whom it was 
 certain that everything that could be known would eveiitu- 
 
^Letters and Memorials.^ 361 
 
 ally be sifted out. Sooner or later the whole truth would 
 be revealed. Should it be told voluntarily by himself, or 
 maliciously by others hereafter ? That was the question. 
 
 When I saw him again after the summer we talked the 
 subject over with the fullest confidence. He was nerv- 
 ously anxious to know my resolution. I told him that, so 
 far as I could then form an opinion, I thought that the 
 letters might be published, provided the prohibition was 
 withdrawn against publishing his own Memoir of Mrs. 
 Carlyle. That would show what his feeling had really 
 been, and what she had really been, which also might per- 
 haps be misconstrued. It would have been hard on both 
 of them if the sharp censures of Mrs. Carlyle's pen had 
 been left unrelieved. To this Carlyle instantly assented. 
 The copy of the Memoir had indeed been given to me 
 among the other papers, that I might make use of it if I 
 liked, and he had perhaps forgotten that any prohibition 
 had been attached, but I required, and I received, a direct 
 permission to print it. The next question was about the 
 time of publication. On the last page of the MS. was at- 
 tached a pencil note naming, first, twenty years after his 
 death. The "^ after my death' had been erased, but the 
 twenty years remained. Though I was considerably 
 younger than he was, I could not calculate on living twenty 
 years, and the letters, if published at all, were to be pub- 
 lished by me. When he had given them to me in June he 
 had told me only that I was to wait till he was gone. He 
 i5aid now tliat ten years would be enough — ten years from 
 that time. There were many allusions in the letters to 
 people and things, anecdotes, criticisms, observations, 
 written in the confidence of private correspondence, 
 which ought not to be printed within s5 short a time. I 
 mentioned some of these, which he directed me to omit. 
 On these conditions I accepted the charge, but still only 
 
353 Carlyle^s Life in Lmidon. 
 
 hypotheticallj. It had been entrusted to me alone, and I 
 wished for further advice. He said that if I was in a diffi- 
 culty I might consult John Forster, and he added after- 
 wards his brother John. John Carlyle I had never an op- 
 portunity of consulting. I presumed that John Carlyle 
 was acquainted with his brother's intentions, and would 
 communicate with me on the subject if he wished to do 
 so ; but I sent the manuscript to Forster, that I might 
 learn generally his opinion about it. Forster had been one 
 of Mrs. Carlyle's dearest friends, much more intimate with 
 her than I had been. He, if any one, could say whether 
 so open a revelation of the life at Cheyne Row was one 
 which ought to be made. Forster read the letters. I sup- 
 pose that he felt as uncertain as I had done, the reasons 
 against the jjubhcation being so obvious and so weighty. 
 But he admired equally the integrity which had led Car- 
 lyle to lay bare his inner history. He felt as I did, that 
 Carlyle was an exceptional person, whose character the world 
 had a right to know, and he found it difficult to come to 
 a conclusion. To me at any rate he gave no opinion at all. 
 He merely said that he would talk to Carlyle himself, and 
 would tell him that he must make my position perfectly 
 clear in his will, or trouble would certainly arise about it. 
 [N'othing more passed between Forster and myself upon 
 the subject. Carlyle, however, in the will which he made 
 two years later bequeathed the MS. to me specifically in 
 terms of the tenderest confidence. He desired that I 
 should consult Forster and his brother when the occasion 
 came for a final resolution ; but especially he gave the trust 
 to me, charging me to do my best and wisest with it. He 
 mentioned seven years or ten from that date (1873) as a 
 term at which the MS. might be published ; but, that no 
 possible question might be raised hereafter on that part of 
 
' Letters and Memorials,^ 353 
 
 the matter, he left tlie determination of the time to myself, 
 and requested others to accept my judgment as his own. 
 
 Under these conditions the * Letters and Memorials ' re- 
 mained in my hands. At the date of his will of 1873 he 
 adhered to his old resolution, that of himself there should 
 be no biography, and that these letters and these letters 
 alone should be the future record of him. Within a few 
 weeks or months, however, he discovered that various per- 
 sons who had been admitted to partial intimacy with him 
 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, 
 correspondence, 'reminiscences,' and other fragments, a 
 collection overwhelming from its abundance, for of his 
 letters from the earliest period of his life his family and 
 friends had preserved every one that he had written, while 
 he in turn seemed to have destroyed none of theirs. ' Take 
 them,' he said to me, ' and do what you can with them. 
 All I can say to you is. Burn freely. If you have any 
 affection for me, the more you burn the better.' 
 
 I bunit nothing, and it was well that I did not, for a 
 year before his death he desired me, when I had done with 
 these MSS. to give them to his niece. But indeed every- 
 thing of his own which I found in these papers tended only 
 to raise his character. They showed him, in all his out- 
 ward conduct, the same noble, single-minded, simple- 
 hearted, affectionate man which I myself had always known 
 him to be ; while his inner nature, with this fresh insight 
 into it, seemed ever grander and more imposing. 
 
 The new task which had been laid upon me complicated 
 the problem of the ' Letters and Memorials.' My first hope 
 was, that, in the absence of further definite instructions 
 
354 CarlyU^s Life in London. 
 
 from himself, I might interweave parts of Mrs. Carljle's 
 letters with his own correspondence in an ordinary narra- 
 tive, passing lightly over the rest, and touching the danger- 
 ous places only so far as was unavoidable. In this view I 
 wrote at leisure the greatest part of ' the jS.rst forty years ' 
 of his life. The evasion of the difficulty was perhaps 
 cowardly, but it was not unnatural. I was forced back, 
 however, into the straighter and better course. 
 
CHAPTER XXXm. 
 A.D. 1872. ^T. 77. 
 
 Weariness of life — History of the Norse Kings— Portrait of John 
 Knox — Death of John Mill and the Bishop of Winchestei^— 
 Mill and Carlyle — Irish policy of Mr. Gladstone — The 
 Prussian Order of Merit — Offer of the Grand Cross of the 
 Bath — ^Why refused— Lord Beaconsfield and the Russo- 
 Turkish war — Letter to the 'Times.' 
 
 Caeltle lived on after this more easy in his mind, but 
 otherwise weary and * heavy laden '; for life, after he ha<i 
 lost the power of working, was become a mere burden to 
 him. Often and often he spoke enviously of the Roman 
 method of taking leave of it. He had read of a senator in 
 Trajan's time who, slipping upon the pavement from in- 
 firmity, kissed the ground, exclaiming * Proserpine, I 
 come I ' put his house in order, and ended. Greatly Carlyle 
 approved of such a termination, and regretted that it was 
 no longer permitted. He did not conceive, he said, that 
 his Maker would resent the voluntary appearance before 
 Him of a poor creature who had laboured faithfully at his 
 task till he could labour no more. He made one more 
 effort to produce something. He had all along admired the 
 old Norsemen, hard of hand and true of speech, as the root 
 of all that was noblest in the English nation. Even the 
 Scandinavian gods were nearer to him than the Hebrew. 
 With someone to write for him, he put together a sketch of 
 the Norse kings. The stories, as he told them to me, set 
 
356 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 off by his voice and maimer, were vigorous and beautiful ; 
 the end of Olaf Trygveson, for instance, who went down 
 in battle into the fiord in his gilded armour. But the 
 greater part of them were weakened by the process of dic- 
 tation. The thing, when finished, seemed diluted moon- 
 shine and did not please him. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 February 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 pres- 
 ence of a third party between my thoughts and me is fatal to 
 any process of clear thought. 
 
 He wrote also a criticism on the portraits of John Ejiox, 
 in which he succeeded in demolishing the authority of the 
 accepted likenesses, without, however, completely estab- 
 lishing that of another which he desired to substitute for 
 them. He had great insight into the human face, and into 
 the character which lay behind it. ' Aut Knox aut Diabo- 
 lus,' he said, in showing me the new picture ; ' if not Knox 
 who can it be ? A man with that face left his mark be- 
 hind him.' But physiognomy 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. 
 
 This, with an appendix to his ' Life of Schiller,' was the 
 last of his literary labours. He never tried any thing again. 
 The pencil entries in the Journal grew scantier, more illeg- 
 ible, and at last ceased altogether. The will was resolute as 
 ever, but the hand was powerless to obey. I gather up the 
 fragments that remain. 
 
 July 12, 1872. — A long interval filled only with pitiful mis- 
 eries and confusions best forgotten. Empty otherwise, except 
 
Death of FHends. H57 
 
 for here and there an hour of serious, penitent reflection, and of 
 a sorrow which could be called loving, calm, and in some sort 
 Siicred and devout ! Pure clear black amidst the general muddy- 
 gloom. Item, generally if attainable, two hours (after 10.30 
 P.M.) of re<ading in some really good book — Shakespeare latterly 
 — which amidst the silence of all the Universe is a useful and 
 purifying kind of thing. Reminiscences 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 
 great secret, but irajxinetrable (is, was, and must be so) to ter- 
 restrial thoughts for evermore. Perhaps somethmg ! Perhaps 
 not nothing, after all. (jrod's will, there also, be supreme. If 
 we are to meet I Oh, Almighty Father, if we are, but silence ! 
 silence! 
 
 The end of the summer of 18Y2 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 occupation of times 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 came again to England, and remained here and 
 on the Continent till the May following. He had" brought 
 his daughter with him, and from both of them Carlyle re- 
 ceived a faint pleasure. Bat even a friend so valued could 
 do little for him. His contemporaries were dropping all 
 round ; John Mill died. Bishop Wilberforce died ; every- 
 one seemed to die except himself. 
 
 Journal. 
 
 June 9, 1873. — 'More and more dreary, barren, base, and 
 ugly seem to me all the aspects of this poor diminishing quack 
 world — fallen openly anarchic — doomed to a death which one 
 can only wish to be speedy. . . . Death of John Millat Avignon 
 about a month ago, awakening what a world of reflections, 
 emotions, and remembrances, fit to be totally kept silent in the 
 present mad explosion (among the maddest I have seen about 
 
358 Carlyys Life in London. 
 
 anyone) of universal threnodying penny-a-limsm ; not at any 
 time a melodious phenomenon.' 
 
 I had mjseK written to him on the Bishop of Winches- 
 ter's death. He answered : — 
 
 July 29, 1873. — ' I altogether sympathize in what you say of 
 poor Sam of Winchester. 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 rehgious nature, and thought 
 in secret, in spite of his bishophood, very much in regard to re- 
 ligion as we do. ' 
 
 His remarks on Mill and Mill's autobiography are curious. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : May 10, 1873. 
 Yesterday, on stepping out into the street, I was told that 
 John Mill 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 Mill alone — rushed down upon me. Poor 
 Mill! He too, has worked out his life drama in sight of me; 
 and that scene has closed too before my old eyes — though he 
 was so much my junior. Goose N. came down to me to day — 
 very dirty — ^very enthusiastic— very stupid and confused, with 
 a daily newspaper ' containing two articles, ineffably sublime 
 and heart-interesting upon Mill.' Two more blustrous bags of 
 empty wind I have seldom read. 'Immortal fame!' 'First 
 spirit of his age ! ' ' Thinker of thinkers ! ' What a piece of 
 work is man with a penny-a-liner pen in his hand. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 November 5. 
 
 You have lost nothing by missing the autobiography of Mill. 
 I have never read a more uninteresting book, nor I should say 
 a sillier, by a man of sense, integrity, and seriousness of mind. 
 
Mill uml Varlyle. 369 
 
 The penny-a-liuei-s 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 tlie 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 mourn- 
 ful psychical curiosity, but in no other point of view, can it inter- 
 est anybody. I suppose it will deliver us henceforth from the 
 cock-a-leerie crow about ' the Gi*eat Thinker of his Age.' Wel- 
 come, though inconsiderable I The thought of poor Mill alto- 
 gether, and of his life and history in this poor muddy world, 
 gives me real pain and sorrow. 
 
 Such a sentence, so expressed, is a melancholy ending 
 to the affectionate intimacy which had once existed be- 
 tween Mill and Carlyle. At heart, perhaps, they remained 
 agreed — al least as much agreed as Carlyle and Bishop 
 Wilberf orce could have been ; both believed that the ex- 
 isting social arrangements in this country were incurably 
 bad, that in the conditions under which the great mass of 
 human beings in all civilised countries now lived, moved, 
 and liad their being, there was at present such deep injus- 
 tice that the system which permitted such things could not 
 be of long endurance. Carlyle felt this to his latest 
 hours. "Without justice society is sick, and will continue 
 sick till it dies. The modern world, incapable of looking 
 duty in the face, attempts to silence complaint w^th issuing 
 flash-notes on the Bank of liberty, and will leave all men 
 free to scramble for as much as they can secure of the 
 swine's trough. This is the notion which it forms to itself 
 of justice, and of the natural aid which human beings are 
 bound to give to one another. Of the graces of mutual 
 kindliness, of the dignity and beauty which rise out of or- 
 ganically-formed human society, it politically knows noth- 
 ing, and chooses to know nothing. The battle is no longer, 
 even to the strong, who have, at least, the one virtue of 
 
360 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 courage ; the battle is to the ciinning, in whom is no virtue 
 at all. In Carlyle's opinion no remedy lay in political 
 liberty. Anarchy only lay there, and wretchedness, and 
 ruin. Mill had struck into that road for himseK. Carlyle 
 had gone into the other. They had drifted far apart, and 
 were now separated for ever. Time will decide between 
 them. Mill's theory of things is still in the ascendant. 
 England is moving more eagerly than ever in the direction 
 of enfranchisement, believing that there lies the Land of 
 Promise. The orators echo Mill's doctrines : the millions 
 hsten and beheve. The outward aspect of things seems to 
 say that Mill did, and that Carlyle did not, understand the 
 conditions of the age. But the way is long, the expected 
 victories are still to be won — are postponed till the day 
 when ' England, the mother of free nations, herself is free.' 
 There are rapids yet to be stemmed, or cataracts to descend, 
 and it remains uncertain whether on arriving (if we do 
 arrive) at a finished democracy, it will be a land flowing 
 with milk 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 Mr. Lecky 
 — with believing in nothing but the divine right of strength. 
 To me, as I read him, he seems to say, on the contrary, that, 
 as this universe is constructed, it is 'right' only that is 
 strong. He says himself : — 
 
 With 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 reverse is the 
 great and venerable author's real opinion — ^namely, that right 
 is the eternal symbol of might : as I hope he, one day descend- 
 ing miles and leagues beyond his present philosophy, will, with 
 amazement and real gratification, discover ; 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. 
 
Iriah Potioy of Mr. Gladntoru. 361 
 
 Old and weary as he was, the persistent belief of people 
 in the blessings of democracy, and the confidence which 
 they gave to leaders who were either playing on their credu- 
 ty or were themselves the dupes of their own phrases, dis- 
 tressed and provoked Carlyle. He was aware that he could 
 do nothing, that self-government by count of heads would 
 be tried out to the end before it would be abandoned ; but 
 in his conversation and letters he spoke his opinions freely 
 — especially his indignation at the playing with fire in Ire- 
 land, which the great popular chief had begun. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : March 7, 1878. 
 
 The whole world is in a mighty fuss here about Gladstone and 
 his Bill : ' the attack on the third branch of the Upas Tree, 
 and the question what is to become of him in consequence of it. 
 To myself from the beginning it seemed the coDSummation 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 viohn into the hands of Cullen and the sacred sons of 
 Belial and the scarlet woman, I had ever seen from him before. 
 
 And a^redn : — 
 
 March 23, 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 ceremonies and out- 
 side 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 name of Beelzebub the god of Ekron, i?rtio 
 seems to be his God. Poor phantasm ! 
 
 He was better pleased with a lecture on English notione 
 
 * Irl»b EducaUon BUI. 
 
362 Carlyle's Life in London, 
 
 of government, delivered by Sir James Stephen, at the 
 Philosophical Institution, at Edinburgh : — 
 
 I found it (he says, November 15) a very curious piece indeed, 
 delineating one of the most perfect dust-whirls of Administra- 
 tive Nihilism, and absolute absurdities and impotences, more like 
 an electric government apparatus for Bedlam, elected and sub- 
 mitted to by Bedlam, than any sane apparatus ever known 
 before. And strangely enough it is interlarded with the 
 loyallest assurances every now and then that it is the 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 work in him. 
 
 Of Stephen, Euskin, and one or two others, Carlyle 
 could still think with a degree of comfort. He would 
 gladly have struck one more 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. From this time his hand failed him entirely, 
 and the private window that opened into his heart was 
 closed up — no dictation being there admissible. 
 
 December 6, 1873. — Day before yesterday was my pOor birth- 
 day, attended with some ceremonial greetings and more or less 
 sincere expressions of regard. Welcome these latter, though 
 unimportant. To myself the serious and solemn fact, 'Thy 
 seventy-eighth year is finished then.' Nor had that in it an im- 
 pressiveness of too much depth ; perhaps rather of too little. A 
 life without work in it, as mine now is, has less 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 imprisonment of the dying or half-dead body. 
 For many months past, except for idle reading, I am pitifully 
 idle. Shame, shame! I say to myself, but cannot help it. 
 Great and strange glimpses of thought come to me at intervals, 
 but to prosecute and fix them down is denied me. Weak, too 
 weak, the flesh, though the spirit is willing. 
 
The Ord^ of Merit, 363 
 
 He seemed to be drifting calmly towards the end, as if of 
 outward incidents or outward activities there would be 
 nothing more to record. But there was still something 
 wanting, and he was not to leave the world without an open 
 recognition of his services to mankind. In January, 1874, 
 there came a rumour from Berlin that Prussia proposed to 
 reward the author of the * Life of Frederic the Great,' by 
 conferring on him the Order of Merit, which Frederic him- 
 self had founded. Possibly the good turn which he had 
 done to Germany by his letter during the siege of Paris, 
 might have contributed to draw the Emperor's attention 
 to him. But his great history, translated and universally 
 accepted by Frederic's countrymen as the worthiest account 
 of their national hero, was itself claim sufficient without ad- 
 ditional motive. Carlyle had never been ambitious of 
 public honours. He had never even thought of such 
 things, and the news, when it first reached Cheyne Row, 
 was received without particular flutter of heart. * Were it 
 ever so well meant,' he said, ' it can be of no value to me 
 whatever. Do thee neither ill na gude.' The Order of 
 Merit was the most flattering distinction which could have 
 been offered him, for it really means * merit,' and must be 
 earned, even by the Princes of the Blood. Of course he 
 could not refuse it, and, at the bottom, I am sure that he 
 was pleased. Yet it seemed as if he would not let himself 
 enjoy anything which she was no longer alive to enjoy with 
 him. 
 
 The day before yesterday (he tells his brother on the 14th of 
 February) his Prussian Excellency forwarded to me by register- 
 ed parcel all the documents and insignia connected with our 
 sublime elevation to the Prussian Oixler of Merit. Due reply 
 sent ; and so we have done, thank Heaven, with this sublime 
 nonentity. I feel about it, after the fact is over, quite as em- 
 phatically as I did at first, — that had they sent me a quarter of 
 
364 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 a pound of good tobacco, the addition to my happiness would 
 probably have been suitabler and greater. 
 
 To his friends this act of the German Government was 
 a high gratification, if to himself it was a slight one. The 
 pleasure which men receive from such marks of respect is 
 in most cases 'satisfied vanity'; and Carljle never thought 
 of his own performances, except as 'duty' indifferently 
 done. 
 
 We, however, were all glad of it, the more so because I 
 then believed that when I wrote his life I should have to say 
 that although for so many years he had filled so great a place 
 amongst us, and his character was as noble as his intellect, 
 the Government, or Governments, of his own country — 
 Tory, Liberal, or whatever they might be — had passed him 
 over without notice. The reproach, however — ^f or reproach 
 it would have been — ^was happily removed while there was 
 yet time. 
 
 It is rather for their own sakes, than for the recipients of 
 their favours, that Governments ought to recognise illustri- 
 ous services. The persons whom they select for distinction 
 are a test of their own worth. 
 
 Everyone remembers the catastrophe of 1874. Mr. 
 Gladstone, but lately ' the people's William,' the national 
 idol, was flung from his pedestal. The country had wearied 
 of him. Adulation had soured into contempt, and those 
 who had chanted his praises the loudest professed, like the 
 Roman populace on the fall of Sejanus, that they had never 
 admired him at all. At the time, the general opinion was 
 that his star had set for ever, and Carlyle thought so too till 
 he saw who it was that the people had chosen to replace 
 him. His mind misgave him then that the greater faults 
 of his successor would lift Mr. Gladstone back again to a 
 yet more giddy eminence and greater opportunities of evil. 
 But this was not the world's impression, and Carlyle tried 
 
The Conservatives in Power, 365 
 
 to hide it from himself as long as he could. Little san- 
 guine as he was, he flattered himself at the time of the 
 election that the better spirit of ancient England was awake 
 again, that she had sickened of her follies and was minded 
 in earnest to put a curb between the teeth of anarchy. It 
 was a bright flash of hope, and might have been more than 
 a hope if the Conservatives could have wisely used the 
 chance which was once more offered them. Unfortunately, 
 the conditions of the time permitted only the alternative of 
 Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone — products, both of them, 
 of stump oratory. From the author of the Reform Bill of 
 1867 he could only look for stage tricks or illusions. No 
 wise action could come of such a man, 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 
 Disraeli the best. Disraeh, though he might delude the 
 world, did not delude himself, and could see facts as they 
 were if he cared to see them. At any rate there was a res- 
 pite from the disintegrating process, and he might hope to 
 live out his remaining years unvexed by any more of it. 
 
 Mr. Disraeli could not have been unaware of the unfa- 
 vourable light in which he was regarded by Carlyle, but he 
 by no means reciprocated the feeling. He was essentially 
 goodnatured, as indeed Carlyle always acknowledged, and 
 took any blow that might be aimed at him with undisturbed 
 composure. He had been a man of letters before he was a 
 politician. He was proud of his profession and of the distinc- 
 tion which he had himself conquered as a novehst. He 
 was personally unacquainted with Carlyle ; they had moved 
 in different circles, and I believe had never met. But in 
 early life he had been struck with the * French Revolution ' ; 
 he had imitated the style of it, and distinctly regarded the 
 author of that book as the most important of living writers. 
 Perhaps he had heard of the bestowal of the Ord* / of 
 
366 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 Merit, and had felt that a scandal would rest on England if 
 a man whom Germany could single out for honour was left 
 unnoticed in his own land. Perhaps the consideration 
 might have been forced upon him from some 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 some high mark of distinction on a 
 person who was so universally loved and admired. It was 
 indeed time, for Carlyle hitherto had been unnoticed en- 
 tirely, and had been left without even the common marks 
 of confidence and recognition which far inferior men are 
 seldom 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 men of 
 letters were generally appointed trustees of the British 
 Museum ; Carlyle's name had not been found among them. 
 The post of Historiographer Boyal for Scotland had been 
 lately vacant. This, at least, his friends expected for him ; 
 but he had been intentionally passed over. The neglect 
 was now atoned for. 
 
 The letters which were exchanged on this occasion are 
 so creditable to all persons concerned, that I print as many 
 of them as I possess complete — in jperjpetuam rei memo- 
 riam. 
 
 To Thomas Carlyle, Esq. 
 
 (Conflclential.) Bournemouth : December 37, 1874. 
 
 Sir, — ^A Government should recognise intellect. It 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 
 Majesty to fit out an Arctic Expedition, and in suggesting other 
 measures of that class, her Government have shown their sym- 
 
Offer of the Grcmd Cross. 867 
 
 pathy 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 things that the test of merit 
 cannot be so precise in literature as in science. When I con- 
 sider the literary world, I see only two living names whicli I 
 would fain believe will be remembered, and they stand out in 
 uncontested superiority. 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 
 Mr. Tennyson, and the same distinction should be at your com- 
 mand if you liked it ; but I have reniembered 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 Majesty to confer on you the highest dis- 
 tinction for merit at her conmaand, and which, I believe, has 
 never yet been conferred by her except for direct services to the 
 State, and that is the Grand Cross of the Bath. 
 
 I will speak with frankness on another point. It is not well 
 that in the sunset of your life you should be disturbed by com- 
 mon cares. I see no reason why a great author should not re- 
 ceive from the nation a pension, as well as a lawyer or states- 
 man. Unfortunately, the personal power of Her Majesty 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 cheerfully accepted 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, 
 
 Yoiu* faithful Servant, 
 
 B. DiSRAEU. 
 
 To the Right Hon. B. Disraeli. 
 
 5, Cbeyne Row, Chelsea : 
 
 December 29, 1874 . 
 
 Sir, — Yesterday, to my great surprise, I had the honour to 
 receive your letter containing a magnificent proposal for my 
 benefit, which will be memorable to me for the rest of my life. 
 Allow me to say that the letter, both in purport and expression, 
 
368 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 IS worthy to be called magnanimous and noble, that it is with- 
 out example in my own poor history ; and I think it is unex- 
 ampled, too, in the history of governing persons towards men 
 of letters at the present, as at any time ; and that I will care- 
 fully preserve it as one of the things precious to memory and 
 heart. A real treasure or benefit it, independent of all results 
 from it. 
 
 This said to yourseK 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 are 
 gone before me) not degrading poverty, become in this latter 
 time amply abundant, 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 anything be done that would not now be a sorrow rather 
 than a pleasure. 
 
 With thanks more than usually sincere, 
 I have the honour to be, Sir, 
 
 Your obliged and obedient servant, 
 
 T. Carlyle. 
 
 To the Countess of Derby. 
 
 5, Cheyne Row, Chelsea : 
 
 December 30, 1874. 
 
 Dear Lady, — As I believe you to have been the originator, 
 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, I venture directly to send you 
 a correct 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 noth- 
 mg ; though I do say still, and will say it, the generous intention, 
 
Diaradi^e Magnanimiiy, 363 
 
 brought ready for fulfilment from such a quarter, will ever re- 
 main a beautiful and precious poesession for me. 
 
 Mr. Disraeli's letter is really what I called it, magnanimous 
 and noble on his part. It reveals to me, after all the hartl things 
 I have said of him, a new and unexpected stratum of genial 
 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 head ; ' and I do truly 
 repent and promise to amend. For the rest, I naturally wish 
 there should be as little as possible said about this transaction, 
 though almost inevitably the secret will ooze out at last. In 
 the meanwhile silence from us all. . . . 
 
 Forgive this loose rambling letter. Write no answer to it till 
 your own time come, and on the whole forgive me my sins gen- 
 erally, or think of me as mercifully as you can. With my re- 
 spectful compliments to Lord Derby, and most loyal wishes 
 that all good may be with you and yours, 
 
 I remain, dear Lady, 
 Your attached and most obedient, 
 
 T. Carlyle. 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : January 1, 1875. 
 The enclosed letter and copy of my answer ought to go to you 
 as a family curiosity and secret. Nobody whatever knows of it 
 beyond our two selves here, except Lady Derby, whom I believe 
 to have been the contriver of the whole affair. You would have 
 been surprised, all of you, to have found unexpectedly your 
 poor old brother converted into Sir Tom; but alas! there was 
 no danger at any moment of such a catastrophe. I do, however, 
 truly admire the magnanimity of Dizzy in regard to me. He is 
 the only man I almost never spoke of except with contempt; 
 and if there is anything of scurrility anyAvheix? chargeable 
 against me, he is the subject of it; and yet see, here he comes 
 with a pan of hot coals for my guilty head. I am, on the 
 whole, gratified a little within my own dark heart at this mark 
 of the good-will of high people— Dizzy by no means the chief of 
 them — which has come to me now at the very end, when I can 
 have the additional pleasure of answering, ' Alas, friends ! it is 
 of no use to me, and I will not have it.' Enough, enough ! Re- 
 
370 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 turn me the official letter, and say nothing about it beyond the 
 walls of your own house. 
 
 The Government was unwilling to accept the refusal, 
 and great private efforts were tried to induce him to recon- 
 sider his resolution. It was intimated to him that Her 
 Majesty herself would regret to be deprived of an opportu- 
 nity of showing the estimation which she felt for him. But 
 the utter unsuitableness of a ' title of honour ' to a person of 
 his habits and nature, was more and more obvious to him. 
 ' The Grand Cross,' he said to me, ' would be like a cap and 
 bells to him.' And there lay below a yet prouder objec- 
 tion. ' You accepted the Order of Merit \ ' I said. ' Yes,' 
 he answered, ' but that is a reality, never given save for 
 
 merit only ; while this .' The Prussian Order besides 
 
 did not require him to change his style. It would leave 
 him, as it found him, plain Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : January 30, 1875. 
 
 I have not been worse in health since you last heard ; in fact, 
 usually rather better ; and at times there come glimpses or 
 bright reminiscences of what I might, in the language of flat- 
 tery, call health — very singular to me now, wearing out my 
 eightieth year. It is strange and wonderful to feel these glow- 
 ings out again of intellectual and spiritual clearness, followed 
 by base physical confusions of feeble old age ; and, indeed, daily 
 I am taught again the unfathomable mystery of what we call a 
 soul, radiant with heaven, yet capable of being overclouded 
 and, as it were, swallowed up by the bottomless mud it has to 
 live in, in this world. . . . There has been again a friendly as- 
 sault made upon me, Disraeli himself the instigator, in regard 
 to the celebrated ' baronetcy ' a£fair. There was first a letter 
 from Lady Derby. Then there duly came the interview of 
 Wednesday, with a great deal of earnest and friendly persuasion 
 to accept some part or other of the Ministerial offers. Then at 
 
Trtbutea of Respect. 871 
 
 last, when all had to be steadfastly declined as an evident super- 
 fluity and impropriety, a frank confession from her ladyship 
 that I had done well to answer No in all particulars. The inter- 
 view was not painful to me, but rather the contrary ; though I 
 really was sorry to disappoint — as it appeared I should do— both 
 Disraeli and a much hi^Iier persou^e, Queen's Majesty herself, 
 namely. Lady D. had at once permission from me to break the 
 secret of the matter, and to tell or publish whatever she pleased 
 of the truth about it. 
 
 So this small circumstance ended. The endeavour to 
 mark his sense of Carlyle's high deserts, which no other 
 Premier had thought of noticing, will be remembered here- 
 after to Lord Beaconsiield's credit, when * peace with 
 honour ' is laughed at or forgotten. The story was a nine 
 days' wonder, with the usual conflict of opinion. The final 
 judgment was perhaps most completely expressed to me by 
 the conductor of an omnibus : ' Fine old gentleman that, 
 who got in along with you,' said he to me, as Carlyle went 
 inside and I mounted to the roof, * we thinks a deal on 
 liim down in Chelsea, we does.' * Yes,' I said, * and the 
 Queen thinks a deal on him too, for she has just offered to 
 make him a Grand Cross.' * Very proper of she to think of 
 it,' my conductor answered, * and more proper of he to have 
 nothing to do with it. 'Tisn't that as can do honour to the 
 likes of he.' 
 
 More agreeable to Carlyle were the tributes of respect 
 which poured in upon Cheyne Row when the coming De- 
 cember brought his 80th birthday. From Scotland came a 
 gold medal ; from Berlin two remarkable letters. I have 
 copies of neither, and therefore cannot give them. One 
 was from a great person whom I do not know ; the other 
 was from Prince Bismarck, written in his own large clear 
 hand, which Carlyle showed me, but I dare not reproduce 
 it from recollection. 
 
372 CarlyWs Life in London, 
 
 To John Carlyle. 
 
 Chelsea : December 4, 1875. 
 
 There has been this morning' a complete whirlwind of birth 
 . day gifts and congratulations about the poor arrival of my eighti- 
 eth and probably last 4th of December. Prince Bismarck, you 
 will observe, thinks it is my seventieth birthday, which is enough 
 to quench any vanity one might have on a missive from such a 
 man ; but I own to being truly pleased with the word or two he 
 says about ' Frederick the Great,' which seems to me a valuable 
 memorial and certificate of the pains I took in the matter, not 
 unwelcome in the circumstances. 
 
 The Scotch medal too was an agreeable tribute, due, he 
 believed, to the kind exertions of Professor Masson. But 
 he was naturally shy, and disliked display when he was him- 
 self the object of it. The excitement worried him. He 
 described it as ' the birthday of a skinless old man ; a day 
 of the most miserable agitation he could recollect in his life.' 
 * The noble and most unexpected note from Bismarck,' he 
 said, ^ was the only real glad event of the day. The crowd 
 of others, including that of the Edinburgh medal, was mere 
 fret and fuss to me, intrinsically of no value at all, at least 
 till one had time to recognise, from the distance, that kind- 
 ness and goodwill had lain at the heart of every part of it.' 
 
 ' Kindness and goodwill,' yet not in the form which he 
 could best have welcomed. The respect of the nineteenth 
 century, genuine though it be, takes the colours of the age, 
 and shows itself in testimonials, addresses, compliments. 
 ' They say I am a great man now,' he observed to me, ' but 
 not one of them believes my report ; not one of them will 
 do what I have bidden them do.' 
 
 His time was chiefly passed in reading and in dictating 
 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 mornings on the Chelsea Embankment. ' A real im- 
 
Advice to CarredponderUs, 873 
 
 provement that,' as he reluctantly admitted. In the after- 
 noon he walked in the park with me or some other friend ; 
 enduig generally in an omnibus, for his strength wbh visi- 
 bly failing. At the beginning of 1876, Mr. Trevelyan 
 brought out his Life of his uncle, and sent Carlyle a copy. 
 ' It promises,' he writes to his brother, * to give a recognisa^ 
 ble likeness of the great Thomas Babington, whom, to say 
 truth, I never could in any way deeply admire, or at all be- 
 lieve in, except to a very shallow extent You remember 
 bringiYig me his first ' Edinburgh Review ' essay,' one night 
 from Annan to the Gill, and reading it with me before go- 
 ing to bed. I think that was the only thing of his I ever 
 read with lively satisfaction. Did you know that Macaulay 
 is understood to signify ' the son of Olaf '; Aulay Macaulay 
 — Olaf, son of Olaf? Olaf Trygveson would surely be 
 much surprised to see some of the descendants he has had. 
 It is a most singular biography, and psychologically may be 
 considered the most curious ever written. No man known 
 to me in present or past ages ever had, with a peaceable 
 composure too, so infinite a stock of good conceit of him- 
 self. Trevelyan has done his task cleverly and well. I 
 finished it with a rather sensible increase of wonder at the 
 natural character of him, but with a clearer view than ever 
 of the limited nature of liis world-admired talent' 
 
 Many letters have been sent to me from unknown cor- 
 respondents — ^young men probably who had been diverted 
 from clericalism by reading his books — and had consulted 
 Carlyle in their choice of a life. Here is one. I would 
 give many more had I room for them, for they are all kind 
 and wise. 
 
 Chelsea: Mareb 80, 1876. 
 
 Dear Sir, — I respect your conscientious scruples in reg^ard to 
 choosing a profession, and wish much I had the power of giv- 
 * On Mlltoo. 
 
374 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 ing you advice that would be of the least service. But that, 1 
 fear, in my total ignorance of yourself and the posture of your 
 affairs, is pretty nearly impossible. The profession of the law 
 IS in many respecttr; a most honourable one, and has this to rec- 
 onunend 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 any- 
 body. 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 altogether human and 
 beautiful. 
 
 Literature, as a profession, is what I would counsel no faith- 
 ful man to be concerned with, except when absolutely forced 
 into it, under penalty, as it were, of death. The pursuit of cul- 
 ture, too, is in the highest degree recommendable to every 
 human soul, and may be successfully achieved in almost any 
 honest 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 advise you to overcome your reluctance against seek- 
 ing refuge there. On the whole there is nothing strikes me 
 likelier for one of your disposition 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 em- 
 ployments may be defined as the usefullest, fruitfullest, and 
 also indispensablest in these days of ours. 
 
 Eegretting much that I can help you so infinitely little, bid- 
 ding 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 calmly and usefully Carlyle's later years went by. 
 There was nothing more to disturb him. His health 
 (though he would seldom allow it) was good. He com- 
 
A lick Carlyle, 87S 
 
 plained of little, scarcely of want of sleep, and suffered le« 
 in all ways than when his temperament was more impet- 
 uously sensitive. One form of sorrow — inevitable when 
 life is far prolonged, that of seeing those whom he had 
 known and loved pass away — this he could not escape. In 
 February, 1876, John Forster died, the dearest friend that 
 Jie had left. I was with him at Forster's funeral in Kensal 
 Green ; and a month later at the funeral of Lady Augusta 
 Stanley at the Abbey. 
 In April his brother Alick went, far off in Canada. 
 
 April 22, 1876.— 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. Tlie much-struggling, ever true 
 and valiant brother is for ever gone. To himself in the state he 
 was in, it can be considered only as a blessed relief, but it strikes 
 me heavily that he is gone before myself ; that I, who should in 
 the course of nature have gone before him, am left among the 
 mourners instead of being the mourned. 
 
 Young Alick's account of his death is altogether interesting — 
 a scene of sublime simplicity, great and solemn under the hum- 
 blest forms. That question of his, when his eyes were already 
 shut, and his mind wavering before the last finis of all : — 'Is 
 Tom coming from Edinburgh the mom ? ' ' will never leave me 
 should I live a hundred years. Poor AUck, 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. Many 
 times he convoyed me to meet the Dumfries coach, or to bring nic 
 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 course of things outside him. He had, as hae been 
 seen, been touched by Mr. Disraeli's action towards him, 
 
 > Alluding to the old times when Carlyle was at thu Unlveratty and UU 
 brothor would be looking out for bini at vucatioo Ume. 
 
376 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 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 him snatch the opportunity of the 
 Kussian-Turkish War to prepare to plaj a great part in 
 European pohtics. It was the curse of modern English 
 political life, as Carlyle saw it, that Prime Ministers 
 thought first of their party, and only of the well-being of. 
 their country as wrapped up in their party's triumph. Mr. 
 Gladstone had sacrificed the loyal Protestants in Ireland for 
 the Catholic vote. Disraeli was appealing to the traditions 
 of the Crimean War, the most foolish enterprise in which 
 England had ever been engaged, to stir the national vanity 
 and set the world on fire, that he and his friends might win 
 a momentary popularity. That any honour, any benefit to 
 England or to mankind, could arise from tliis adventure, he 
 could neither believe himself nor do Disraeli so much in- 
 justice as to suppose that he believed it. Lord Palmers ton, 
 a chartered libertine, had been allowed to speak of the 
 Turks as Hhe 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 incurable ; that their presence in Europe was 
 a disgrace ; that they had been like a stream 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 Parliament, press, 
 and platform were lending themselves to the Premier's 
 ambition, was but an illustration of what Carlyle had always 
 said about the practical v^lue of English institutions ; but 
 he was disgusted that the leaders in the present insanity 
 should be those from whom alone resistance could be hoped 
 
The RtLssia/nr- Turkish War 377 
 
 for against the incoming of democracy. It wius something 
 worse than even their Reform Bill ten years before. He 
 saw that it could lead to nothing but the discredit, perhaps 
 the final ruin of tlie Conservative party, and tlie return of 
 Mr. Gladstone, to work fresh mischief in Ireland. He fore- 
 saw 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 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 War, and supporting him- 
 self by his Irish Home Rulers, great troop of commonplace To- 
 ries, Jews, &c., suddenly get Parliament to support him in a new 
 Philo-Turk war against Russia— the maddest thing human im- 
 agination could well conceive. I am strongly urged to write 
 something further upon it, but cannot feel that I have anything 
 new to say. 
 
 Events move fast in these days, and one nail drives out 
 another ; but we all remember the winter campaign which 
 brought the Russians to Constantinople and the English 
 fleet to the Dardanelles. Opinion in England was all but 
 prepared to allow the Government to throw itself into the 
 fray — all but — but not entirely. If initiative could 1x3 
 forced upon the Russians, those who wished for a fresh 
 struggle could have it. A scheme was said to liave been 
 formed either to seize GtiUipoli or to take some similar step, 
 under pretence of protecting English interests, which would 
 have driven Russia, however reluctant she might be, into a 
 declaration of war. The plan, whatever it may have been, 
 was kept a secret ; but there is reason to believe that prep- 
 arations were actually made, that commanders were chosen. 
 
378 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 and instructions were almost on their way, which would 
 Lave committed the country beyond recall. Carlyle heard 
 of this, not as he said from idle rumour, but from some au- 
 thentic source ; and he heard too that there was not a 
 moment to lose. On the 6th of May he writes to his 
 brother : — 
 
 After much urgency and with a dead-lift effort, I have this 
 day got issued through the ' Times ' a small indispensable de- 
 liverance on the Turk and Dizzy question. Dizzy, it appears, to 
 the horror of those who have any interest in him and his pro- 
 ceedings, 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 ' Times ' was brief, not more than three 
 or four lines ; but it was emphatic in its tone, and was pos- 
 itive about the correctness of the information. Whether he 
 was right, or whether some one had misled him, there is no 
 evidence before the public to show. But the secret, if secret 
 there was, had thus been disclosed prematurely. The let- 
 ter commanded attention as coming from a man who was 
 unlikely to have spoken without grounds, and any unex- 
 pected shock, slight though it may be, will disturb a criti- 
 cal operation. This was Carlyle's last public act in this 
 world ; and if he contributed ever so little to preventing 
 England from committing herself to a policy of which the 
 mischief would have been immeasurable, counterbalanced 
 by nothing, save a brief popularity to the Tory party, it was 
 perhaps also the most useful act in his whole life. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 A.D. 1877-81. ^T. 82-85. 
 
 Conversation and habits of life — Estimate of leading politician! 
 — ^Visit from Lord Woiseley — Lord Beaconsfield and Mr. 
 Gladstone — Dislike of Jews — The English Liturgy — An 
 afternoon in Westminster Abbey — Progress — Democracy — 
 Religion— The Bible— Characteristics. 
 
 My tale draws to an end. In representing Carlyle's thoughts 
 on men and things, I have confined myself as much as pos- 
 sible to his own words in his journals and letters. To re- 
 port correctly the language of conversations, especially 
 when extended over a wide period, is almost an impossi- 
 bility. The listener, in spite of himself, adds something 
 of his own in colour, form, or substance. 
 
 I knew Carlyle, however, so long and so intimately, that 
 I heard many things from him which are not to be found 
 under his hand ; many things more fully dilated on, which 
 are there only hinted at, and slight incidents about himself 
 for which I could make no place in my narrative. I have 
 already noticed the general character of his talk with me. 
 I add here some few memorabilia, taken either from notes 
 hastily written down, or from my own recollection, which 
 I believe in the main to be correct. 
 
 When the shock of his grief had worn off, and he had 
 completed his expiatory memoir, he became more com- 
 posed,, and could discourse with his old fulness, and more 
 
380 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 calmly than in earlier times. A few hours alone with him 
 furnished then the most delightful entertainment. We 
 walked ^nq or six miles a day in Hyde Park or Battersea, 
 or in the environs of Kensington. As his strength de- 
 clined, 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 Sydenham, or 
 wherever it might be. Occasionally, in the warm days of 
 early summer, he would go with me 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 mackintosh and his broad-brimmed hat, let the 
 rain do its worst upon him. The driving days were, the 
 least interesting to me, for his voice grew weak, and my 
 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 extremely sensitive, and would become uneasy 
 and even violent — often without explaining himself — for 
 the most unexpected reasons. It will be remembered that 
 he had once stayed at Malvern with Dr. Grully, and on the 
 whole had liked Grully, or had at least been grateful to 
 him. Many years after. Dr. Gully's name had come be- 
 fore the world again, in connection with the Balham mys- 
 tery, and Carlyle had been shocked and distressed about it. 
 We 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 way. He became 
 suddenly agitated, insisted that the man was going T\Tong, 
 and at last peremptorily 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 Balham. I cannot bear to pass that house.' , 
 
Sensitiveneas, 881 
 
 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 comer to 
 avoid being squeezed. The conductors knew him, and his 
 appearance was so marked 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 may wear a queer 'at, but wliat would 
 you give for the 'ed-piece that's a inside of it ? ' 
 
 He went often by omnibus to the Regent Circus, walked 
 from thence up Regent Street and Portland Place into the 
 Park, and returned the same way. Portland Place, being 
 airy and uncrowded, pleased him particularly. We were 
 strolling along it during the Russo-Turkish crisis, one after- 
 noon, when we met a Foreign Office official, who was in 
 the Cabinet secrets. Knowing me, he turned to walk with 
 us, and I introduced him to Carlyle, saying who he was. 
 C. took the opportunity of delivering himself in the old 
 eruptive style ; the Geyser throwing up whole volumes of 
 steam and stones. It was very fine, and was the last occa- 
 sion on which I ever heard him break out in this way. Mr. 
 wrote to me afterwards to tell me how much inter- 
 ested he had been, adding, however, that he was still in the 
 dark as to whether it was his eyes or the Turk's that had 
 been damned at such a rate. I suppose I might have an- 
 swered, both. 
 
 He spoke much on politics and on the characters of pub- 
 lic men. From the British Parliament he was profoundly* 
 convinced that no more good was to be looked for. A 
 democratic Parliament, from the nature of it, would place 
 persons at the head of affairs increasingly unfit to deal witli 
 them. Bad would be followed by worse, and worse by 
 worst, till the very fools would see that the system must 
 
382 Carlyle^s L'lfe in Lmidon. 
 
 end. Lord Wolseley, then Sir Garnet, went with me once 
 to call in Cheyne Eow, Carlyle having expressed a wish to 
 see him. He was much struck with Sir Garnet, and talked 
 freely with him on many subjects. He described the House 
 of Commons as ' six hundred talking asses, set to make the 
 laws and administer the concerns of the greatest empire the 
 world had ever seen ; ' with other uncomplimentary phrases. 
 "When we rose to go, he said, * Well, Sir, I am glad to have 
 made your acquaintance, and I wish you well. There is one 
 duty which I hope may yet be laid upon you before you 
 leave this world — ^to lock the door of yonder place, and turn 
 them all out about their business.' 
 
 Of the two Parliamentary chiefs then alternately rul- 
 ing, I have already said that he preferred Mr. Disraeli, 
 and continued to prefer him, even after his wild effort to 
 make himself arbiter of Europe. Disraeli, he thought, was 
 under no illusions about himself. To him the world was a 
 mere stage, and he a mere actor playing a part upon it. 
 He had no serious beliefs, and made no pretences. He un- 
 derstood, as well as Carlyle himself, whither England was 
 going, with its fine talk of progress ; but it would last his 
 time ; he could make a figure in conducting its destinies, or 
 at least amuse himself scientifically like Mephistopheles. 
 He was not an Englishman, and had no true care for Eng- 
 land. The Conservatives, in choosing him for their lead- 
 er, had sealed their own fate. He had made his fame by 
 assailing Peel, the last of the great order of English minis- 
 ters. He was dexterous in Parliamentary manoeuvres, but 
 looked only to winning in divisions, and securing his party 
 their turn of power. If with his talents he had possessed 
 the instincts of a statesman, there was anarchic Ireland to 
 be brought to order ; there were the Colonies to be united 
 with the Empire ; there was the huge, hungry, half -human 
 population of our enormous towns to be drafted out over the 
 
The Political Leaders, 383 
 
 infinite territories of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, 
 where, with land to cultivate and pure air to breathe, they 
 might recover sanity of soul and limb. 
 
 He used to speak with real anger of the argument that 
 such poor wretches were wanted at home in tlieir squalid 
 alleys, that labour might continue cheap. It was an argu- 
 ment worthy only of Carib cannibals. This was the work 
 cut out for English Conservatives, and they were shutting 
 their eyes to it because it was diflScult, and were rushing 
 off, led by Dizzy, into Russian wars. 
 
 Mr. Disraeli, however, had, he admitted, some good 
 qualities. He could fjee facts, a supreme merit in Carlyle's 
 eyes. He was good-natured. He bore no malice. If he 
 was without any lofty virtues, he affected no virtuous airs. 
 Mr. Gladstone, Carlyle considered to be equally incapable 
 of high or sincere purpose, but with this difference, that he 
 supposed himself to have what he had not. He did not 
 look on Mr. Gladstone merely as an orator, who, knowing 
 nothing as it ought to be known, had flung his force into 
 words and specious sentiments ; but as the representative 
 of the multitudinous cants of the age — religious, moral, po- 
 litical, litei-ary ; differing in this point from other leading 
 men, that the cant seemed actually true to him ; that he 
 believed it all and was prepared to act on it. He, in fact, 
 believed Mr. Gladstone to be one of those fatal figures, 
 created by England's evil genius, to work irreparable mis- 
 cliief, which no one but he could have executed. 
 
 This, in sum, was the opinion which he expressed to me 
 a hundred times, witli a hundred variations, and in this 
 imperfect form I have here set it down. In a few years, 
 the seed which Mr. Gladstone has sown in Ireland and 
 elsewhere will have ripened to the hai'vest. ' All political 
 follies,' Carlyle says somewhere, * issue at last in a broken 
 head to somebody. That is the final outcome of them.' 
 
384 Ca/rlyWs Life in London. 
 
 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 dis- 
 like of Jews. He had a true Teutonic aversion for that unfor- 
 tunate race. They had no humour, 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 
 anything who were without a ' genial sympathy with the 
 under side.' They had contributed nothing, besides, to the 
 ' wealth ' of mankind, being mere dealers in money, gold, 
 jewels, or else old clothes, material and spiritual. He stood 
 still one day, opposite Rothschild's great house at Hyde 
 Park Corner, looked at it a little, and said, ' I do not mean 
 that I want King John back again, but if you ask me which 
 mode of treating these people to have been the nearest to 
 the will of the Almighty about them — to build them palaces 
 like that, or to take the pincers for them, I declare for the 
 pincers.' Then he imagined himself King John, with the 
 Baron on the bench before him. ' Now, sir, the State requires 
 some of those millions you have heaped together with your 
 financing work. " You won't 1 " very well,' and he gave a 
 twist with his wrist — ' ISTow will you ? ' and then another 
 twist, till the millions were yielded. I would add, how- 
 ever, that the Jews were not the only victims whose grind- 
 ers he believed democracy would make free with. 
 
 London housebuilding was a favourite text for a sermon 
 from him. He would point to rows of houses 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 themselves or their 
 owners. ' Human life,' he said, was not possible in such 
 houses. All real worth in man came of stability. Char- 
 acter grew from roots hke a tree. In healthy times the 
 family home was constructed to last for ages ; sons to fol- 
 
The Church of England. :M) 
 
 low tlieir fathers, working at the Hiime husiness, with es- 
 tablislied inetliods of thought and action. Modern honses 
 were symbols of the universal appetite for change. They 
 were not houses at all. They were tents of nomads. The 
 modern artisan had no home^ and did not know what home 
 meant. Everything was now a makeshift. Men 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 same reason he respected such old institutions as 
 were still standing among us — not excepting even the 
 Church of England. He called it the most respectable 
 teaching body at present in existence ; and he thought it 
 might stand for a while yet 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 had to say was not wholly true. Puritan- 
 ism was a noble thing while it was sincere, but that was 
 not true either. All doctrines had to go, after the truth 
 of tliem came to be suspected. But as long as men could 
 be found to work the Church of England who believed the 
 Prayer-book sincerely, he had not the least wish to see the 
 fall of it precipitated. He disliked the liberal school of 
 clergy. Let it once be supposed that the clergy generally 
 were teaching what they did not believe themselves, and 
 the whole thing would become a hideous hyp)Ocrisy. 
 
 He himself had for many years attended no place of wor- 
 ship. Nowhere could he hear anything which he regarded 
 as tnie, and to be insincere in word or act was not possible 
 to liiiii. But liturgies and such-like had a mouniful inter- 
 est for him, as fossils of belief which once had been 
 genuine. A lady — Lady Ashburton, I think — induced 
 hJTTi once, late in his life, to go with her to St. Paul's. He 
 
386 CarlyJe's Life in Lmidon. 
 
 liad never before heard the Eiighsh Cathedral Service, and 
 far away in the nave, in the dim light, where the words 
 Avere indistinct, or were disguised in music, he had been 
 more impressed than he expected to be. In the prayers he 
 recognised ' a true piety ' which had once come straight out 
 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 Westminster Abbey. I told him that Dean Stanley, for 
 whom he had a strong regard, would preach, and this was 
 perhaps another inducement. The experiment proved dan- 
 gerous. We were in the Dean's seat. A minor canon was 
 intoning close to Carlyle's ear. The chorister boys were 
 but three yards off, and the charm of distance was ex- 
 changed for contact which was less enchanting. The hues 
 of worshippers in front of him, sitting while pretending to 
 kneel, making their responses, bowing in the creed by 
 habit, and mechanically repeating the phrases 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 alarmed for what I had 
 done before the service was half over. Worst of all, 
 through some mistake, the Dean did not preach, and in the 
 place of him was a popular orator, who gave us three- 
 quarters of an hour of sugary eloquence. For a while 
 Carlyle bore it like a hero. But by-and-by I heard the 
 point of his stick rattle audibly on the floor. He crushed 
 his hat angrily at each specially emphatic period, and 
 groans followed, so loud that some of the congregation 
 sitting near, who appeared to know him, began to look 
 
 round. Mrs. D , the Dean's cousin, who was in the 
 
 seat with us, exchanged frightened glances with me. ] 
 was the most uneasy of all, for I could see into his mind ; 
 
Wearifie^is of Life, 387 
 
 aDd at the t(x> florid peronitiou I feared that he would rwe 
 and insist on going out, or even, like Oliver, exclaim, 
 ' Leave your fooling, sir, and come down I ' Happily 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 misfortune. It was the loss of everytliing. The 
 powers of writing, even with pencil, went finally seven 
 years before his death. His mind was vigorous and restless 
 as ever. Keading without an object was weariness. Idle- 
 ness was misery ; and I never knew him so depressed as 
 when the fatal certainty was brought home to him. To 
 this, as to other immediate things, time partly reconciled 
 him ; but at first he found life intolerable under such 
 conditions. Every day he told' me he was weary of it, and 
 spoke wistfully of the old Roman method. * A man must 
 stick to his post,' he said, * and do his best there as long as 
 he can work. When his tools are taken from him, it is a 
 sign that he may retire.' When 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. In- 
 creasing weakness only partially tamed him into patience, 
 or reconciled him to an existence which, even at its best, he 
 had more despised than valued. 
 
 To Carlyle, as to Hamlet, the modem world was but * a 
 pestilent congregation of vapours.' Often and often I have 
 lieai-d him repeat Macbeth'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 I 
 
 Life's but a walking shadow ; a poor player 
 
 That struts and frets his hour upon the stage. 
 
388 Carlyle^s L{fe in London. 
 
 And then is heard no more. It fe a tale 
 Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
 Signifying nothing. 
 
 He was especially irritated when he heard the ordinary 
 cant about progress, unexampled prosperity, &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 neces- 
 sarily wiser and better than the one before ; as if there was 
 no such thing as progressing down to hell ; as if human his- 
 tory was anything else but a history of birth and death, 
 advance and decline, of rise and fall, in all that men have 
 ever made or done. The only progress to which Carlyle 
 "would allow the name was moral progress ; the only pros- 
 perity the growth of better and nobler men and women : 
 and as humanity could only expand into high dimensionb 
 in an organic society when the wise ruled and the ignorant 
 obeyed, the progress which consisted in destroying au- 
 thority, and leaving everyone to follow his own will and 
 pleasure, was progress down to the devil and his angels. 
 That, in his opinion, was 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 same level, Judas Iscariot and Paul of Tarsus count- 
 ing equal at the polling booth, the annals of human in- 
 fatuation, he used to say, did not contain the equal. 
 
 Sometimes he thought that we were given over and lost 
 without remedy; that we should rot away through in- 
 glorious centuries, sinking ever deeper into anarchy, pro- 
 tected by our strip of sea from a violent end till the earth 
 was weary of us. At other times the inherent manliness 
 of the English race, inherited from nobler ages, and not 
 yet rinsed out of them, gave him hopes that we might yet 
 be delivered. 
 
Tha StUe. 3» 
 
 I reminded him of the comment of Dion ObmIiis on the 
 change in Rome from a commonwealth to an empire. In a 
 democracy, Cassius says, a country cannot be well admin- 
 istered, even by accident, for it is ruled by the majority, 
 and the majority are always fools. An emperor is but a 
 single man, and may, if the gods please, be a wise one. 
 But tliis did not please Carlyle either. The emj^erors that 
 Rome got, and that we should be likely to get, were of the 
 Copper Captain type, and worse than democracy itself. 
 The hope, if there was hope, lay in a change of heart in 
 the English people, and the reawakening of the nobler ele- 
 ment in them ; and this meant a recovered sense of ' religion.' 
 They would rise out of their delusions when they recognised 
 once more the sacred meaning of dvty. Yet whcU rdigicm f 
 He did not think it possible that educated honest men could 
 even profess much longer to believe in historical Christian- 
 ity. He had been reading the Bible. Half of it seemed 
 to be inspired truth, half of it human 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 must come to something like that if any 
 more good is to grow out of them.' Scientific accountings 
 for the moral sense were all moonshine. Right and wrong 
 in all things, great and small, had been ruled eternally by 
 the Power which made us. A friend was arguing on the 
 people's right to decide this or that, and, when Carlyle dis- 
 sented, asked who was to be the judge. Carlyle tiercely 
 answered, ' Hell fire will be the judge. Grod Almighty will 
 be the judge, now and always.' 
 
 The history of mankind is the history of creeds growing 
 one out of the other. I said it was possible that if Protest- 
 ant Christianity ceased to be credible, some fresh snpersti- 
 
390 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 tion miglit take its place, or even that Popery might come 
 back for a time, developed into new conditions. If the 
 Olympian gods could survive Aristophanes 800 years ; if a 
 Julian could still hope to maintain Paganism as the religion 
 of the empire, I did not see why the Pope might not sur- 
 vive Luther for at least as long. Carlyle would not hear of 
 this ; but he did admit that the Mass was the most genuine 
 relic of religious belief now left to us. He was not always 
 consistent in what he said of Christianity. He would often 
 speak of it with Goethe ' as a height from which, when 
 once achieved, mankind could never descend.' He did not 
 himself beheve in the Resurrection as a historical fact, yet 
 he was angry and scornful at Strauss's language about it. 
 ' Did not our hearts burn within us ? ' he quoted, insisting 
 on the honest conviction of the apostles. 
 
 The associations of the old creed which he had learnt 
 from his mother and in the Ecclefechan kirk hung about 
 him to the last. I was walking with him one Sunday after- 
 noon in Battersea Park. In the open circle among the trees 
 was a blind man and his daughter, she singing hymns, he 
 accompanying her on some instrument. We stood listen- 
 ing. She sang Faber's ' Pilgrims of the Mght.' The words 
 were trivial, but the air, though simple, had something 
 weird and unearthly about it. ' Take me away ! ' he said 
 after a few minutes, ' I shall cry if I stay longer.' 
 
 He was not what is commonly called an amiable man. 
 Amiability runs readily into insincerity. He spoke his 
 mind freely, careless to whom he gave offence : but as no 
 man ever delighted more to hear of any brave or good 
 action, so there was none more tender-hearted or compas- 
 sionate of suffering. Stern and disdainful to wrongdoers, 
 especially if they happened to be in high places, he was 
 ever pitiful to the children of misfortune. Whether they 
 wxre saints or sinners made no difference. If they were 
 
Characteristics. 891 
 
 miserable his heart was open to them. He was like Goethe's 
 elves : — 
 
 Wenn er heilig, wenn er bOee, 
 
 Jammert sie der UnglQcksinann. 
 
 His memory was extremely tenacious, as is always the case 
 with men of genius. He would relate anecdotes for hours 
 together of Scotch peasant life, of old Edinburgh students, 
 old Ecclefechan villages, wandering from one thing to 
 another, but always dwelling on the simple and pious side 
 of things, never on the scandalous or wicked. Burns's songs 
 were constantly on his lips. He knew them so well that 
 they seemed part of his soul. Kever can I forget the tone 
 in which he would repeat to me, revealing unconsciously 
 where his own thoughts were wandering, the beautiful lines: — 
 
 J. t^ «. ^ , Had we never loved sae kindly. 
 
 Had we never loved sae blindly, 
 Never met and never parted, 
 We had ne'er been broken-hearted. 
 
 Not once but many times the words would burst from him, 
 rather as the overflow from his own heart than as addressed 
 to me. 
 
 In his last years he grew weak, glad to rest upon a seat 
 when he could find one, glad of an arm to lean on when on 
 his feet. He knew that his end must be near, and it was 
 Rcldom long out of his mind. But he was not conscious of 
 a failure of intellectual power, nor do I think that to the 
 last there was any essential failure. He forgot names and 
 places, as old men always do, but he recollected everything 
 that was worth remembering. He caught the point of 
 every new problem with the old rapidity. He was eager as 
 < ver for new information. In his intellect nothing pointed 
 t. » an end ; and the ex}>erience that tlie mind did not neces- 
 parily decay with the body confirmed his conviction that it 
 
392 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 was not a function of the body, that it had another origin 
 and might have another destination. When he spoke of 
 the future and its uncertainties he fell back invariably on 
 the last words of his favourite hymn : — 
 
 Wir heissen euch hoffen. 
 (We bid you to hope.) 
 
 Meanwhile his business with the world was over, his con- 
 nection with it was closing in, and he had only to bid it 
 
 Farewell. 
 
 Fear no more the heat of the sun, 
 
 Nor the stormy winter rages ; 
 Now the long day's task is done, 
 
 Home art gone and ta'en thy wages. 
 Golden lads and lasses must. 
 Like chimney-sweepers, come to dust. 
 
 Often these words were on his lips. Home^ too, he felt 
 that he was going ; home to those ' dear ' ones who had 
 gone before him. His wages he has not taken with him. 
 His wages will be the love and honour of the whole Eng- 
 lish race who read his books and know his history. If his 
 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 which could give 
 him hope and confidence. The inherited creed had crum- 
 bled down, and he had to form a belief for himself by 
 lonely meditation. ^N^ature had not bestow^ed on him the 
 robust mental constitution which passes by the petty trials 
 of life without heeding them, or the stubborn stoicism 
 which endures in silence, l^ature had made him weak, 
 passionate, complaining, dyspeptic in body and sensitive in 
 spirit, lonely, irritable, and morbid. He became what he 
 was by his moral rectitude of principle, by a conscientious 
 resolution to do right, which never failed him in serious 
 
Moral Structure, 808 
 
 things from his earliest years, and, though it could not 
 change his temperament, was the inflexible guide of his con- 
 duct. Neither self-indulgence, nor ambition, nor any 
 meaner motive, ever led liim astray from the straight road 
 of duty, and he left the world at last, having never spoken, 
 never written a sentence which he did not believe with his 
 whole heart, never stained his conscience by a single deHb- 
 erate act which he could regret to remember. 
 
CHAPTEK XXXY. 
 
 A.D. 1877-81. MT. 82-85. 
 
 Statues — ^Portraits — Millais's picture — Study of the Bible — Ill- 
 ness and death of John Carlyle — Preparation of Memoirs — 
 Last words about it — Longing for death — The end — Offer of 
 a tomb in Westminster Abbey — Why declined — Ecclef echau 
 churchyard — Conclusion. 
 
 A BRIEF chapter closes my long story. All things and all 
 men come to their end. This biography ends. The bi- 
 ographer himself will soon end, and will go where he will 
 have to answer for the manner 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 
 summer of 187Y Carlyle, at my urgent entreaty, sat for his 
 picture to Mr. Millais. Mr. Boehm had made a seated 
 statue of him, as satisfactory 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 Mr. Boehm to catch with more than common suc- 
 cess the shifting changes of his expression. But there was 
 still something wanting. A portrait of Carlyle completely 
 satisfactory did not yet exist, and if executed at aU could be 
 executed only by the most accomplished painter of his age. 
 Millais, I believe, had never attempted a more difficult sub- 
 ject. In the second sitting I observed what seemed a miracle. 
 The passionate vehement face of middle life had long dis- 
 
MiUMs P(yiHrait. 396 
 
 appeared. Something of the Annandale peasant had Stolen 
 back over the proud air of conscious intellectual power. The 
 scorn, the fierceness was gone, and tenderness and mild sor- 
 row had passed into its place. And yet under Millais's hands 
 the old Carlyle stood again upon the canvas as I had not 
 seen him for thirty years. The inner secret of the features 
 had been evidently caught. There was a likeness which no 
 sculptor, no photographer, had yet equalled or apjjroached. 
 Afterwards, I knew not how, it seemed to fade away. Mil- 
 lais grew dissatisfied with his work, and, I beUeve, never 
 completed it. Carlyle's own verdict was modestly uncer- 
 tain. 
 
 The picture, he said, does not please many, nor in fact myself 
 altogether; but it is surely strikingly like in every featiire, and 
 the fundamental condition was that Millais should paint what 
 he was able to see. 
 
 His correspondence with his brother John, never inter- 
 mitted while 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 
 completely through the * Decline and Fall.' 
 
 I have finished Gibbon, he wrote, 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 re- 
 search, but of a most disagreeable style, and a great want of the 
 highest faculties (which indeed are very rare) of what we could 
 call a classical historian, compared with Herodotus, for instance, 
 and his perfect clearness and simplicity in every part. 
 
 In speaking of Gibbon's work to me he made one re- 
 mark which is worth recording. In earlier years he had 
 spoken contemptuously of the Athanasian controversy, of 
 the OhriBtian world torn in pieces over a diphthong, and 
 
396 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 he would ring the changes in broad Annandale on the 
 Homoousion and the Hom(?^ousion. 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, Hhe significance of 
 wliich,' he found, ' deep and wonderful almost as much as 
 it ever used to be.' Bold and honest to the last, he would 
 not pretend to believe what his intellect rejected, and even 
 in Job, his old favourite, he found more wonder than satis- 
 faction. But the Bible itself, the Bible and Shakespeare, 
 remained ^ the best books ' to him that were ever written. 
 
 He was growing weaker and weaker, however, and the 
 exertion of thought exhausted him. 
 
 I do not feel to ail anything, he said of himself, INbvember 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 departure is nigh. I am 
 grateful to Heaven for one thing, that the state of my mind 
 continues unaltered and perfectly clear ; surely a blessing be- 
 yond 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 may be. 
 
 And again, IS'ovember Y :— 
 
 The fact is, so far as I can read it, my strength is faded nearly 
 quite away, and it begins to be more and more evident to me 
 that I shall not long have to struggle under this 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 Ernster 
 Freund as the most merciful and indispensable refuge appointed 
 by the Great Creator for His wearied children whose work is 
 done. Alas, alas ! the final mercy of God, it in late years always 
 appears to me is, that He delivers us from life which has be- 
 come a task too hard for us. 
 
 As long as John Carlyle survive, he had still the a^soci 
 
lUneas of John Cwrhjle. Wt- 
 
 ate of his early years, on whose affection he conld rely, and 
 John, as the younger of the two, might be expected to out- 
 live him. But this last consolation he was to see pass from 
 him. John Carlyle, too, was sinking under the weight of 
 years. Illness bore heavily on him, and his periodic visits 
 to Chelsea had ceased to be manageable. His home was at 
 Dumfries, and the accounts of him which reached Cheyne 
 Row all through that winter were less and less hopeful. It 
 was a winter memorable 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 14, 1878. 
 
 My dear Brother, — On coming down stairs from a dim and 
 painful night I find your punctual Letter here, announcing that 
 mattei-s are no better with yourself, probably in some respects 
 even worse. We must be patient, dear brother, and take piously 
 if we can what days and nights are sent us. The night before 
 last was unusually good with me. All the rest, especially last 
 night, were worse than usual, and little or no sleep attainable 
 by me. In fact I seem to perceive that there is only one hope, 
 that of being called away out of this unmanageable scene. One 
 must not presume to form expi-ess 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 tliat there is no good news to 
 be expected from either side. God's will be done. The froet, 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, and 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. Mary 
 sends her kindest love. To me she is unwearied in her atten- 
 tion ; rose last night, for example, as she ever does at my sum- 
 mons; but \\-as not able last night, for the first time, to do me 
 
398 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 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. 
 
 A little more and John was gone. As his condition 
 grew hopeless, Carljle was afraid every day that the end 
 had come, and that the news had been kept back from him. 
 ' Is my brother John dead ? ' he asked me one day as I 
 joined him in his carriage. He was not actually dead then, 
 but he suffered only for a few more days. John Carlyle 
 would have been remembered as a distinguished man if he 
 had not been overshadowed by his greater brother. After 
 his early struggles he worked in his profession for many 
 careful years, and saved a considerable fortune. Then, 
 in somewhat desultory fashion he took to literature. 
 He wanted brilliancy, and still more he wanted energy, 
 but he had the virtue of his family — veracity. "What- 
 ever he undertook he did faithfully, with all his abil- 
 ity, and his translation of Dante is the best that 
 exists. He needed the spur, however, before he would 
 exert himself, and I believe he attempted nothing serious 
 afterwards. In disposition he was frank, kind-hearted, 
 generous; entirely free from all selfishness or amtition; 
 simple as his brother in his personal habits; and ready 
 always with money, time, or professional assistance, wher- 
 ever Jiis help was needed. When Carlyle bequeathed 
 Craigenputtock to the University of Edinburgh, John too 
 settled a handsome sum for medical bursaries there, to 
 encourage poor students. These two brothers, born in a 
 peasant's home in Annandale, owing Kttle themselves to an 
 Alma Mater which had missed discovering their merits, 
 were doing for Scotland's chief University what Scotland's 
 peers and merchants, with their palaces and deer forests 
 
AtUobiographical Fragments. 899 
 
 and social splendour, had, for some cause, too imperfectly 
 supplied. 
 
 James Carlyle and three sisters still remained, and 
 Carlyle was tenderly attached to them. But John had 
 been his early friend, the brother of his heart, and his 
 death was a sore blow. He bore his loss manfully, sub- 
 mitting to the inevitable as to the will of his Father and 
 Master. He was very feeble, but the months went by 
 without producing much visible change, save that latterly 
 in his drives he had to take a supply of liquid food with 
 him. He was still fairly cheerful, and tried, though with 
 diminished eagerness, to take an interest in pubhc afEairs. 
 He even thought for a moment of taking a personal part 
 in the preparation of his Memoirs. Among his papers I 
 had found the Reminiscences of his father, of Irving, of 
 Jeffrey, of Southey and Wordsworth. I had to ask myself 
 whether these characteristic, and as I thought, and continue 
 to think, extremely beautiful 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 hatl al- 
 most 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 
 immediately on his death. The world would then be talk- 
 ing about him, and would have something authentic to go 
 upon. It was suggested that he might revise the sheets 
 personally, and that the book might appear in his lifetime 
 as edited by himself. He turned the proposal over in hifl 
 mind, and considered that perhaps he might try. On re- 
 flection, however, he found the effort would be too much 
 for him. 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 pnrposer 
 
400 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 of including in the intended volume the Memoir of Mrs. 
 Carlyle. This was part of his separate bequest to me, and 
 I was then engaged, as I have already said, in incorporat- 
 ing both memoir and letters in the history of his early life. 
 I think a year must have elapsed after this before the sub- 
 ject was mentioned between us again. At length, however, 
 one day about three months before his death, he asked me 
 very solemnly, and in a tone of the saddest anxiety, what I 
 proposed to do about ' the Letters and Memorials.' I was 
 sorry — for a fresh evidence at so late a date of his wish that 
 the Letters should be published as he had left them 
 would take away my discretion, and I could no longer treat 
 them as I had begun to do. But he was so sorrowful and 
 earnest — though still giving no positive order — that I could 
 make no objection. I promised him that the Letters should 
 appear with such reservations as might be indispensable. 
 The Letters implied the Memoir, for it had been agreed 
 upon from the first between us, that, if Mrs. Carlyle's 
 Letters were published, his Memoir of her must be pub- 
 lished also. I decided, therefore, that the Memoir should 
 be added to the volume of Eeminiscences ; the Letters to 
 follow at an early date. I briefly told him this. He was 
 entirely satisfied, and never spoke about it again. 
 
 I have said enough already of Carlyle's reason for pre- 
 paring these papers, of his bequest of them to me, and of 
 the embarrassment into which I was thrown by it. The 
 arguments on either side were weighty, and ten years 
 of consideration had not made it more easy to choose 
 between them. My final conclusion may have been right 
 or wrong, but the influence which turned the balance was 
 Carlyle's persevering wish, and my own conviction that it 
 was a wish supremely honourable to him. 
 
 This was in the autumn of 1880, a little before his 85th 
 l)irthday. He was growing so visibly infirm, that neither 
 
The Approaching Change, 401 
 
 he himself nor any of ub expected him to survive the 
 winter. He was scarcely able even to wish it 
 
 He was attended by a Scotch physician who liad lately 
 settled in London. He disliked doctors generally, and 
 through life had allowed none of them near him except his 
 brother ; but he submitted now to occasional visits, though 
 he knew that he was past help and that old age was a disease 
 for which there was no earthly remedy. I was sitting with 
 him one day 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. We must just 
 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 January 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 day. I mentioned sometliing 
 of it to him one day. He listened indifferently. ' These 
 things do not interest you ? ' I said. ' JS'ot the least,' he 
 answered, and turned languidly away. * He became worse 
 a day or two after that. I went down to see him. His bed 
 had been moved into the drawing-room, which still bore the 
 stamp of his wife's hand upon it. Her workbox and other 
 ladies' trifles lay about in their old places. He had forbid- 
 den them to be removed, and they stood within reach of his 
 dying hand. 
 
 He wfis wandering when I came to his side. He reeoj;- 
 
402 Carlyle's Life in London. 
 
 nised me. * I am very ill,' lie said. ^ Is it not strange that 
 those people should have chosen the very olde^ man in all 
 Britain to make suffer in this way % ' 
 
 I answered, ' "VYe do not exactly know why those people 
 act as they do. They may have reasons that 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 him next his speech was gone. His eyes 
 were as if they did not see, or were fixed on something far 
 away. I cannot say whether he heard me when I spoke to 
 him, 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 morning 
 following he died. He had been gone an hour when I 
 reached the house. He lay calm and still, an expression of 
 exquisite tenderness subduing his rugged features into fem- 
 inine beauty. I have seen something like it in Catholic pic- 
 tures of dead saints, but never, before or since, on any hu- 
 man countenance. 
 
 So closed a long Hfe of eighty-five years — a life in which 
 extraordinary talents had been devoted, with an equally ex- 
 traordinary purity of purpose, to his Maker's service, so far 
 as he could see and understand that Maker's will — a life of 
 single-minded effort to do right and only that ; of constant 
 truthfulness in word and deed. Of Carlyle, if of anyone, it 
 may be said that ' he was a man indeed in whom was no 
 guile.' No insincerity ever passed his Kps ; no dishonest or 
 impure thought ever stole into his heart. In all those long 
 years the most malicious scrutiny will search in vain for a 
 single serious blemish. If he had frailties and impatiences, 
 if he made mistakes and suffered for them, happy those 
 whose conscience has nothing worse to charge them with. 
 Happy those who, if their infirmities have caused pain to 
 others who were dear to them, have, like Carlyle, made the 
 
Offered Sepulture in the Alley, 403 
 
 fault into a virtue by the simplicity and completenesB of 
 their repentance. 
 
 He 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 might be 
 made to give him a more distinguished resting-place in 
 Westminster Abbey. For many reasons he had decided 
 that it was not to be. He objected to parts of the English 
 burial service, and, veracious in everything, did not chooeo 
 that words should be read over him which he regarded aA 
 untrue. ' The grain of com,' he said, * does not die ; or if it 
 dies, does not rise again.' Something, too, there was of the 
 same proud feeling which had led him to decline a title. 
 Funerals in the Abbey were not confined to the deserving. 
 
 When was buried there he observed to me, * 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 pilgrimage, the old kirkyard at Ecclefe- 
 chan. 
 
 Dean Stanley wrote to me, after he was gone, to offer 
 the Abbey, in the warmest and most admiring terms. He 
 had applied to me as one of the executors, and I had to tell 
 him that it had been otherwise arranged. He asked that 
 the body might rest there for a night on the way to Scot- 
 land. This also we were obliged to decline. Deeply affect- 
 ed as he was, he preached on the Sunday following on Car- 
 lyle's work and character, introducing into his sermon a 
 beautiful passage which I had given to him out of the last 
 journal. 
 
 The organ played afterwards the Dead March in 
 ^Saul' — grand, majestic — as England's voice of farewell to 
 one whose work for England had closed, and yet had not 
 
404 Carlyle^s Life in London. 
 
 closed. It is still, perhaps, rather in its infancy ; for he, 
 being dead, yet speaks to us as no other man in this cen- 
 tury has spoken or is likely to speak. 
 
 He was 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. We arrived 
 at Ecclef echan on a cold dreary February morning ; such a 
 morning as he himself describes when he laid his mother in 
 the same grave where he was now to rest. Snow had 
 fallen, and road and field were wrapped in a white wind- 
 ing-sheet. The hearse, with the coffin, stood solitary in the 
 station yard, as some waggon might 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 
 desolate, was painful ; and, to lose sight of it in the three 
 hours which we had to wait, we walked up to Mainhill, the 
 small farmhouse, two miles distant, where he had spent his 
 boyhood and his university vacations. I had seen Mainhill 
 before, my companions had not. The house had been en- 
 larged since my previous visit, but the old part of it, the 
 kitchen and the two bedrooms, of which it had consisted 
 when the Carlyles lived there, remained as they had been, 
 with the old alcoves, in which the beds were still standing. 
 To complete the resemblance, another family of the same 
 station in life now occupied it — a shrewd industrious farm- 
 er, whose wife was making cheeses in the dairy. Again 
 there were eight children, the elde^^ sons at school in the 
 village, the little ones running about barefoot as Carlyle 
 had done, the girls with their brooms and dusters, and one 
 little fellow not strong enough for farm work, but believed 
 to have gifts, and designed, by-and-by, for college. It was 
 the old scene ovar again, the same stage, the same play, 
 with new players. We stayed looking alx)ut us till it was 
 
Burial at EccUfecJiati . 4U5 
 
 time to go, aiid then waded biick through the lialf-inelted 
 snow to the station. A few strangore had arrived from 
 Edinburgh and elsewhere, but not many ; for the family, 
 simple in their habits, avoided display, and the day, and 
 even the place of the funeral, had not been made public. 
 Two or three carriages were waiting, belonging to gentle- 
 men in the neighbourhood. Mr. James Carlyle and his 
 sisters were there, with their children, in carriages also, and 
 there was a carriage for us. The hearse was set in move- 
 ment, and we followed slowly down the half-mile of road 
 which divides the station from the village. A crowd had 
 gathered at the churchyard, not disorderly, but seemingly 
 with no feeling but curiosity. There were boys and ^Is 
 bright with ribands and coloured dresses, climbing n]X)n 
 the kirkyard walls. There was no minister-^-or at least no 
 ceremony which implied the presence of a minister. I 
 could not but contrast, in my own thoughts, that poor and 
 almost ragged scene, with the trampled sleet and dirt, and 
 'Zfriordered if not ^^/^ordered assemblage, with the sad ranks 
 of mourners who would have attended in thousands had 
 Dean Stanley's offer been accepted. I half -regretted the 
 resolution which had made the Abbey impossible. Mel- 
 ancholy, indeed, was the impression left upon me by tliat 
 final leave-taking of my honoured master. The kirk- 
 yard was peopled with ghosts. All round me were 
 headstones, with the names of the good old villagers of 
 whom I had heard so many stories from him : the school- 
 master from whom he had learnt his first Latin, the black- 
 smith with whom his f atlier had argued on the resurrection 
 of the body, his father, mother, sister, woven into the life 
 which was now over, and wliich it was to fall to myself to 
 describe. But the graves were soiled with half-thawed 
 sleet, the newspaper correspondents were busy with their 
 pencils, the people were pressing and pushing as the coffin 
 
406 Carhjlcs Life in Ijondon. 
 
 was lowered down. Xot in this way, I thought for a mo- 
 ment, ought Scotland to have laid her best and greatest in 
 his solemn sleeping-place. But it was for a moment only. 
 It was as he had himself 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 nothing really unsuitable in what habit had made nat- 
 ural and fit. It was over, and we left him to his rest. 
 
 In future years, in future centuries, strangers will come 
 from distant lands — from America, from Australia, from 
 New Zealand, from every isle or continent where the Eng- 
 lish language is spoken — to see the house where Carlyle 
 was born, to see the green turf under which his dust is 
 lying. Scotland will have raised a monument over his 
 grave ; but no monument is needed for one who has made 
 an eternal memorial for himself 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 raiost hon- 
 ourable, not 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 
 iu their own land which is the record of their virtues, but the 
 unwritten memory of them in the hearts and minds of all man* 
 kind.' 
 
INDEX. 
 
 ABERGWILI, visit to Bishop 
 Thirlwall at, i. 261 
 
 Addiscorabe, visits to, ii. 151 
 
 Alma, on the battle of the, iL 147 
 
 America, good news from, i. 125 ; re- 
 mittances from, 131, lf>5 
 
 American Civil War, Carlvle's allusion 
 to the, ii. 2(K> 
 
 Anarchy, on the uses of. ii. 249 
 
 Annandale, incidents at, i. 215; anec- 
 dotes of, 234 ; visits to, ii. 243, 274 
 
 Anne Boleyn, Carlvle's opinion of her 
 guilt, ii. 338 
 
 Argyll, Duke of, ii. 210 
 
 Arnold, Dr., of Rugby, on the ' French 
 Revolution,' L 153; visited by Car- 
 lyle,2I6 
 
 Art, Carlyle's characteristic remarks 
 on, i. 179 
 
 Ashbiirton, Lord (father of Mr, Efar- 
 ing), makes the acquaintance of 
 Carlyle, i 296 ; his death, 379 
 
 Ashley, Lord (afterwards Lord Shaf- 
 tesbury), his efforts for the protec- 
 tion or factory children, i. 2Ni 
 
 Athanasian controversy, on the, ii. 395 
 
 Atheism, modern, Carlyle's opinion 
 of, iL 317, 329 
 
 Authors, remarks on, i. 133 
 
 Azeglio, rebuke of, iL 109 
 
 B ABB AGE, i. 171 
 Baring, Lady Harriet (afterwards 
 LaJy Ashburton), her admiration 
 for Carlyle, i. 292 ; visited by Mrs, 
 Carlyle, 15S; her death, ii. 314 
 Baring, Mr. (afterwards Lord Ashbur- 
 ton), i. i:',3. 292 ; visited by the 
 Carlyles. 317 ; joint tour in Scot- 
 land, 3:i5 ; Carlyle's visits to, 355, 
 379, ii. 209; an incident at the 
 Grange, ii. 109 ; his second marriage, 
 195; his illness, 227; his death, 
 233 ; legacy to Carlyle, 283 
 
 Barry, the architect, ii. SIJ 
 
 Bath, description of, l 254 
 
 Benthamism, i. 247 
 
 Berlm, the revolution in, i. S70; de- 
 scription of the city, ii 100 
 
 Bemstorff, Count (Prussian Ambas- 
 sador in London), his letter to Car* 
 lyle. ii..*345 
 
 Blanc, Louis, visit from, L 385 
 
 Boehm's statue of Carlyle, ii. 3M 
 
 Bonn, visit to, ii. 85 
 
 Bores, Carlyle's contempt for, L 295 
 
 Breslau, visit to, i". I^<9 
 
 Bright, Jacob, acuuaintance with, L 
 a52 
 
 Bright, John, acquaintance with, L 
 352 
 
 Bromley, Miss Davenport, visit to, ii 
 277 
 
 Bruges, visit to, i 224 
 
 Budget of a Femme TncomprUe, ii. 
 138 
 
 Buller, Charles, i 159, 219; his high 
 Parliamentary reputation, 383 ; bis 
 death, 38:} ; Carlyle's elegy o.i. 383 
 
 Bullers, the. their kindness to Carlyle, 
 219 ; death of Mrs. Buller, 888 
 
 Bunsen, meeting with, i 134 
 
 Buxton, visit to, i. 350 
 
 CAMBRIDGE friends, Uberality of, 
 i 130 
 Cant, Carlyle's detestation of, ii 14 
 Carleton, the novelist, i. 340 
 Carlyle, James (brother of T. Carlyle). 
 
 represent* Carlyle at the funeral of 
 
 the letter's mother-in-law, i 901 ; 
 
 visits his brother in linden, 805 ; 
 
 his oharaoter. ii. 12:1 
 Carlyle. Alick (brother of T. Carlyle), 
 
 the death of, ii 375 
 Carlyle, Jane Welsh, her opinion of 
 
 the rewritten burnt manoaoript, 
 
 L 46; Carlyle's lott«s to, M, 65, 
 
408 
 
 Index. 
 
 67, 95, 125, 126, 178, 202, 256, 
 257, 261, 271, 302, 311, 324, 325, 
 336, 371, ii 9-12, 45, 74, 96, 
 149, 178, 235; her illness, i. 63; 
 visits her mother m Scotland, 63 ; 
 her domestic trials, 68 ; returns 
 to London in better spirits, 69 ; 
 again seriously ill, 86 ; gives a 
 soiree, 134; accompanies Carlyle to 
 Scotland, 143 ; her temper, 154 ; 
 her close friendship with Miss 
 Geraldine Jewsbury, 177; letter to 
 her mother on affairs in Cheyi)e 
 Row, 198 ; her illness at Liverpool 
 on learning the death of her 
 mother, 199; returns to Cheyne 
 Row, 205 ; consents to follow the 
 Bullers to Suffolk, 219 ; her birthday 
 present from Carlyle, 259 ; super- 
 intends the alterations in Cheyne 
 Row, 281 ; her indomitable spirit 
 under illness, 291 ; visits Lady Har- 
 riet Baring, 314 ; visits the Bar- 
 ings in Hampshire, 316 ; her dislike 
 of Addiscombe, 320- disagreement 
 with Carlyle, 324 ; goes to Seaforth, 
 324 ; seeks advice from Mazziui, 
 325 ; his letters in answer, 325, 328 ; 
 returns to Cheyne Row, 335 ; resolu- 
 tion regarding the Barings, 336 ; 
 friendship with Mazzini, 343 ; ac- 
 companies Carlyle to the Grange, 
 348 ; and to Matlock and Buxton, 
 350 ; her illness at Addiscombe, 
 353; visits Haddington, ii. 7; 
 writes to John Carlyle, 7 ; her 
 description of a Scotch wedding, 
 8 ; visit to the Grange, 75 ; decides 
 not to accompany Carlyle to Ger- 
 many, 83 ; visits John Carlyle and 
 his wife at Moffat, 111 ; nurses 
 Carlyle's mother, 113 ; her thrifti- 
 ness, 136 ; Budget of a Femme In- 
 comprise^ 138 ; begins h^-r diary, 
 153 ; satirical letter from, 157 ; goes 
 to Haddington, 160 ; her opinion of 
 the opening of 'Frederick,' 165; 
 grows weaker in health, 167; her 
 improved condition, 175 ; domestic 
 trials, 198 ; improved domestic 
 arrangements, 206 ; her delicate 
 condition, 212 ; goes to Nithsdale, 
 212 ; note to Mr. Froude on Bishop 
 Colenso, 223 ; her continued weak- 
 ness, 227 ; accident. 230 ; goes to St. 
 Leonards, 233; flight to A'-nandale, 
 234 ; her partial recovery, 240 ; loses 
 the power of her right arm, 243 ; 
 goes to Nithsdale, 246 ; and returns 
 
 to Cheyne Row, 247; her last part- 
 ing from her husband, 256 ; her 
 pleasure at the success of Carlyle's 
 Edinburgh address, 261 ; her death, 
 265; and funeral, 268; dawn of 
 the ' Letters and Memorials of ' 
 306 
 
 Carlyle, John (brother of T. Carlyle), 
 i. 18, 29; Carlyle's letters to, 46, 
 61, 71, 82, 85, 101, 115, 143. 144, 152, 
 380, ii. 167, 203, 345, 369; visits 
 his brother in Cheyne Row, i. 
 62 ; criticises his MS. , 69 ; devotes 
 himself to the poor in Rome during 
 the cholera, 100 ; his thoughtfulness 
 for his brother, 143 ; his influence 
 over him, 253 ; leaves for Scotland, 
 253 ; his translation of Dante's 
 * Inferno, ' ii. 7; death of his wife, 
 136 7iote ; stays with his brother at 
 Cheyne Row, 276 ; returns to Scot- 
 land, 277 ; meets his brother on his 
 return from Mentone, 291 ; his 
 death, 398 ; his character. 398 ; his 
 bequest to Edinburgh University, 
 398 
 
 Carlyle, Margaret (mother of T. Car- 
 lyle). her anxiety regarding Car- 
 lyle's faith, i. 58 ; characteristic 
 letters to her son, 54, 163 ; Carljde's 
 letters to, i. 81, 88, 107, 243, 2S4, 
 287, 2S8, 348, 374, 381, 386, ii. 92, 
 118; her increasing weakness, i. 311, 
 312; Carlyle visits her, 212, 3-2, ii. 
 142 ; her indignation at Lady Harriet 
 Baring's treatment of Mrs. Carlyle, 
 i. 353 ; divines domestic trouble in 
 Cheyne Row, ii. 69 ; death, 121 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, his opinion of biog- 
 raphy, i. 1 ; beginning of life in 
 Cheyne Row, 7 ; uncertain pros- 
 pects, 8 ; absorbed in French Revo- 
 lution, 10 ; his creed, 11 ; on litera- 
 ture as a profession, 19, 70, 112 ; his 
 reception of the news of the burnt 
 manuscript, 23; compensation for, 
 25 ; resolves to rewrite the volume, 
 24 ; meets Wordsworth. 27 ; his 
 poverty and confidence. 29 ; blank 
 prospects, 31 ; his style, 34, 45 ; 
 its justification, 35 ; refuses to 
 recognize any body of believers, 
 37; thoughts of abandoning litera- 
 ture, 40 ; finishes the rewriting of 
 the burnt volume, 47 ; starts for 
 Scotland, 49 ; returns to Chelsea, 
 52 ; refuses to be connected with 
 parties, 56 ; Mr. Basil Montagu's 
 offer of employment, 57 ; mode of 
 
Index, 
 
 409 
 
 life, 59 ; relaxation in garden work, 
 01 ; pleasure in iiig brother's com- 
 pany, O'i ; the discipline of gi'uius, 
 02 ; visits John Mill, 68 ; progress 
 of his work, 64; reception of the 
 * Diamond Necklace ' by the critics, 
 09 ; pessimistic views of literary 
 life, 70 ; completes the ' French 
 Revolution,' 73 ; his belief in the 
 Divine guidance of the world's 
 affairs, 77 ; his ' word-pictures,* 78 ; 
 his inflexible love ot truth, 79 ; 
 reception of his work by contem- 
 poraries, 80 ; consents to deliver 
 lectures in London, 84 ; prospectus 
 of the lectures, 85 ; their success, 
 89; visits Scotland, 93; returns 
 to London, 98; his kindness to 
 others, 100 ; thoughts on the 
 cholera, 100 ; resolutions against 
 vanity, 102 ; proposals from the 
 publishers regarding reprints of his 
 works, 104 ; distaste for public 
 employment, 111 ; prepares for 
 seconrt course of lectures, 113; 
 opinion of popularity and its value, 
 114; depressing effect of lecturing 
 upon him, 119; visits Kirkcaldy, 
 1*^4 ; calls on Jeffrey, 124 ; goes to 
 Scotsbrig, 125 ; evidences in Lon- 
 don of his growing importance, 
 128 ; agrees to write on Cromwell 
 for the ' London and Westminster,' 
 128 ; agitates for the insiitution 
 of a public leading library. 131 ; 
 resulting in the formation of the 
 London Library, 181 ; on authors 
 and publishers, 182; first impres- 
 sions on the records of the Com- 
 monwealth, 132 ; makes the ac- 
 quaintance of Monckton Milnes, 
 13 J ; Bunsen, 134 ; and Mr. Baring 
 (afterwards Lord Ashburton), 184 ; 
 remarks on Mrs. Carlyle's 8oiree,l*i5; 
 interview with Count d'Orsay, 136 ; 
 success of third course of lectures, 
 187; his dissatisfaction with them, 
 187; his fear of being led away 
 by public speaking, i:^; reflections 
 on condition of the working classes, 
 188 ; corresponds with Mill and 
 Lockhart on writing an article 
 thereon, 140 ; meets Webster, 141 ; 
 his portrait of him, 141 ; becomes 
 acquainted with Connop Thirlwall 
 (afterwards Bishop of St. David's), 
 142 ; receives present of a mare, 
 142 ; visits Scotland, 143 : first ox- 
 perienoe of railway travelling, U4 ; 
 
 benefit derived from riding, 14S : 
 continues article on * CbartiUm,* 
 147 : which Lockhart rcfoMHi. 14t$ ; 
 publishes the article in book form 
 •uccessfuUy, 149 ; iu reoepium 
 by the critics. 149; on herocii, I.Vl; 
 proposed disouurncs on * H«ro«« Mid 
 Hero-worshin,' 151 ; receives con- 
 gratulatory lettern from HtranKem, 
 153 ; his unrest, 154 ; his letU'is oii 
 Heroes, 155 ; resolves to put tbem 
 into book form, 158 ; his trestmenfc 
 of uncongenial company, 199 ; on 
 special juries. 102 ; remarks on the 
 supposed Micatdav article about 
 him in the ' Edinourgh Keview,* 
 164 ; receives further remittances 
 from America, 1(*5 ; finishes ' Lect- 
 ures on Hcroeti,' KXi ; wishes to live 
 by the sea, 169; cu:itinues studies 
 j on the Commonwealth, 170 ; im- 
 j patience with London, 172 ; his 
 j nervous irritability, 174 ; exp jri- 
 ence of a special jury. 175- comes 
 I to terms with Fraser al)out lectures 
 I on ' Hero-worship,' 110; first »c- 
 
 3uaintance with Miss Geraldine 
 ewsbury, 177 ; goes to Firston 
 j with Milues. 178 ; visits the jismes 
 Marshalls at Headiogly, 181 ; a new 
 experience of life in English oonn- 
 I try houses, 182 ; proceeds to Liver- 
 pool and Dumfriesshire, 183 ; takes 
 I acottiiL'e on the Solway for the som- 
 I ni es in seclusion, 180; 
 
 I rti . ridon, 189; difficulty 
 
 j iu tx^Miiiiiii;; ' Cromwell,' 190; dis- 
 belief ill the present being better 
 than the past, 190 ; sets out to at- 
 tend his mother-in-law's funeral, 
 201 ; is left sole executor, 201 ; his 
 life at Templand, 202, 201; incident 
 in Crawford churchyard. 211 ; visits 
 his mother, 212 ; his pride in his 
 family pedij^ee. 215 ; visits Dr. Ar- 
 nold at Rugby. 216; the battle-field 
 of Naseby, 217 ; returns to Ix>ndon, 
 218; goes to the House of Com- 
 mons to hear CharJe* HiilU»r spoak. 
 219; hisopiiii " ' T! • '" 
 
 agrees to acco: 
 Rice to Ost«M 
 tive power, 221 ; v. 
 returns to Londo- 
 appreciatioa o^ '•'- 
 besoroas aoQu 
 
 ral- 
 
 vitiu py 
 
410 
 
 Index. 
 
 234 ; St. Ives, 235 ; Huntingdon, 
 
 235 ; his slow progress with ' Crom- 
 well,' 238 ; his prophecies regarding 
 the future laughed at, 240 ; the 
 birth of 'Past and Present,' 240; 
 rapidity of its composition, 242 ; re- 
 ception of the work, 244 ; its effect 
 among his contemporaries, 246 ; 
 his position and influence, 248 ; 
 passion for truth, 250 ; earnestness, 
 252 ; opinion of the reviews on 
 'Past and Present,' 253; accepts 
 invitations to visit South Wales, 
 254 ; visits the Bishop of St. 
 David's, 362 ; description of an inn 
 at Gloucester, 267 ; surveys the 
 battlefield of Worcester, 267 ; ar- 
 rives at Liverpool, 268 ; sees Father 
 Mathew, 268 ; brief tour in North 
 Wales with his brother, 269 ; goes 
 to Scotsbrig, 270; reflections on a 
 biography of Ralph Erskine, 273; 
 visits Templand and Crawford 
 churchyard, 275 ; Haddington, 276 ; 
 remarks on Irish and Highland 
 shearers, 277 ; visits Jeffrey and 
 Erskine, 278 ; and returns to Lon- 
 don, 279 ; effects upon him of the 
 alterations in Cheyne Row, 280 ; 
 conscientiousness in writing, 285 ; 
 refuses a professorship at St. 
 Andrews, 288 ; delight at the 
 success of the movement for the 
 protection of factory children 
 288 ; anxiety for his mother, 289 
 difficulties with ' Cromwell, ' 289 
 low estimate of his own work, 290 
 an evening with the Barings at 
 Addiscombe, 292 ; his contempt for 
 bores, 295 ; life at the Grange, 296 ; 
 progress with 'Cromwell,' 300; its 
 completion, 304; nature of the 
 work, 305 ; effect upon his mind 
 of the long study of the Common- 
 mealth, 307 ; political conclusions, 
 308 ; the rights of majorities, 308 
 joins his wife at Seaforth, 311 
 goes on to Scotsbrig, 311 ; the 
 reception of ^ Cromwell ' by the 
 public, 316 ; dawn of ' Frederick 
 the Great,' 315; returns to London, 
 315; visits the Barings in Hamp- 
 shire in company with his wife, 
 31 6 ; domestic clouds, 324 ; solicited 
 to assist the ' Young Ireland ' party, 
 333 ; impatience at his wife's silence, 
 334 ; accompanies the Barings to 
 Scotland, 335; visits Ireland, 339; 
 witnessea the last appearance of 
 
 O'Connell. 330 ; meets Carleton, the 
 novelist, 340 ; dines with John Mit- 
 chel, 340 ; returns to England, 341 ; 
 meets with Margaret Puller, 442 ; 
 visits Lord and Lady Ashburton at 
 the Grange, 344 ; visits the Barings, 
 345 ; his sympathy for Ireland, 346 ; 
 visits from Jeffrey, 347 ; and from 
 Dr. Chalmers, 347 ; his advice to 
 young men on literature as a pro- 
 fession, 349 ; visits Matlock and 
 Buxton, 350 ; and Mr. W. E. Forster 
 at Rawdon, 350; makes the ac- 
 quaintance of John and Jacob 
 Bright, 351 ; visits his mother, 352 ; 
 returns to London, 354 ; visit to 
 the Barings, 355 ; corresponds with 
 Baron Rothschild on the Jew Bill, 
 358 ; his financial circumst inces, 
 358 ; projects for new books, 361 ; 
 the 'Exodus from Houndsditch, ' 
 361 ; thinks of writmg a work on 
 democracy, 366 ; meets Sir Robert 
 Peel, 369 ; thoughts on the state of 
 Europe, 370 ; on Chartism, 372 ; 
 writes newspaper articles, 373 ; 
 accompanies Emerson to Stone- 
 henge, 376 ; visits the Barings, 379 ; 
 his opinion of the proposed Crom- 
 well statue, 384 ; visited by Louis 
 Blanc, 386 ; encounters Louis 
 Napoleon, 386 ; provides temporary 
 refuge for Charles Gavan Duffy, 
 389 ; becomes acquainted with Mr. 
 J. A. Froude, 390 ; tour through 
 Ireland, ii. 1 ; meet Gavan Duffy, 
 3 ; and Petrie, the antiquarian, 3 ; 
 declines an invitation from the 
 Viceroy, 3 ; his description of Kil- 
 dare, 3 ; meets Mr. W. E. Forster, 
 5 ; his opinion of Lord George 
 Hill's experiment in Donegal, 5 ; 
 address at Derry, 6 ; stays at 
 Scotsbrig, 8 ; visits the Ashburtons 
 at Glen Truim, 8 ; his description 
 of a Highland shooting paradise, 11 ; 
 returns to Scotsbrig, 12 ; his de- 
 testation of cant, 14 ; his bitterness 
 on the Negro question, 21 ; severs 
 his connection with Mill, 22 ; visits 
 Millbank Penitentiary, 25 ; a re- 
 miniscence of old times, 31 ; his 
 habits of declamation, 35 ; invited 
 to dine with Sir Robert Peel, 35 ; 
 meets Prescott, Cubitt, and Barry 
 the architect, 36 ; meets Savage 
 Landor, 42 ; visits Mr. Redwood, 
 43 ; his description of Merthvr 
 Tydvil, 44 ; life at Scotsbrig, 46 ; 
 
Index, 
 
 ,411 
 
 reaction after the Pamphletn, 47; 
 his (liccontent, 4S ; vihitu the Mar- 
 shalb, 50 ; returns to London, 63 ; 
 dissatisfied with Wycherley'n Come- 
 dies, 55 ; writes the 'Life of Ster- 
 ling,' 58 ; his remarks on a portrait 
 of himself, 64 ; on a peculiarity of 
 the English language, (30 note ; on 
 the Crystal Palace, 67, 130; ^oes 
 to the waters at Malvcru, 68 ; vuits 
 the Ashburtons in Paris, 70 ; meets 
 Thiers, Mcrime'e, and Laborde, 70 • 
 resolves to write the history oi 
 Frederick the Great, 73 ; magnitnde 
 of the task, 73 ; studies for ' Fred- 
 crick,' 76; proiects going to Ger- 
 many, 78 ; visits Linlathen, 79 ; 
 resolves to visit Germany, K2 ; at 
 Bonn, bn ; dei>r viption of the 
 Rhine, 88; at Frankfv.rt, 90; 
 Hombnrg, 91 ; Marbourc, KYi ; de- 
 scription of Goethe's house, 95; 
 and Schiller's, 96 ; his opinion of 
 Hermhut, 99 ; description of Ber- 
 lin, 100 ; end of the journey, 101 ; 
 retrospect, 104 ; on the Duke of i 
 Wellington's funeral, 107 ; the { 
 beginning of 'Frederick,' 1C8; re- j 
 bukes Azeglio, 109; an incident at j 
 the Grange, 109 ; revival of the cock I 
 nuisance. 115 ; extract from journal j 
 on his miseries, 116; his last letter ' 
 to his mother, 118; hnrries to 
 Scotsbrig in time to see her once i 
 more, 120; on his mother's death, I 
 131; his grief, 124; his opinion of i 
 the Crimean war, 128 ; and of Louis : 
 Napoleon, 129; the sound-proof | 
 room, 130 ; the journal of a day, j 
 136 ; the economies of Cheyne Row, J 
 137; Fources of income, 137; his 
 difficulties over ' Frederick,' 146 ; on 
 the battle of the Alma, 1 47 ; and 
 Louis Napoleon's visit to England, ; 
 148; visit to Suffolk, 149, 149;! 
 goes to Addiscombe, 151 ; spends I 
 the autumn in Scotland, 15*5 ; visits 
 the Ashburtons, 157 ; grief at the 
 death of Lady Ashburton, 158; his 
 liortjc Fritz, 159 ; progress with j 
 'Frederick.' 160; fresh worries,' 
 162 ; the difficulties in costume, I 
 164, 178: remarks on the Indian 
 Mutinj', i65 ; »nd on London Christ- 
 mas, 16*5; on Scotch servants, 168; 
 completion of first two volumes of 
 the 'Frederick,' 170; his ' Frederick' 
 compared with ' Walter Shandy.' , 
 174 ; a night in a railway train, 1 16; 
 
 pays visit to Craigenpnttoek, 182 ; 
 Moond tour in Germany, \b\- nar. 
 rative of his Journey, IM: \isiU 
 RQB«m. 185; Frederiek't baiU*. 
 fields. 188 : BrMlao, 180 ; FnTm- 
 and DreMien, 100; fvtttnu to Loo- 
 don. 191 • bis masierlT grup of tb* 
 battle-fields, 1V«; saocMsof* Fred- 
 erick,' 193; effecU of literary Ufc, 
 196; mode of life, 109; Ukes a 
 house in Fife, 200 ; visits Thnxso 
 Castle, 201 ; improved '^fltntitio 
 arrangemenU, 20(5; his JErkndahip 
 with John Hnskin, 207; on the 
 American Civil War, 200; visit 
 to the Grange, 209; publication of 
 third volume of 'Frederick.' I'l 3; per- 
 sonal intercourse with Mr. Fronde, 
 215 ; his charity, 216 ; fais compaa- 
 pion for suffering, 217; as a com- 
 panion, 218 ;'hiB distrust of modem 
 science, 219; his estimate of re- 
 ligion, 220; and materialism, 221; his 
 opinion of Dean Stanley, 223 ; and 
 Colenso, 22:^ ; on litetatore and its 
 value. 224 ; is compared to St Paul, 
 225 ; tone of his conversation, 2a»> ; 
 breakdown of his horse Fritz, 22>S ; 
 on Dickens's reading, 229 ; his wife's 
 accident, 230; his blindness to ito 
 nature, 231 ; accompanies herto Bt 
 Leonards, 232 ; takes a honse there, 
 233 ; alone in Cheyne Row, IS5 ; 
 presents his wife with a broogham, 
 240; completes ' Frederick.'^ 840; 
 coes to Annandale^ 243 ; visits ibe 
 Speddings at Keswick, 247 ; retama 
 to Che}'ne Row. 250 ; his feelings 
 towards Edinburf^h, 252 ; cboeen 
 Rector of the Univcrsitr. 2Si ; his 
 opinion of Ruskin's ' Etnios of tbe 
 Dust,' 25:S ; departs for Edinbovfh, 
 255 ; his last parting from bis wUe. 
 256 ; insUUation as Rector. 257; hu 
 speech, '<^7 ; its effect on ine world. 
 260; temporary popularity of bis 
 works, 260; recognized bii a 'great 
 man,' 261 ; praise from the news- 
 
 Sapers. 262 ; delayed by an acci- 
 ent, 26.'! ; his reception of the 
 news of his wife's death, 287; re- 
 turns to London, SOS; Mooo- 
 Bmies tbe body of his wife to 
 addingUm, 968; her tumnl, SOB; 
 receives message from the Qaetn, 
 272; his reply, 278 ; attempUat oc- 
 oupation, 2i6; vinits MIm iMvenport 
 Bromlev, 277 ; and Ladjr Aahbartoo 
 at Mentone, 288 ; rttvns to iiLf • 
 
412 
 
 Index. 
 
 land, 391 ; his charities, 295 ; on 
 public affairs, 295 ; publishes 
 'Shooting Niagara,' 298; his last 
 public utterance on English poli- 
 tics, 300 ; resumes riding, oOO ; 
 daily worries, 800 ; revision of his 
 ' Collected Works,' 301 ; his weari- 
 ness of life, 302 ; visit to Wools- 
 thorpe, 304 ; receives a visit from 
 his brother James, 304 ; oa the 
 Clerkenwell explosion, 304 ; retro- 
 spect, 305 ; dawn of ' the Letters 
 and Memorials of Mrs. Carlyle,' 
 306 ; interests himself in the defence 
 of Eyre, 310 ; his opinion of the dis- 
 establishment of the Irish Church, 
 311 ; and of Tyndall's lecture on 
 Faraday. 312 ; visits Lord North- 
 brook, 313; meets S.G.O. ('the Rev. 
 Lord Sydney'), 314; makes selec- 
 tions from his wife's letters, 314 ; 
 meditations from his journal, 315 ; 
 his opinion of modern atheism, 317, 
 329 ; and ol: oratory, 318 ; another 
 riding accident, 323 ; meets the 
 Queen at Westminster, 323 ; loses 
 the power of his rignt hand, 332 ; 
 on the death of his friend Erskine, 
 333 ; on the uses of anarchy, 334 ; 
 on Anne Boleyn, 337 ; on Ginx's 
 Baby, 339 ; on the Franco-German 
 war, 340; and ISTapoleon IIL, 340; 
 on the victory of Germany, 341 ; 
 on the prospects for France, 341 ; 
 on Russia's breach of the Treaty 
 of Paris, 342; his letter to the 
 ' Times ' on the Franco-German 
 question, 343 ; its effect on the 
 English people, 345 ; on the loss of 
 the use of his right hand. 347 ; gives 
 his Avife's Reminiscences into the 
 keeping of Mr. Froude 348; in- 
 trusts Mr. Froude with the writing 
 of his biography, 353 ; his latest 
 writings, 356 ; on the death of 
 Bishop Wilberforce and J. S. Mill, 
 4358 ; on Mill's Autobiography, 358 ; 
 on Mr. Lecky, 360 ; on the Irish 
 policy of Mr. Gladstone, 361 ; on 
 Sir James Stephen, 363 ; his last 
 entry in the journal, 362 ; receives 
 the Order of Merit from Prussia, 
 363 ; on the general election of 1 874, 
 364 ; on Gladstone and Disraeli, 
 365,382; his answers to Mr. Dis- 
 raeli's letter on a proposed recogni- 
 tion of his intellect, and to the 
 Countess of Derby, 368 ; tributes 
 of respect on his eightieth birthday, 
 
 371 ; mode of life, 373 ; his opinion 
 of Trevelyan's ' Life of Macaulay,' 
 373 ; a characteristic letter of advice 
 to a young man, 374 ; on the death 
 of his brother Alick, 375 ; on the 
 policy of the Tory party daring the 
 Russo-Turkish war, 376 ; his letter 
 to the 'Times' thereon, 378 ; an 
 amusing incident in Kew Gardens, 
 380 ; his opinion of the British 
 Parliament, 381 ; meets Sir Garnet 
 Woiseiey, 381 ; his opinion of the 
 Jews, 384; on London housebuild- 
 ing, 385 ; and the Church of Eng- 
 land, 385 ; his opinion of the ser- 
 vices at St. Paul's and Westminster, 
 386 ; his irritation at his decaying 
 powers, 387 ; on progress, 388 ; his 
 tenacious memory, 391 ; his knowl- 
 edge of his approachiug end, 391 ; 
 his unswerving rectitude, 393; 
 Boehm's statue of him, 394; Millais's 
 portrait, 395 ; his opinion of Gib- 
 bon's 'Decline and Fall,' 395 ; his 
 anxiety regarding the ' Letters and 
 Memorials,' 400 ; his dislike of 
 doctors, 401 ; increasing weakness, 
 and death, 403 ; his funeral, 404 
 Cavaignac, General, i. 374 
 Chalmers, Dr., visits Carlyle, i. 347 
 I Charter is. Lady Anne, i. 345 
 j Chartism, i. 137 ; article on, 147, 149 ; 
 I thoughts upon, 372 
 I Chartism and Radicalism, Carlyle' s 
 i estimate of, i. 137, 147 
 i Chepstow, description of, i. 255 
 j Cheyne Row, beginning of life, in, i. 
 ! 7; effect on Carlyle of alterations 
 I in, ;.'80 ; visitors to, ii. 56 ; the econo- 
 I- mies of, 137'; alone in, 235, 250, 291 ; 
 I strange applications at, 331 
 ^ Cholera, thoughts on the, i. 100 
 ; Christianity and political economy, 
 
 difference between, ii. 27 
 I Church of England, Carlyle's views on 
 
 the, ii. 385 
 ! Clerkenwell explosion, on the, ii. 304 
 j Clough. Arthur, his reason for leav- 
 j ing Oxford, i. 390; Carlyle's high 
 ! opinion of him, 390 ; his death, ii. 
 : 206 
 
 Cockbum, Lord, Carlyle's estimate of, 
 I ii. 135 
 Colenso, Bishop, Carlyle's opinion of, 
 j ii. 223 ; Mrs. Carlyle's note to Mr. 
 I Froude on, ii. 323 
 ; Coleridge, i. 38; ii. 60 
 . Cologne Cathedral anecdote of, ii 
 ' 113 note 
 
Index. 
 
 418 
 
 Commons. Hou«e of, Carlyle visiU 
 the, i. 219 ; hin opinion of it, 219 
 
 Commonwealth, Carlyle's first impres- 
 sions on the records of the, i. lo2 ; 
 continues Iheir study, 170 ; its effect 
 on his mind, 307 
 
 Commune, the French, Carlyle's 
 opinion of, ii. 345 
 
 Conservatism, remarks on, i. 21 
 
 Craigenputtock, visit to. ii. 182; be- 
 queathed to University of Edin- 
 burgh, ^^94 
 
 Crawford churchyard, incident in, i. 
 211 ; visit to. 274 
 
 Crimean war, the, ii. 129 
 
 Cromwell, L 128, 130, 132; difficulty 
 in beginning Life of. ll»l ; its l>e- 
 ginnings, ^3 ; difficulties with, 
 289 ; its progress, 300 ; and com- 
 pletion, 304 ; its reception bv the 
 public, 316; new edition called for, 
 310 ; Carlyle's opinion of the pro- 
 posed Cromwell statue. 384 
 
 Crystal Palace, the, ii. 67, 130 
 
 Cubitt, meeting with, ii. 36 
 
 DEMOCRACY, Carlyle's thoughts 
 on, i. 366 
 
 Derby, Lady, her interview with Car- 
 lyle regarding a proposed recogni- 
 tion of nis genius, li. 370 
 
 Derry, Carlyle's address at, ii. 6 
 
 'Diamond Necklace,' its reception by 
 the critics, i 69 
 
 Dickens, Charles. Carlyle's first sight 
 of, i. 152 ; on his readings, ii. 229 
 
 Disraeli, Benjamin, Carlvle's opinion 
 of, iL 366, 382 ; his letter to Car- 
 lyle, 366 ; Carlyle's answer, 367 
 
 Doctors, Carlyle's dislike of, ii. 401 
 
 Donegal, Lord G. Hill's experiment 
 in, ii. 5 
 
 D'Orsay, Count, interview with, L 136 
 
 ' Downing Street and Modern Govern- 
 ment,' li. 2<3 
 
 Dresden, visit to, ii. 191 
 
 Duffy, Charles Gavan, and the 'Young 
 Ireland ' party, L 332 ; Carlyle's 
 opinion of Duffy, 340 ; his narrow 
 escape, '^\ ; guest in Cheyne Row, 
 389 ; meets Carlyle in Dublin, ii. 3 
 
 Dumfriesshire, visit to, L 183 
 
 EDINBURGH, Carlyle's feelings 
 towards, ii. 2.52 ; is chosen Rec- 
 tor of the Univerity of. 253 ; his in- 
 stallation, 257 ; l)equeaths Craigen- 
 puttock to the University, 2i>4 
 * Edinburgh Review,' Carlyle's re- 
 
 marks on tappoMd ariiole by ]|«- 
 ; caulay in the, l 164 
 Ely Cathedral, risit to, L 234 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, hit relationa 
 
 with Carlyle. i. 38, 119 ; hi^h ap- 
 
 preciation of, 187 ; risits Carlyle m 
 
 London. 354 ; lectures in EngUnd, 
 I 860 ; visits Paris and Oxford, 375 ; 
 
 at Stonebense, 876 ; hia opinion of 
 
 * Frederick.^ iL 242; again nsiU 
 
 England, a57 
 England, condition of, in 1842, L 
 
 2:W; improved condition now. 241 ; 
 
 this partly the reason of Carlyle's 
 
 teaching, 241 
 English language, on a peculiarity of 
 
 the. ii. 66 note 
 Erskine, Ralph, reflections on a biog- 
 raphy of, i. 273 
 Erskine, Thomas, of Linlathen, L 100, 
 
 ii. 79; Carlyle's letters to, i. 209. 
 
 236, 323, 367; ii. 15. 112, 213, 270; 
 
 visit to, i. 27K; his letter to Mr. 
 
 Carlyle, ii. 248 ; his death. 333 
 Europe, thoughts on the state of. L 370 
 • Exodus from Houndsditch,' L 361 
 Eyre, Governor, Carlvle's opinion of 
 
 his conduct. iL 280; and interest 
 
 in his defence, 810 
 
 FARADAY, Carlyle's opinion of 
 Tyndall's lecture on, ii. 312 
 
 Fenviie JncomprUe, budget of a, ii. 
 138 
 
 Fife, Carlyle takes a house in, iL 200 
 
 Forster, John, his kindness on the 
 death of Mrs. Carlyle, iL 265 ; his 
 death, 375 
 
 Forster, Mr. W. E., visit to. at Raw- 
 don, i. 350 ; meets bim in Ireland, 
 iL5 
 
 Foxton. Mr., ii. 183 
 
 France, Carlyle on the prospects of, 
 iL 341 
 
 Franco-German war, Carlyle on the, 
 iL 340 ; and the victory of the Ger- 
 mans. 3-U 
 
 Frankfurt, visit to, iL 90 
 
 Fraser, James (proprietor of the 
 
 magazine), Carlyle's opinion of hia 
 
 critical faculty, i. HM ; come to 
 
 I terms about the leoUires on * Hero 
 
 i Worship,' 176 
 
 ' Frederick the Great.* dawn of the 
 history, L 315: studios for. iL 76; 
 its bcKinniuK. 107; difficulties with, 
 146; its progrewi. UJO ; completion 
 of the first two volume*, liO; Urn 
 comparison with * Walter Bhaody/ 
 
414 
 
 Index. 
 
 174 ; its success, 193 ; publication 
 of the third volume, 213 ; comple- 
 tion of the work, 240 ; its transla- 
 tion into German, 241 ; its effect in 
 Germany, 241 ; reception in Eng- 
 land, 242 
 French Revolution, Carlyle's History 
 of the, i. 10 ; mishap witli the MS., 
 23, 29; resolves to rewrite it, 24. 
 43, 45, 47 ; progress with, r4 ; its 
 completion. 72 ; nature of the work, 
 7G ; its reception by contemporaries, 
 80, 82 
 Fripps, Mr., i. 256 
 Fritz, Carlyle-s horse, ii. 159, 228 
 Fronde, J. A., first introduction to 
 Carlyle, i. 390 ; a disciple of Car- 
 lyle's, ii. 152; Carlyle's criticisms 
 on his work, 153 ; on Carlyle's his- 
 torical metho.l, 170; become close 
 friends, 215 ; Carlyle gives the cus- 
 tody of his wife's Reminiscences to, 
 348 ; and intrusts him with the 
 writing of his biography, 353 
 Fuller, Margaret, meeting with, i. 342 
 Fuller, Margaret, her meeting with 
 Carl}le, i. 342, 343, 344 
 
 GAVAZZI, FATHER, Carlyle's 
 opinion of, ii. 70 
 German Literature, Lectures on, i. 85, 
 
 88 
 Germany, projected visit to, ii. 78, 82 ; 
 
 second tour in, ii. 184 
 Ghent, visit to, i. 226-230 
 Gibbon's ' Decline and Fall,' estimate 
 
 of, ii. 395 
 Ginx's Baby, ii. 339 
 Gladstone, W. E., on slavery, ii. 17 
 
 note ; his valedictory address as 
 
 Rector of Edinburgh University, 
 
 250 ; Carlyle's opinion of him, 285, 
 
 364, 383 ; "his Irish policy, 361 
 Gloucester, picture of an inn at, i. 
 
 2()7 
 Goethe, letters to Sterling on, i. 105. 
 
 IV.2; description of his house, ii. 
 
 95 
 Gully, Dr., ii. 6S, 380 
 
 HADDINGTON, visit to, i. 276 ; 
 Mrs. Carlyle's visit to, ii. 7 
 Hampshire peasantry, letter on the, i. 
 
 381 
 Hare, Archdeacon, his Life of John 
 Sterling, i. 357 ; Carlyle's opinion 
 of it, 357 
 Headingly, visit to, i. 181 
 
 'Heroes and Hero-worship,' i. 151 
 154, 158, 166, 176 
 
 Herrnhut, Carlyle's opinion of, ii. 100 
 
 Highland and Irish shearers, i. 277 
 
 Hill, Lord George, his attempt to im- 
 prove the state of Ireland, ii. 7 
 
 Holland, Lady, i. 152, 253 
 
 Holland, Lord, i. 152 
 
 Homburg, visit to, ii. 91 
 
 House of Commons, visit to the, i. 
 219 
 
 Housebuilding in London, Carlyle's 
 remarks on, ii. .~85 
 
 Hudson, the 'Railway King,' i. 388 
 
 Hunt, Leigh, i. 117 
 
 Huntingdon, visit to, i. 235 
 
 Huxley, John, ii. 256 
 
 INDIAN MUTINY, remarks on the, 
 li. 165 
 
 Ireland, Carlyle's anxiety about, i. 
 338 ; visits to, 339, ii. 1 ; sympathy 
 for, i. 346 ; under English rule, ii. 
 1 ; Lord George Hill's attempt to 
 improve its condition, 5 ; the Gov- 
 ernment's Irish policy, 328 
 
 Irish and Highland shearers, i.- 277 
 
 Irish Church. Carlyle's opinion of the 
 disestablishment of the, ii. 311 
 
 Irving, Edward, Carlyle's Reminis- 
 cences of, ii. 281 
 
 JEFFREY, his opinion of the 
 ' French Revolution,' i, 92 ; on 
 Carlyle as an author, 112 ; meets 
 Carlyle in Edinburgh, 124 ; Carlyle's 
 visit to, 278 ; visits Carlyle, 347 
 
 ' Jesuitism,' ii. 27 
 
 'Jew Bill,' the, i. 358 
 
 Jews, Carlyle's opinion of the. ii. 384 
 
 Jewsbury, Miss Geraldine, Carlyle's 
 acquaintance with, i. 177 
 
 KEBLE, JOHN, Carlyle's descrip- 
 tion of, ii. 210 
 Kepler, ii. 21 9 
 Kew Gardens, amusing incident in, ii. 
 
 380 
 Kildare, description of, ii. 3 
 Kingsley's ' Alton Locke,' ii. 49 
 Kirkcaldy, visit to, i. 124 
 Knox, John, Carlyle's criticisms on 
 
 the portraits of, ii. 356 
 
 IABORDE, M., ii. 70 
 ^ Landor, Savage, visit to, ii. 42 
 Larkin, Mr., assists Carlyle with 
 ' Frederick,' ii. 169 
 
Index. 
 
 415 
 
 • Latter-day Pamphlets,' the fir»tof, 
 
 ii. 19 ; reviews of them, 55 
 Leoky, Mr. . ii. 86U 
 Lectures in London, Carlyle**, L 84, 
 
 118, 117, 119, 190, 137 
 Lending library, agitates for a, L 131 
 'Letters and Memorials of Mrs. Car- ! 
 
 lyle,' Mr. Fronde's opinion of, ii. 
 
 348 ; John Forster on, 353 ; Carlyle's , 
 
 anxiety about, 400 
 Lib?rty, on, IL 17 j 
 
 Linlathen, visit to Mr. Erskine at, ii. 
 
 79 ; 
 
 Literature as a profession, i. 10, 40, 
 70, 112, 349; its effects on Carlyle, 
 iL 196 ; its value, 234 | 
 
 Liverpool, visits to, i. 183, 2«8 
 
 Llandough, South Wales, visit to, i. 
 2.56 _ I 
 
 Lockhart, his correspondence with i 
 Carlyle about the article on the ! 
 working classes, i. 140, 147; his I 
 opinion of ' Past and Present,' 245 1 
 
 * London and Westminster Review,' 
 
 article on Cromwell in, i. 128 
 London Library, establishment of the, 
 
 i. \M, 161 ' 
 
 London lions, letter to his brother on, 
 
 i. 152 
 Luther, on the localities of, iL 91. i 
 
 MACATJLAY,Carlyle'8 remarks on 
 supposed article by, i. 164 ; ; 
 opinion of him^ 869 ; his ' Essay on i 
 Milton,' 368; Trevelyan's Life of, ' 
 ii. 373 i 
 
 Mackenzie, Miss Stuart (Lady Ash- 
 burton), her marriage to Lord Ash- 
 burton, ii. 195 ; invites Carlyle to } 
 Mentone, 279 
 Mahomet, i. 155 
 
 Majorities, the rights of, L 308 ■ 
 
 Malvern, visit to the waters at, ii. 68 
 Manche.sber, adventure zn, L 127 ; in- j 
 
 surrection at, 241 
 M II burjj, visit to, ii. 92 ' 
 
 Marshall, Mr., of Leeds, i. 143, 181, 
 
 ii 5.1 
 Mart-nean, Harriet, visits Carlyle, i. 
 8} 
 1 iteri ilism, Carlyle's opinion of, iL 
 
 Mat lew. Father, described, L 2*58 i 
 
 M itlock, visit to, L 350 
 
 Maurice, Frederick (brother-in-law of 
 
 John Sterling), his pamphlet on > 
 
 the Thirty-nine Art-ides, i. 38 ; ! 
 
 Carlvle's opinion of liim, 108; his! 
 
 * Religions of the World,' 34& 
 
 Maxzini and London aooietT, I 2M; 
 his letters to Mrs. Carlvle, 83S. Skt ; 
 oonventatiun with Carlyle, SIS {Mm 
 temporary triumph in Italy, 888; 
 rerina the French at Boiiie, 887 
 
 Melbourne, Ljrtl, L 150 
 
 Meatone, visit to, ii. 288 
 
 Mi'riraee, M., ii 70 
 
 Merivale, Herman, his article on Car* 
 lyle in the ' EdicburKh Review,' L 
 IW 
 
 Merthyr Tydvil, description of, iL 44 
 
 Michael Angelo, Carlyle's criticism of 
 his work, L 236 
 
 MiU, John Stuart, Carlyle's estimate 
 of, i 21 ; entreats Carlvle to accept 
 compensation for the burnt msnn- 
 soript, 35 ; is visited by Carlyle, ft:! ; 
 correspondence with Carlyle' on his 
 article upon the workin<' claMC^, 
 140 ; willing to publish ' Cnartium ' 
 in the ' Westminster Review,' 148 ; 
 replies to Carlyle on the Negro 
 question, iL 32 ; severs his connec- 
 tion. 23; Carlyle on his death, 358 ; 
 and his Autobiography, 358 
 
 Millais's portrait of Carlyle. ii. 395 
 
 Millbank Penitentiary, visit to, ii. 25 
 
 Milnes, Monckton, Carlyle's intimacy 
 with, L 134, 178 
 
 Mitchel, John, Carlyle's opinion of 
 him, L 2340 ; the result of his work, 
 341 
 
 ' Model Prisons,' iL 25 
 
 Modern science, Carlyle's distrust of, 
 ii. 219 
 
 Moffat, Mrs. Carlvle's visit to, iL 111 
 
 Montagu, Basil, his offer of employ- 
 ment, i. 57 
 
 Monteagle, Lord (Mr. Spring Rioe), 
 L 106 
 
 Montrose, remarks on, L 183 
 
 Murray, Dr. Thomas, L 160 
 
 NAPOLEON, LOL^S, Carlyle's 
 opinion of him, L 3^>d, iL 108, 
 
 340 ; his visit to England. 148 
 Nusebv, visit to the Imttle-field of, L 
 
 217 ' 
 Negro question, the, iL 19 
 NeiilH?ri». Mr., Carlyle's companion In 
 
 Oerniany. iL 84; Carlyle's high 
 
 appreciation of, 103 
 Newbv. life at. i. 185 
 NithHdale, Mrs. Carlyle's ridt loi, tt. 
 
 212. 2M\ 
 Northbrook, Lord, visit to. iL 818 
 North Walts, tour in. L 950 
 
416 
 
 Index, 
 
 O'CONNELL, DANIEL, i. 339 
 Oratory, Carlyle's opinion of, 11. 
 318 
 Ostend, visit to, 1. 233 
 Owen, the geologist, acquaintance 
 with, 1. 233 
 
 PANIZZI, the librarian, ii. 116 
 Paris, revolution in, 1. 365 ; and 
 the reaction, 374; on Russia's 
 breach of the Treaty of, li. 343 
 
 Parliament, Carlyle's opinion of, IL 
 381 
 
 ' Past and Present,' 1. 339 ; Its recep- 
 tion, 'M4 ; reviews of, 353 
 
 Peel, Sir Robert, receives a copy of 
 'Cromwell' from Carlyle, 1. 331; 
 his answer, 333 ; becomes personally 
 acquainted with Carlyle, 369 ; article 
 in 'Spectator ' on, 385 ; invites Car- 
 lyle to dinner, 11. 35 ; his death, 40 ; 
 Carlyle's estimate of his character, 
 41 
 
 Petrie, the antiquarian, meeting with. 
 11.3 
 
 Pig Philosophy, ii. 33 
 
 Political economy, remarks on, 1. 340 ; 
 difference between Christianity and, 
 11. 37 
 
 Prag, visit to, 11. 189 
 
 Prescott, the historian, meeting with, 
 li. 36 
 
 Publishers, remarks on, 1. 133 
 
 Puseyism, 1. 165 
 
 Q. 
 
 UEEN, the, her message of sym- 
 jjathy to Carlyle, ii. 373 ; meets 
 'im at Westminster, 333 
 
 RADICALISM, remarks on, i. 31 ; 
 Carlyle's declaration of war 
 
 against modern, 11. 19 
 Redwood, Mr., i. 354, ii. 43 
 Reform Bill of 1867, 11. 293, 398 
 Religion, Carlyle's opinion of, 11. 16, 
 
 330 
 Remington, Mr., ii. 103 
 Rhine, description of the, ii. 88 
 Robertson and the article for the 
 
 'London and Westminster,' 1. 13S 
 Rogers, Carlyle's opinion of, 1. 171, 
 
 344 
 Rothschild, Baron, asks Carlyle to 
 
 write In favour of the Jew Bill, 1. 
 
 358 
 Riigen, visit to, ii. 185 
 Ruskin, John, his acquaintance with 
 
 Carlyle, li. 307 ; his ' Letters on 
 
 Political Economy,' 207 ; his ' Unto 
 
 this Last,' 313 ; his 'Ethics of the 
 Dust,' 353 ; defends Governor Eyre, 
 280 
 Russell, Lord John, and Carlyle's - 
 ' Downing Street and Modern Gov- 
 ernment, 11. 36 
 
 SAND, GEORGE, her works, 1. 176 
 Schiller's house, description of, 
 I 11. 96 
 
 j Scotch History Chair. 1. 193 
 ! Scotch servants, on, 11. 168 
 \ Scotsbrlg, life at, 1. 50. 95, 125, 143, 
 I 370,311,11.8,13,46,155 
 Scott, Sir Walter, writes article on, 
 : 1. 103 
 
 i Seaforth, visit to his wife at, 1. 311 
 i Sewell, William, his article on Carl vie, 
 ! i. 165 
 
 I S.G.O. ('the Rev. Lord Sidney'), 11. 
 ! 314, 314 note 
 j ' Shooting Niagara,' publication of, 11. 
 
 298 
 I Sinclair, Sir George, li. 201 
 I South Wales, invitations to, i. 254 ; 
 ! description of, 259 
 Special juries, remarks on, i. 162; ex- 
 perience of, 175 
 Speddings, visit to the, at Keswick, 
 
 11. 247 
 ' Spiritual Optics,' 11. 65 
 Spring Rice, Mr. (Lord Monteagle), 1. 
 
 106 
 Spring Rice, Stephen, 1. 220 
 St. Andrews Professorship, the, i. 288 
 St. Ives, visit to, i. 235 
 St. Leonards, Carlyle accompanies his 
 
 wife to, ii. 233 
 St. Paul's, on the services at, 11. 386 
 Stanley, Dean, 11. 223 ; his champion- 
 ship of Bishop Colenso, 223 ; offers 
 Westminster Abbey as the last rest- 
 ing-place of Carlyle, 403 ; his 
 funeral sermon, 403 
 Stephen, Sir James, ii. 362 
 Sterling, John, his opinion of Carlyle, 
 i. 9; is caught by the Radical 
 epidemic, 32 ; offended by Carlyle's 
 I style, 34 ; Carlyle's letters to, 72, 
 93, 94, 105, 145, 192, 233, 243, 
 283 ; dispute about Goethe, 105 ; his 
 j article on Carlyle in the ' Westmins- 
 ter Review,' 145; bad state of health, 
 195; his 'Strafford,' 196; returns to 
 London from Italy, 219 ; his death, 
 298 ; his last letter to Carlyle, 299 ; 
 Carlyle's Life of him, ii. 57 
 Stonehenge, Carlyle accompanies 
 Emerson to, i. 375 
 
Index. 
 
 417 
 
 •Stump Oratory,' ii. 36 
 Sullblk, visit to, L 234^ ii. 149 
 Sussex, a week's riding tour in, L 
 
 166 
 Symons, Dr., i. 256 
 
 TEMPLAND, life at, L 184, 204, 
 275 
 
 Ten Hours' Bill, i. 288 
 
 Tennyson, Carlyle's admiration for, L 
 16:3 ; the repreeentative in poetry 
 of Carlyle, 248 ; ii 52 
 
 Thames, Carlyle's word-picture of a 
 scene on the, L 167 
 
 Thiers, M., ii. 70 
 
 Thirlwall, Connop (afterwards Bishop 
 of St. David's), i. 142, 159 ; invites 
 Carlyle to Wales, 254; Carlyle's 
 -visit to him, 2G1 * 
 
 Thurso Castle, ii. 201 ; its neighbour- 
 hood, 203 
 
 Tieck's ' Vittoria Accorombona,' L 
 257 
 
 * Times,' Carlyle refuses employment 
 on the, i. 9 
 
 Town and country, on, i. 168 
 
 Trevelyan, his ' Life of Macaulay,' 
 Carlyle's opinion of, ii 373 
 
 Tyndall, John, ii. 255 ; his lecture on 
 Faraday at the Royal Institution, 
 311 ; Carlyle's opinion thereof, 313 
 
 VITTORIA ACCOROMBONA,' 
 Tieck's, i. 257 
 
 WALTER 8HAKDY,* 'Fwd- 
 erick ' oomimred with, iL 174 
 WatU's portrait of liiroseU, Carijk'a 
 
 remarks on. ii. :t24 
 Webster, meeting with, L 141 
 WeUington, Duke of. Carlyle's por- 
 trait of him, ii ;{V: his funeraL 
 100 
 WeUh, Mrs. (mother of Mrs. T. Car- 
 lyle), visits her daughter in Lon- 
 don, i 50; her death, 199 
 Westminster Abbey, on the serrieea 
 
 at, ii. 386 
 , ' Westminster Review,* Sierhng's ar« 
 
 tide on Carlyle in the, i 145 
 j Wilberforoe, Bishop, ii 37, 858 
 Wilkie, the artist, Carlyle's opinion 
 1 oC,i283 
 Wilson, Miss, i. SI 
 ; Wilson, John, death of, ii 133 ; Car- 
 { lyle's estimate of him. 138 
 ; Windsor Castle, Carlyle's commenU 
 
 on, i 108 
 I Wolseley, Sir Garnet (now Lord), hia 
 interview with Carlyle, ii 382 
 Woolsthorpe, visit to, ii 304 
 Worcester, the battle-field of, i 267 
 Wordsworth, meeting with, i 27; 
 
 remarks on, 38 
 Working,' classes, reflections on their 
 
 condition, i 138, 140, 147 
 Wycherley's Comedies, Carlyle's dis- 
 satisfaction with, ii. 55 
 
 YOUNG, ARTHUR, his tonr in 
 Ireland, ii. 6 
 ' Young Ireland ' movement, i. 332 ; 
 Carlyle's opinion of it, 340 
 
AUTHORIZED EDITION. 
 
 LETTERS AND MEMORIALS 
 
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 Prepared for Publication by Thomas Carlyi.e. 
 Edited by JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
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 •,* jFor SaU by all booksellers^ or sent, post-paid, upon reeeipt o/priee, ky 
 
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 is to be, to the view of the future, the foremost literary figure of 
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 ** John Lawrence, the name by which the late Viceroy of India 
 will always be best known, has been fortunate in his biographer, 
 Mr. Bosworth Smith, who is an accomplished writer and a faith- 
 ful, unflinching admirer of his hero. He has produced an enter- 
 taining as well as a valuable book ; the general reader will 
 certainly find it attractive ; the student of recent history will 
 discover in its pages matters of deep interest to him." — London 
 Daily Telegraph. 
 
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