fiction. I remember few happier days | than those in which I ran off into the fields to read Roderick Random, and how inconsolable I was that I could not get the second volume. To this day I know of few writers equal to Smollett. Humphry Clinker is precious to me now as he was in those years. Nothing by Dante or any one else surpasses in pathos the scene where Humphry goes into the smithy made for him in the old house, and whilst he is heating the iron, the poor woman who has lost her husband and is deranged comes and talks to him as to her husband. 'John, they told me you were dead. How glad I am you have come!' And Humphry's tears fall down and bubble on the hot iron.

"Ah, well, it would be a long story. As with every 'studious boy' of that time and region, the destiny prepared for me was the nearly inevitable kirk. And so I came here to Edinburgh, aged fourteen, and went to hard work. Nearly the only companion I had was poor Edward Irving, then one of the most attractive of youths; we had been to the same Annan school, but he was three years my senior. Then, and for a long time after, destiny threw us a good deal together."

(An old Scotch gentleman who knew the two in those years told me that these two were vehemently argumentative; also that though Carlyle was the better reasoner, Irving generally got the best of the argument, since he was apt to knock Carlyle down with his fist when himself driven into logical distress.).

After such long years I came to part with him, and to get my certificate. Without a word, he wrote on a bit of paper: 'I certify that Mr. Thomas Carlyle has been in my class during his college course, and has made good progress in his studies.' Then he rang a bell, and ordered a servant to open the front door for me. Not the slightest sign that I was a person whom he could have distinguished in any crowd. And so I parted from old John Playfair."

Carlyle's extraordinary attainments were clearly enough recognized by his fellow-students, among whom, no doubt, he might have found sympathetic friends had he been willing to spare time from the books he was devouring in such vast quantities. When he had graduated, the professors began to note that their best student had gone. Professor Leslie, the coadjutor, and afterward the successor, of Playfair, procured for him and Irving situations as teachers in the neighborhood.

"It had become increasingly clear to me that I could not enter the ministry with any honesty of mind; and nothing else then offering, to say nothing of the utter mental confusion as to what thing was desired, I went away to that lonely straggling town on the Frith of Forth, Kircaldy, possessing then as still few objects interesting to any one not engaged in the fishing profession. Two years there of hermitage, utter loneliness, at the end of which something must be done. Back to Edinburgh, and for a time a small subsistence is obtained by teaching a few pupils, while the Law is now the object aimed at. Then came the dreariest years

whether there shall be presently anything else to eat, disappointment of the nearest and dearest as to the hoped-for entrance on the ministry, and steadily growing disappointment of self with the undertaken law profession-above all, perhaps, wanderings through mazes of doubt, perpetual questionings unanswered.

"Very little help did I get from anybody in those years, and, as I may say, no-eating of the heart, misgivings as to sympathy at all in all this old town. And if there was any difference, it came least where I might most have hoped for it. There was Professor Playfair. For years I attended his lectures, in all weathers and all hours. Many and many a time when the class was called together it was found to consist of one individual, to wit, of him now speaking; and still oftener, when others were present, the only person who had at all looked into the lesson assigned was the same humble individual. I remember no instance in which these facts elicited any note or comment from that instructor. He once requested me to translate a mathematical paper, and I worked through it the whole of one Sunday, and it was laid before him, and it was received without remark or thanks.

VOL. LXII.-No. 372.-57

"I had already become a devout reader in German literature, and even now began to feel a capacity for work, but heard no voice calling for just the kind of work I felt capable of doing. The first break of gray light in this kind was brought by my old friend David Brewster. He set me to work on the Edinburgh Encyclopædia; there was not much money in it, but a certain drill, and, still better, a sense of accomplishing something, though far yet from

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what I was aiming at; as, indeed, it has | known, and of thus giving me the means always been far enough from that." I of doing more congenial work, such as may recall here an occasion when Carlyle | the Life of Schiller, and Wilhelm Meiwas speaking in his stormy way of the ster's Wanderjahre. But one gaunt form tendency of the age to spend itself in had been brought to my side by the strain talk. Mrs. Carlyle said, archly, And through which I had passed, who was not how about Mr. Carlyle?" He paused some in a hurry to quit-ill health. The remoments: the storm was over, and I al- viewers were not able to make much of most fancied that for once I saw a tear Wilhelm. De Quincey and Jeffrey looked gather in the old man's eyes as he said, in hard at us. I presently met De Quincey, low tone, "Mr. Carlyle looked long and and he looked pale and uneasy, possibly anxiously to find something he could do thinking that he was about to encounter with any kind of veracity: he found no some resentment from the individual door open save that he took, and had to whom he had been cutting up. But it take, though it was by no means what he had made the very smallest impression would have selected." Between the years upon me, and I was quite prepared to 1820-1824 Carlyle wrote for the Edinburgh | listen respectfully to anything he had to Encyclopædia sixteen articles, namely, say. And, as I remember, he made himMary Wortley Montagu, Montaigne, Mon- self quite agreeable when his nervousness tesquieu, Montfaucon, Dr. Moore, Sir John was gone. He had a melodious voice and Moore, Necker, Nelson, Netherlands, New- an affable manner, and his powers of confoundland, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, versation were unusual. He had a soft, Northumberland, Mungo Park, Lord Chat- courteous way of taking up what you had ham, William Pitt. To the New Edin- said, and furthering it apparently; and burgh Review, in the same years, he you presently discovered that he didn't contributed a paper on Joanna Baillie's agree with you at all, and was quietly up"Metrical Legends," and one on Goethe's setting your positions one after another." "Faust." In 1822 he made the translation of Legendre, and wrote the valuable essay on "Proportion" prefixed to it, though it did not appear until 1824. M. Louis Blanc informed me that he once met with a small French book devoted to the discussion of the mathematical theses of Carlyle, the writer of which was evidently unaware of his author's fame in other

matters.

"And now" (toward the close of his twenty-seventh year would be a proximate date)

The review of Wilhelm Meister by Jeffrey was one of the notable literary events of the time. Beginning his task with the foregone conclusion that prevailed at Holland House concerning all importations from Germany, even before they were visible, Jeffrey pronounced Wilhelm Meister to be "eminently absurd, puerile, incongruous, and affected," "almost from beginning to end one flagrant offense against every principle of taste and every rule of composition." Unfortunately, this was preceded by the statement that the judgment was made "after the most deliberate consideration"; for in the latter part of the review the writer is compelled to regard the translator as one who has proved by his preface to be a person of talents, and by every part of the work to be no ordinary master of at least one of the languages with which he has to deal"; and finally, this strange review (this time evidently "after the most deliberate consideration") winds up with its confession: "Many of the passages to which we have now al

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things brightened a little. Edward Irving, then amid his worshippers in London, had made the acquaintance of a wealthy family, the Bullers, who had a son with whom all teachers had effected nothing. There were two boys, and he named me as likely to succeed with them. It was in this way that I came to take charge of Charles Buller-afterward my dear friend, Thackeray's friend also-and I gradually managed to get him ready for Oxford. Charles and I got to love each other dearly, and we all saw him with pride steadily rising in Parliamentary dis-luded are executed with great talent, and tinction, when he died. Poor Charles! he was one of the finest youths I ever knew. The engagement ended without regret, but while it lasted was the means of placing me in circumstances of pecuniary comfort beyond what I had previously

we are very sensible are better worth extracting than those we have cited. But it is too late now to change our selections, and we can still less afford to add to them. On the whole, we close the book with some feeling of mollification toward its faults,

world it is always as a window flung open to the azure. During all this last weary work of mine, his words have been near

"After Emerson left us, gradually all determining interests drew us to London; and there the main work, such as it is, has been done; and now they have brought me down here, and got the talk out of me!"

and a disposition to abate, if possible, some part of the censure we were impelled to bestow on it at the beginning." "And now an event which had for a ly the only ones about the thing done long time been visible as a possibility-Friedrich-to which I have inwardly drew on to consummation. In the love- responded, 'Yes-yes-yes; and much liest period of my later life here in Edin- obliged to you for saying that same!' The burgh there was within reach one home other day I was staying with some people and one family-to which again Irving, who talked about some books that seemed always glad to do me a good turn-had to me idle enough; so I took up Emerson's introduced me. At Haddington lived the English Traits, and soon found myself Welshes, and there I had formed a friend- lost to everything else-wandering amid ship with Jane, now Mrs. Carlyle. She all manner of sparkling crystals and wonwas characterized at that time by an ear- derful, luminous vistas; and it really apnest desire for knowledge, and I was for a peared marvellous how people can read long time aiding and directing her studies. what they sometimes do, with such books The family were very grateful, and made on their shelves. Emerson has gone a it a kind of home for me. But when, far- very different direction from any in which ther on, our marriage was spoken of, the I can see my way to go; but words can family-not unnaturally, perhaps mind- not tell how I prize the old friendship ful of their hereditary dignity (they were formed there on Craigenputtoch hill, or descended from John Knox)-opposed us how deeply I have felt in all he has writrather firmly. But Jane Welsh, having ten the same aspiring intelligence which taken her resolution, showed further her shone about us when he came as a young ability to defend it against all comers; man, and left with us a memory always and she maintained it to the extent of our cherished. presently dwelling man and wife at Comely Bank, and then at the old solitary farmhouse called Craigenputtoch, that is, Hill of the Hawk. The sketch of it in Goethe's translation of my Schiller was made by George Moore, a lawyer here in Edinburgh, of whom I used to see something. The last time I saw old Craigenputtoch it filled me with sadness-a kind of Valley of Jehoshaphat. Probably it was through both the struggles of that time, the end of them being not yet, and the happy events with which it was associated. there, and on our way there, that the greetings and gifts of Goethe overtook us; and it was there that Emerson found us. He came from Dumfries in an old rusty coach; came one day and vanished the next. I had never heard of him: he gave us his brief biography, and told us of his bereavement in the loss of his wife. We took a walk while dinner was preparing. We gave him a welcome, we were glad to see him: our house was homely, but she who presided there made it in neatness such as was at any moment suitable for a visit from any Majesty. I did not then adequately recognize Emerson's genius; but my wife and I both thought him a beautiful transparent soul, and he was always a very pleasant object to us in the distance. Now and then a letter comes from him, and amid all the smoke and mist of this

It was

When I left Mr. Erskine's house that night, it was to go to the office of the Scotsman, in order to revise the proof of the new Lord Rector's address. Carlyle placed in my hands the notes he had made beforehand for the occasion, saying as he did so that he did not suppose they would assist me much. His surmise proved unhappily true. The notes had been written partly in his own hand, partly by an amanuensis. Those written by the amanuensis had been but little followed in the address, and those added by himself were nearly undecipherable. Already that tremor which so long affected his hand when he held a pen-it was much steadier when he used a pencilafflicted him. The best-written sentences in the notes (now before me) are the lines of Goethe which he repeated at the close of the address, a fac-simile of which I give.

For the rest, I find in these notes some passages which were not spoken, but were meant to reach the public. I therefore quote them here, premising only that where I have supplied more than a con

Best hard and the bois,
Heard on the Jager,
The works and the Ages:

Chover well, a choice is

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&rt enden.

changes of dialect, they continue: pious awe of the Great Unknown makes a sacred canopy under which all has to grow. All is lost and futile in universities if that fail. Sciences and technicalities are very good and useful indeed, but in comparison they are as adjuncts to the smith's shop.

There is in this university a considerable stir about endowments. That there should be need of such is not honorable to us at a time when so many in Scotland and elsewhere have suddenly become possessed of millions which they do not know what to do with. Like that Lancashire gentleman who left a quarter of a million to help pay the national debt. Poor soul! All he had got in a life of toil and struggle were certain virtues-diligence, frugality, endurance, patience-truly an invaluable item, but an invisible one. The money which secured all was strictly zero. I am aware, all of us are aware, a little money is needed; but there are limits to the need of money, comparatively altogether narrow limla its. To every mortal in this stupendous universe incalculably higher objects than money. The deepest depth of Vulgarism is that of setting up money as our Ark of the Covenant. Devorgilla gave [a good deal of money gathered by John Balliol in Scotland] to Balliol College in Oxford, and we don't want it back; but as to the then ratio of man's soul to man's stomach, man's celestial part to his terrestrial, and even bestial, compared to the now ratio in such improved circumstances, is a reflection, if we pursue it, that might humble us to

FAC-SIMILE OF CARLYLE'S HANDWRITING.

necting word here and there, such phrase is put in brackets, and mainly taken from what he really did say.

EXTRACTS FROM THE NOTES.

Beautiful is young enthusiasm; keep it to the end, and be more and more correct in fixing on the object of it. It is a terrible thing to be wrong in that-the source of all our miseries and confusions whatever.

the dust.

I wrote the same night to Mrs. Carlyle, adding particulars regarding Carlyle himself which I knew she would be glad to hear. Alas! alas! It was but a few weeks after that I placed in Carlyle's hand, when he returned from her grave, the answer to my letter-one of the last she ever wrote. Here it is:

The "Seven Liberal Arts" notion of education is now a little obsolete; but try whatever is set before you; gradually find what is fittest for you. This you will learn to read in all sciences and subjects.

You will not learn it from any current set of History Books; but God has not gone to sleep, and eternal Justice, not eternal Vulpinism [is the law of the universe].

It was for religion that universities were first instituted; practically for that, under all

"5 CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA, 5 April, 1866. "MY DEAR MR. CONWAY,--The 'disposition to write me a little note' was a good inspiration, and I thank you for it; or rather, accepting it as an inspiration, I thank Providence for it-Providence, 'Immortal Gods,' 'Superior Powers,' 'Destinies,' whichever be the name you like best.

"Indeed, by far the most agreeable part of this flare-up of success, to my feeling, has been the enthusiasm of personal affection and sympathy on the part of his friends. I haven't been so fond of everybody, and so pleased with the world, since I was a girl, as just in these days when reading the letters of his friends, your own included. I am not very well, having done what I do at every opportunitygone off my sleep; so I am preparing to spend a day and night at Windsor for change of at