"I, sir, do entertain great apprehension for the fate of my country. I do in my conscience believe that unless the plan proposed, or some similar plan, be speedily adopted, great and terrible calamities will befall us. Entertaining this opinion, I think myself bound to state it, not as a threat, but as a reason.'

In more than one of the debates he held up the French Revolution as a warning :

"The French nobles delayed too long any concession to the popular demands. Because they resisted reform in 1783, they had to resist revolution in 1789. They would not endure Turgot, and they had to endure Robespierre.'

In one speech he drew a vivid picture of the destruction of the nobility, and asked

"Why were they scattered over the face of the earth, their titles abolished, their escutcheons defaced, their parks wasted, their palaces dismantled, their heritages given to strangers? Because they had no sympathy with the people, no discernment of the signs of their time; because, in the pride and narrowness of their hearts, they called those whose warnings might have saved them theorists and speculators; because they refused all concession until the time had arrived when no concession would avail."

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CHAPTER III.

THOMAS CARLYLE,

Born Dec. 4, 1795.

THOMAS CARLYLE, "The Censor of the Age," as he has been called, is an author by profession. In his famous petition on the Copyright Bill, written in 1839, he described himself as a writer

of books."

His early life was not particularly checkered; and since he adopted the profession of literature, the principal epochs of his career have been the dates of his various books.

His education was the education of hundreds of young Scotchmen in the same generation. His father, who is spoken of as a shrewd and intelligent man, had a farm near the village of Ecclefechan, in Dumfriesshire. Thomas, the eldest son, was sent with other little boys to the parish school; and in 1810, after some training in the higher branches of learning at the burgh school of Annan, proceeded to the University of Edinburgh.

When he entered the University, he had not quite completed his fifteenth year. Some of his professors were men of note: Dunbar, Professor of Greek; Leslie, Professor of Mathematics; Playfair, Professor of Natural Philosophy; Thomas Brown, Professor of Logic and Moral Philosophy. Young Carlyle was a hard student. He applied himself diligently to classics. To Brown's lectures he probably gave little attention, having a strong distaste for the analytic mode of dealing with mind, but the lectures in science he mastered thoroughly: natural liking for the subject, or the professor's enthusiasm, or accident, led him to make mathematics his principal study. He prosecuted the high mathematics for a long time with the greatest ardour. It was in his devotion to this subject that he first injured his naturally robust health.

He became a mathematical teacher, and at one time was a candidate for the Professorship of Astronomy in Glasgow. Traces of these studies appear not only in his figurative allusions, but in an amount of scientific method far beyond what is generally found in writers of high imagination.

In the end of May 1814 he quitted Edinburgh, having gone through the usual curriculum in arts; and, by competitive trial at Dumfries, got the teachership of mathematics in the burgh school of Annan, where, as we have mentioned, he had himself been a scholar. After two years' service in that post, he was, through the recommendation of his Edinburgh professors, offered the teachership of mathematics and classics in the burgh school of Kirkcaldy, and held that appointment also for about two years. In Kirkcaldy he made the intimate acquaintance of Edward Irving, who, like himself, had been a schoolboy at Annan, and who for some years was master of a "venture school" in Kirkcaldy, known as "The Academy."

up.

The time spent by Carlyle in schoolmastering, and its probable influence on his habits of thought and feeling, have been a little exaggerated. He was barely three-and-twenty when he gave it In the end of 1818 he left Kirkcaldy, and went across to Edinburgh, with no definite prospects, but with a vague leaning towards literature. He spent some three years in Edinburgh mainly in what he would call "stony-ground husbandries." His only known literary work during those years was the composition of certain articles for Brewster's Edinburgh Encyclopedia." It is probably to this period especially that we must refer the rumours of his unprecedented reading in the University library; he devoured extraordinary numbers of books on history, poetry (in a moderate degree), romance, and general information as to all countries, and all things of popular interest. In 1821 he became tutor to Charles Buller, an appointment that probably relieved him from a good deal of distasteful drudgery.

In 1823 he sent to the 'London Magazine' the first instalment of his 'Life of Schiller.' In 1824 his publications were numerous; he finished his 'Life of Schiller,' and produced a translation of 'Legendre's Geometry,' with an original Essay on Proportion, as well as his first notable work, the translation of 'Wilhelm Meister.' During the next two years he laboured at translations from the German, "honest journey-work, not of his own suggesting or desiring." In 1825 his Schiller appeared in a separate form. In 1826 he married Miss Jane Welsh, only daughter of Dr Welsh, a lineal descendant from John Knox, and lived with his wife in Edinburgh till he had completed and published four volumes of translations from German romance. He then (in 1828) retired to the farm of Craigenputtoch, in Dumfriesshire, a small property

belonging to his wife, situated about a day's journey east of his native Ecclefechan.

When he married he resigned his tutorship, and henceforth devoted his whole time to letters. At Craigenputtoch he lived about six years. His manner of life he described in an oftenquoted letter to Goethe, with whom he had been brought into correspondence by his translation of Wilhelm Meister.' He had retired to his own "bit of earth" to "secure the independence through which he could be enabled to remain true to himself." "Six miles from any one likely to visit him," "in the loveliest nook of Scotland," he yet kept himself informed of what was passing in the literary world; he had, "piled upon the table of his little library, a whole cartload of French, German, American, and English journals and periodicals." He was "uncertain about his future literary activity."

At Craigenputtoch he wrote for various periodicals-The Edinburgh Review,' 'The Foreign Quarterly,' Fraser's Magazine'the essays reprinted in the three first volumes of his Miscellanies.' Two of these are estimates of British writers; the Essay on Burns (1828), mentioned in his letter to Goethe as the only thing of importance he had written during his first year at Craigenputtoch; and his Essay on Boswell's Life of Johnson.' The others are estimates of German and French authors-Richter, Werner, Goethe, Heine, Novalis, Schiller, Voltaire, Diderot. His own line of literary activity being yet undeveloped, he occupied himself in measuring the literary activity of others. But during this period of criticism he had been revolving and finishing an original work in a peculiar vein, the 'Sartor Resartus,' which, after being rejected by several publishers, at length saw the light as a series of articles in 'Fraser's Magazine,' 1833-34. The singularity and force of the Sartor drew upon the author more attention than he had hitherto received.

In 1834 he removed to the London suburb now associated with his name. The "Seer of Chelsea" is now as familiar a synonym as "the glorious Dreamer of Highgate." His fame was then in a rapid ascendant. The Sartor was much admired in America; it and his fugitive essays were reprinted at Boston in 1836. In 1837 he gave to a very crowded, yet a select, audience" in London a course of six public lectures on German literature; in 1838 a course of twelve "On the History of Literature, or the Successive Periods of European Culture;" in 1839 a course on "the Revolutions of Modern Europe;" in 1840 a course on "Heroes, HeroWorship, and the Heroic in History."1 These lectures made a sensation in fashionable literary circles; the rugged English, the Scotch accent, the emphatic sing-song cadence, combined with the

1 The last course only has been published.

loftiness and originality of the matter, drew crowds to hear the new prophet. "It was," said Leigh Hunt, "as if some Puritan had come to life again, liberalised by German philosophy and his own intense reflections and experiences."

Meanwhile his master-works began to appear. In 1837 he produced 'The French Revolution,' the first work that bore his name. In 1838 'Sartor Resartus,' "hitherto a mere aggregate of Magazine articles," emerged from its "bibliopolic difficulties," and became a book. The same year witnessed the first edition of his 'Miscellanies.' In 1839 he published, under the title of Chartism,' his first attack on the corruption of modern society, and the futility of all extant projects of reform. In 1843 he followed up 'Chartism' with Past and Present.' In 1845 he published his 'Cromwell's Letters and Speeches,' which met with a more rapid sale than any of his previous works. In 1850 he returned, in his 'Latter-Day Pamphlets,' to the condition of society, pouring forth unmeasured contempt on "The Nigger Question," "The Present Time," "Model Prisons," "Downing Street," "The New Downing Street," " "Stump Orators,' Parliaments," "Hudson's Statue,' 'Jesuitism." Next year appeared his Biography of John Sterling.' Thereafter he was occupied exclusively with his great historical work, 'The History of Frederick II., commonly called The Great.' The two first volumes were published in 1858, other two in 1862, and in 1865 the work was completed.

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29.66

In the session of 1865-66 he was elected Lord Rector by the students of Edinburgh University; and on April 2, 1866, delivered to a crowded and enthusiastic audience his famous Installation Address. He was not suffered long to enjoy the most affecting public manifestations that have ever honoured his name. His wife died before his return to London: in the very hour of his public triumph came the stroke of calamity; and the old man mourned that "the light of his life was quite gone out."

6

In

Of late years he has published no large work. Now and then he makes his voice heard on questions of passing interest. 1867 he wrote for Macmillan's Magazine' a very gloomy anticipation of the consequences of the Reform Bill, with the suggestive title, "Shooting Niagara, and After?" In 1869 he sent to the newspapers a letter on his favourite "Emigration." His last utterance was in 1870, on the war between France and Germany, rejoicing over the French defeat, and quoting history to show that it had been well deserved.

In his Rectorial Address at Edinburgh, being then a patriarch of seventy, he addressed a kindly warning to his youthful hearers against the physical dangers of too severe study. His own strong frame and great constitutional robustness were early impaired by