Italian, German, and others.

You will give me yonder little room, and you will waken me every morning about five or six o'clock. Then such study. I shall delve in the garden too, and, in a word, become not only the wisest but the strongest man in those regions. This is all claver, but it pleases one.

My dear mother, yours most affectionately,
THOMAS CARLYLE.

D'Alembert's name had probably never reached Annandale, and Mrs. Carlyle could not gather from it into what perilous regions her son was travelling-but her quick ear caught something in the tone which frightened her.

Oh, my dear, dear son (she answered at once and eagerly), I would pray for a blessing on your learning. I beg you with all the feeling of an affectionate mother that you would study the Word of God, which He has graciously put in our hands, that it may powerfully reach our hearts, that we can discern it in its true light. God made man after His own image, therefore he behoved to be without any imperfect faculties. Beware, my dear son, of such thoughts; let them not dwell on your mind. God forbid! But I dare say you will not care to read this scrawl. Do make religion your great study, Tom; if you repent it, I will bear the blame forever.

Carlyle was thinking as much as his mother of religion, but the form in which his thoughts were running was not hers. He was painfully seeing that all things were not wholly as he had been taught to think of them; the doubts which had stopped his divinity career were blackening into thunderclouds; and all his reflections were colored by dyspepsia. "I was entirely unknown in Edinburgh circles,' he says, "solitary, eating my own heart, fast losing my health too, a prey to nameless struggles and miseries, which have yet a kind of horror in them to my thoughts, three weeks without any kind of sleep from impossibility to be free of noise. In fact, he was entering on what he called the three most miserable years of my life." He would have been saved from much could he have resolutely thrown himself into his intended profession; but he hated it, as just then, perhaps, he would have hated anything.

I had thought (he writes in a note somewhere) of attempting to become an advocate. It seemed glorious to me for its independency,

and I did read some law books, attend Hume's lectures on Scotch law, and converse with and

question various dull people of the practical sort. But it and they and the admired lecturNEW SERIES.-VOL. XXXIV., No. 3

ing Hume himself appeared to me mere denizens of the kingdom of dulness, pointing toward nothing but money as wages for all that bug-pool of disgust. Hume's lectures once done with, I flung the thing away forever.

Men who are out of humor with themselves see their condition reflected in the world outside them, and everything seems amiss because it is not well with themselves. But the state of Scotland and England also was fitted to feed his discontent. The great war had been followed by a collapse. Wages were low, food at famine prices. Tens of thousands of artizans were out of work, their families were starving, and they themselves were growing mutinous. Even at home from his own sternly patient father, who never meddled with politics, he heard things not calculated to reconcile him to existing arrangements.

I have heard my father say (he mentions), with an impressiveness which all his perceptions carried with them, that the lot of a poor man was growing worse, that the world would not, and could not, last as it was, but mighty changes, of which none saw the end, were on

the way.

In the dear years when the oatmeal was as high as ten shillings a stone, he had noticed the laborers, I have heard him tell, retire each separately to a brook and there drink instead of dining, anxious only to hide it.

These early impressions can be traced through the whole of Carlyle's writings, the conviction being forced upon him that there was something vicious to the bottom in English and Scotch society, and that revolution in some form or other lay visibly ahead. So long as Irving remained in Edinburgh "the condition of the people" question was the constant subject of talk between him and Carlyle. They were both of them ardent, radical, indignant at the injustice which they witnessed, and as yet unconscious of the difficulty of mending it. Irving, however, Carlyle had seen little of since they had moved to Edinburgh, and he was left, for the most part, alone with his own thoughts. There had come upon him the trial which in these days awaits every man of high intellectual gifts and noble nature on his first actual acquaintance with human things-the question, far deeper than any mere political one, What is this world then, what is this human life, over which a just God is said to

20

preside, but of whose presence or whose providence so few signs are visible? In happier ages religion silences scepticism if it cannot reply to its difficulties, and postpones the solution of the mystery to another stage of existence. Brought up in a pious family where religion was not talked about or emotionalized, but was accepted as the rule of thought and conduct, himself too instinctively upright, pure of heart, and reverent, Carlyle, like his parents, had accepted the Bible as a direct communication from Heaven. It made known the will of God, and the relations in which man stood to his Maker, as a present fact, the truth of it, like the truth of gravitation, which man must act upon or immediately suffer the consequences. But religion, as revealed in the Bible, passes beyond present conduct, penetrates all forms of thought, and takes possession wherever it goes. It claims to control the intellect, to explain the past and foretell the future. It has entered into poetry and art, and has been the interpreter of history. And thus there had grown round it a body of opinion on all varieties of subjects assumed to be authoritative; dogmas which science was contradicting; a history of events which it called infallible, yet which the canons of evidence, by which other histories are tried and tested successfully, declared not to be infallible at all. In the Mainhill household the Westminster Confession was a full and complete account of the position of mankind and of the Being to whom they owed their existence. For Carlyle's father and inother this Old and New Testament not only contained all spiritual truth necessary for guidance in word and deed, but every fact related in them was literally true. To doubt was not to mistake, but was to commit a sin of the deepest dye, and was a sure sign of a corrupted heart. His own wide study of modern literature had shown him that much of this had appeared to many of the strongest minds in Europe to be doubtful or even plainly incredible. Young men of genius are the first to feel the growing influences of their time, and on Carlyle they fell in their most painful form. With his pride, he was most modest and self-distrustful. He had been taught that want of faith

was

was sin, yet, like a true Scot, he knew that he would peril his soul if he pretended to believe what his intellect told him was false. If any part of what was called Revelation was mistaken, how could he be assured of the rest? How could he tell that the moral part of it, to which the phenomena which he saw round him were in plain contradiction, more than a "devout imagination ?" Thus in the midst of his poverty and dyspepsia there had come upon him the struggle which is always hardest in the noblest minds, which Job had known, and David, and Solomon, and schylus, and Shakespeare, and Goethe. Where are the tokens of His presence? where are the signs of coming? Is there, in this universe of things, any moral Providence at all? or is it the product of some force of the nature of which we can know nothing, save only that "one event comes alike to all, to the good and to the evil, and that there is no difference?"

Commonplace persons, if assailed by such misgivings, thrust them aside, throw themselves into outward work, and leave doubt to settle itself. Carlyle could not. The importunacy of the overwhelming problem forbade him to settle himself either to law or any other business till he had wrestled down the misgivings which had grappled with him. The greatest of us have our weaknesses, and the Margaret Gordon business perhaps intertwined itself with the spiritual torment. The result of it was that Carlyle was extremely miserable, tortured," as he says, by the freaks of an imagination of extraordinary and wild activity.'

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He went home, as he had proposed, after the session, but Mainhill was never a less happy place of retreat to him than it proved this summer. He could not conccal, perhaps he did not try to conceal, the condition of his mind; and to his family, to whom the truth of their creed was no more a matter of doubt than the presence of the sun in the sky, he must have seemed as if "possessed.

He could not read; he wandered about the moors like a restless spirit. His mother was in agony about him. He was her darling, her pride, the apple of her eye, and she could not restrain her lamentations and remonstrances.

some portion of each day or week to this object and this alone, leaving the rest free for objects professional and pleasant. This is nothing more than what I urged at our last meeting, but I have nothing to write I reckon so important. Therefore do take it to thought. Depend upon it, you will be delivered by such present adventure from those harpies of your peace you are too much tormented with. You will get a class with whom society will be as pleasant as we have found it together, and you will open up ultimate prospects which I trust no man shall be able to close.

I think our town is safe for every leal-heart

ed man to his Maker and to his fellow-men to traverse without fear of scaith. Such traversing is the wine and milk of my present existence. I do not warrant against a Radical rising, though I think it vastly improbable. But continue these times a year or two, and unless you unmake our present generation, and unman them of human feeling and of Scottish intelligence, you will have commotion. It is impossible for them to die of starvation, and they are making no provision to have them relieved. And what on earth is for them? God and my Saviour enable me to lift their hearts above a world that has deserted them, though they live in its plenty and labor in its toiling service, and fix them upon a world which, my dear Carlyle, I wish you and I had the inheritance in; which we may have if we will.

But

I am not going to preach, else Iwould plunge into another subject which I rate above all subjects. Yet this should not be excluded from our communion either.

I am getting on quietly enough, and, if I be defended from the errors of my heart, may do pretty well. The doctor (Chalmers) is full of acknowledgments, and I ought to be full-to a higher source.

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Yours affectionately,

EDWARD IRVING. Carlyle was less eager to give his thoughts tongue" than Irving supposed. He had not yet, as he expressed it, taken the Devil by the horns. He did not mean to trouble the world with his doubts, and as yet he had not much else to trouble it with.. But he was more and more restless. Reticence about his personal sufferings was at no time one of his virtues. Dyspepsia had him by the throat. Even the minor ailments to which our flesh is heir, and which most of us bear in silence, the eloquence of his imagination flung into forms like the temptations of a saint. His mother had early described him as gay ill to live wi'," and while in great things he was the most considerate and generous of men, in trifles he was intolerable irritable. Dyspepsia accounts for most of it. He did not know what was the matter with him, and when the fit was severe he drew pictures of his con

dition which frightened every one belonging to him. He had sent his family in the middle of the winter a report of himself which made them think that he was seriously ill. His brother John, who had now succeeded him as a teacher in Annan School, was sent for in haste to Mainhill to a consultation, and the result was a letter which shows the touching affection with which the Carlyles clung to one another.

J. A. Carlyle to Thomas Carlyle.

MAINHILL, February, 1820.

I have just arrived from Annan, and we are all so uneasy on your account that at the request of my father in particular, and of all the rest, I am determined to write to call on you for a speedy answer. Your father and mother,

and all of us, are extremely anxious that you should come home directly if possible, if you think you can come without danger. And we trust that,, notwithstanding the bitterness of last summer, you will still find it emphatically a home. My mother bids me to call upon you to do so by every tie of affection, and by all that is sacred. She esteems seeing you again and administering comfort to you as her highest felicity. Your father, also, is extremely anxious to see you again at home. The room is much more comfortable than it was last season. The roads are repaired, and all things more convenient; and we all trust that you will yet recover, after you shall have inhaled your native breezes and escaped once more from the unwholesome city of Edinburgh, and its selfish and unfeeling inhabitants. In the name of all, then, I call upon you not to neglect or refuse our earnest wishes; to come home and experience the comforts of parental and brotherly affection, which, though rude and without polish, is yet sincere and honest.

The father adds a postscript: 'MY DEAR TOM: I have been very uneasy about you ever since we received your moving letter, and I thought to have written to you myself this day and told you all my thoughts about your health, which is the foundation and copestone of all our earthly comfort. But, being particularly engaged this day, I caused John to write. Come home as soon as possible, and forever oblige,

Dear sir, your loving father,

JAMES CARLYLE. The fright had been unnecessary. Dyspepsia, while it tortures body and mind, does little serious injury. The attack had passed off. A letter from Carlyle was already on the way, in which the illness was scarcely noticed; it contained little but directions for his brother's studies; and an offer of ten pounds out of his scantily filled purse to assist Sandy" on the farm. With his

family it was impossible for him to talk freely, and through this gloomy time he had but one friend, though he was of priceless value. To Irving he had written out his discontent. He was now disgusted with law, and meant to abandon it. Irving, pressed as he was with work, could always afford Carlyle the best of his time and judgment.

Edward Irving to Thomas Carlyle.

GLASGOW, March 14, 1820.

Since I received your last epistle, which reminded me of some of those gloomy scenes of nature I have often had the greatest pleasure in contemplating, I have been wrought almost to death, having had three sermons to write, and one of them a charity sermon; but I shall make many sacrifices before I shall resign the entertainment and benefit I derive from our correspondence.

Your mind is of too penetrating a cast to rest satisfied with the frail disguise which the happiness of ordinary life has thrown on to hide its nakedness, and I do never augur that your nature is to be satisfied with its sympathies. Indeed, I am convinced that were you translated into the most elegant and informed circle of this city, you would find it please only by its novelty, and perhaps refresh by its variety; but you would be constrained to seek the solid employment and the lasting gratification of your mind elsewhere. The truth is, life is a thing formed for the average of men, and it is only in those parts of our nature which are of average possession that it can gratify. The higher parts of our nature find their entertainment in sympathizing with the highest efforts of our species, which are, and will continue, confined to the closet of the sage, and can never find their station in the drawingrooms of the talking world. Indeed, I will go higher and say that the highest parts of our nature can never have their proper food till they turn to contemplate the excellencies of our Creator, and not only to contemplate but to imitate them. Therefore it is, my dear Carlyle, that I exhort you to call in the finer parts of your mind, and to try to present the society about you with those more ordinary displays which they can enjoy. The indifference with which they receive them, and the ignorance with which they treat them, operate on the mind like gall and wormwood. I would entreat you to be comforted in the possession of your treasures, and to study more the times and persons to which you bring them forth. When I say your treasures, I mean not your information so much, which they will bear the display of for the reward and value of it, but of your feelings and affections, which, being of finer tone than theirs, and consequently seeking a keener expression, they are apt to mistake for a rebuke of their own tameness, or for intolerance of ordinary things, and too many of them, I fear, for asperity of mind.

* I.e., the talk to which you usually treat your friends.

There is just another panacea for your griefs (which are not imaginary, but for which I see a real ground in the too penetrating and, at times perhaps, too severe turn of your mind); but though I judge it better and more worthy than reserve, it is perhaps more difficult of practice. I mean the habit of using our superiority for the information and improvement of others. This I reckon both the most dignified and the most kindly course that one can take, founded upon the great principles of human improvement, and founded upon what I am wont, or at least would wish, to make my pattern, the example of the Saviour of men, who endured, in His errand of salvation the contradiction of men. But I confess, on the other hand, one meets with so few that are apt disciples, or willing to allow superiority, that will be constantly fighting with you upon the threshold, that it is very heartless, and forces one to reserve. And besides, one is so apt to fancy a superiority where there is none, that it is likely to produce overmuch self-complacency. But I see I am beginning to prose, and therefore shall change the subject-with only one remark, that your tone of mind reminds me more than anything of my own when under the sense of great religious imperfection, and anxiously pursuing after higher Christian attainments.

I have read your letter again, and, at the risk of further prosing, I shall have another bit at its contents. You talk of renouncing the law, and you speak mysteriously of hope I pray springing up from another quarter. that it may soon be turned into enjoyment. But I would not have you renounce the law unless you coolly think that this new view contains those fields of happiness, from the want of which the prospect of law has become so Law has within it scope ample dreary. The reformation which

enough for any mind. it needs, and which with so much humor and feeling you describe,* is the very evidence of what I say. Did Adam Smith find the commercial system less encumbered? (I know he did not find it more); and see what order the mind of one man has made there. Such a reformation must be wrought in law, and the spirit of the age is manifestly bending that way. I know none who, from his capacity of remembering and digesting facts, and of arranging them into general results, is so well fitted as yourself.

With regard to my own affairs, I am becoming too much of a man of business, and too little a man of contemplation. I meet with few minds to excite me, many to drain me off, and, by the habit of discharging and receiving nothing in return, I am run off to the very lees, as you may easily discern. I have a German master and a class in college. I have seen neither for a week, such is the state of my engagements-engagements with I know not what; with preaching in St. John's once a week, and employing the rest of the week in visiting objects in which I can learn nothing, unless I am collecting for a new series of

* Carlyle's letters to Irving are all unfortunately lost.