As in "Sartor," so in "Wotton Rein- | as Wotton rated him, a debauchee, but fred," the knot of the intrigue is untied wealthy, well-allied, and influential in the by the descent of an unsympathizing county. female relative from the machine. "Wotton Reinfred : " "Tiger-ape reads very like " exSepoy captain" writ large, and an offiJane Montagu had an ancient maiden cer of the 7th Hussars with his busby aunt:... the old lady was proud and and aigrette and various crimson and poor; she had high hopes from her niece, gold splendors - worth 500l. as he stood and in her meagre hunger-bitten philosophy might well have posed for Edmund Wotton's visits had from the first been but Walter. faintly approved of. He even appears surprised at the "Dnenna cousin," whoever she may have been, in whose meagre hunger-bitten philosophy the religion of young hearts was from the first faintly approved of. These words are followed by the famous reflection that a Mrs. Teufelsdröckh would have been unable to afford to assert her respectability by keeping a gig the author's first symbolical use of that vehicle, which he employs with such extraordinary effect in the finale of the "Diamond Necklace." This locus classicus has no equivalent in "Wotton Reinfred." After such specimens, a harmony of the respective parting scenes would be superfluous. The agreement is complete, except that, unlike Diogenes T., who " was made immortal by a kiss," "Wotton Reinfred only embraced vacuity. That" Wotton Reinfred" was in hand in 1827 and 1828 we know from Carlyle's correspondence; like Mr. Froude, he thought it" went wholly to the fire.” The paragraph just quoted seems to indicate that it was not finally laid aside before 1829. On the identities above traced a final remark may be allowed. In 1892 to have sat to Carlyle for Blumine may seem a scarcely lower honor than having been the original of Lotte, or the Maid of Athens. While men of culture now rank "Sartor Resartus" with the great masterpieces of European prose, the taste of that day dismissed it as "damned stuff!" In such circumstances, ambition for the digito monstrari could have spoken with no force to the first interpreters of the symbolism of the Rose-goddess and her attendant train. I now descend to a time within the horizon of my own distinct recollections — viz., to 1842, when Carlyle paid us a Toughgut's post in the finale of the long-promised visit at Clifton. His arolder story is filled by an officer who, rival was preceded by a correspondence however, is only Miss Montagu's poten-between Mrs. Strachey and his wife on tial husband. The "Reminiscences" the subject of his wants and habits. To speak of Miss Kirkpatrick as becoming the question, "How was he to be made the "prize of an ex-Sepoy captain." comfortable?" Mrs. Carlyle replied, Here is the equivalent passage in the that "she had never been able to find novel : out that, and could only say, as his own mother did, 'he's gey hard to deal with;'" he must smoke a long clay pipe after breakfast, and that not in the garden but in the house. And then a question-poultry were to him anathhad we any cocks and and the tobacco problem received a "demon-fowls" existed, suitable solution. Amongst the propensities of my youth were conjuring, the use (or misuse) of model machines, and chemistry, the latter mainly di "Good God!" cried Wotton, starting from his seat, and pacing hurriedly over the floor, 66 can you not spare me? What have I to do with Edmund Walter? The tigerape!" cried he, stamping on the ground, "with his body and shoulder knots, his smirks and fleers! A gilt outside, and within a very lazar-house! Gay speeches, a most frolic sunny thing; and in its heart the poison of asps !" By and by came reports that his Jane was to be wedded — wedded to Edmund Walter, a gay young man of rank, a soldier, and, ema maranatha- N sense. phraseology, she saw a mere apparatus of decorative language - a vesture, to speak with Teufelsdröckh, of words employed in their "non-natural To him heaven was a phase of human thought; prayer a silent aspiration of the mind; sin an infraction of the eternal verities of the universe. How did the faith of Socrates or Cicero differ from that? Carlyle was surpassed by his hostess in knowledge of the Bible and of the classics of theology. The same may be said of their common friend and her neighbor, John Sterling, with whom, on the terrace that joined their houses, she often debated the arcana of reprobation and grace. The intellectual disagreements of the hostess and the guest extended beyond celestial topics; but, thanks to the abnormal development in both the disputants of that useful corrective of heat in argument, the sense of the ridiculous which, according to Carlyle, is "very indispensable to man"-their discussions were never acrimonious. rected to the generation of the more | pard." Carlyle's beliefs or unbeliefs fetid and explosive elements and com- were far from her. In his religious pounds, on which account a room had been set apart for my pursuits. On the day succeeding Carlyle's arrival he was conducted after breakfast into this temple of science, where, after lighting his long clay, he attended with due reverence to an exposition of the character of the substances and apparatus before him. He was next required to undergo a lecture on the first principles of chemistry and physics, and a demonstration of the electrotype (then a novelty), which was followed by the production of chlorine, or some other equally deleterious gas or mixture. The capital display of the sitting was an exhibition of the Marquis of Worcester's rotatory glass steam-engine, conducted with such vigor as nearly to end the existence, or, at any rate, the eyesight of the sage of Chelsea. The presence of so great a man called for extra stoking; the result was that the Marquis of Worcester's engine, being unable to emit its steam in sufficient quantity, exploded with a fearful crash, the boiler bursting in Carlyle's face, which was spurted over with the steam and boiling water, and bombarded with a shower of broken glass. Happily, it was not my destiny to play the part of a modern dog Diamond by depriving mankind of "Past and Present," and the biographies of Cromwell, Sterling, and Frederick the Great, so that no mischief was done. Although Carlyle was devoid of the aesthetic sensibilities, he was taken to a party at the house of my married sister, where, despite his recorded contempt for the portion of mankind that listened to Paganini, he attended with propriety to some solos executed by that great violinist, H. C. Cooper. During the pause for supper, the hero of the evening was buttonholed by a local clerIn his hostess Carlyle had a conver- ical magnate, whose attitude towards sationalist not unworthy of his steel, the new philosophy, if not that of a and a portion of the "solid day" was proselyte of righteousness, was that of consumed by them in protracted talks. a proselyte of the gate. They got into Though not a Madame Dacier, herja warm controversy on matters of faith, scholarship enabled her to read the Old and New Testament in the Hebrew and Greek scripts; mistress of French and Italian, she was now becoming well acquainted with German. Her intellectual horizon was of large extension, and on closing her favorite Epistle to the Hebrews, a "Calvin's Institutes," or "Luther on the Galatians," she would soon be lost in Sismondi's 'Italian Our guest was more impressed by Republics," or "The Excursion," or some performances of my own of the "Wilhelm Meister," or "Jack Shep-necromantic order. In allusion to Sir and when Carlyle said, "If a man's maker bid him go to the bottomless pit, he should go," the clergyman asked, "What do you mean by the bottomless pit?" the answer was: "Sir, I mean the pit of love and despair; and now, sir, we will go back to the fiddlers." Saying which Carlyle triumphantly returned to the drawing-room. Chelsea: 7 December, 1846. Walter Scott, the Houdin or Maskelyne | mournful event was made by my sister's of the day had styled himself "the husband to Carlyle, from whom the Wizard of the North;" an appellation annexed letter of condolence was renow conferred on me by Carlyle, in sign | ceived in return : of his approval of my skill as conjurer. Some time after this, my fulminating habits having subsided in favor of energies of a literary character, which were stimulated by the example of the family friend, a magazine was founded by me with the help of some schoolfellows, and I usurped the functions of editor. By a special vote of the proprietary, Carlyle's name was placed on the free list, and copies of the Totteridge Miscellany were duly forwarded to Chelsea. In due course the subjoined acknowledgment was received by me, as the Croker or Empson concerned : Chelsea: 3 March, 1844. Dear Little Wizard, I have received two numbers of your ingenious periodical, the second of them this morning, and have to return you my thanks and congratulations. I find it a very handsome enterprise this of yours, and cannot but think you have a fair augury both of pleasure and profit from the same. It will be new satisfaction to my little Wizard of the North to burn off his fireworks in this literary form; may he prosper with them, our present little Wizard, as he used to do when they consisted of chemical gases and such like! We all know with what dexterity he used to go off, ever at the right moment, and with what brilliancy to blaze, in that latter department astonishing the minds of beholders. The like good speed attend him here. Need I wish him better? With many kind wishes to my little wizard friend, and his periodical literature, and other honest achievements and improvements, I remain (in good hopes of him), Most sincerely his, T. CARLYLE. Not long afterwards we were overtaken by a calamity which caused genuine grief to Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle. A brief excursion to Naples having stimulated my mother's love of the arts, literature, and natural beauties of Italy, she decided to make a protracted sojourn in the Peninsula, but was attacked at Perugia by an illness to which she succumbed. Communication of this I receive with deep sorrow, as you may imagine, your melancholy news this morning. Your noble mother now gone was the first friend I acquired in this country, was the oldest and dearest friend I anywhere had in the world; a truer, more generous, or higher soul I have never known. And now, all on a sudden, she is snatched away, I am to see her face no more, to hear her kind voice, or commune with her noble heart no more. In such cases words are very vain; nor will I add any. I desire to offer an affectionate sympathy to Mrs. Hare, in this her great distress : let her live worthy of such a mother. There is no other consolation but what lies in that direction. With many thoughts which it would be profane to write; with remembrances which will not quit me while I live, I remain with true participation, Yours faithfully always, T. CARLYLE. Were other evidence wanting, this touching letter would be testimony enough to the depth of Carlyle's regard for his "oldest and dearest friend." The Mentone memoirs of 1867 thus summarize her character To this day, long years after her death, I regard her as a singular pearl of a woman; pure as dew, yet full of love; incapable of inveracity to herself or others. In such terms he always spoke of her to the last, and it may be truly said that in the friendship which united her and the Chelsea household there was never "any variableness or shadow of turning." During an educational residence in London in 1848, I was frequently in Cheyne Row. In Mrs. Carlyle's lifetime, company was received in the room on the ground floor facing the street. A sofa stood in front of the windows, on which, when there was "æsthetic tea,' or a single guest, the gnädige Frau sat behind her cups and saucers, while her husband occupied a chair between her and the fire, beyond which, and opposite the host's, was the visitor's place. Adaptation of his topics to his | lap-dog, a fussy sofa-pet of one of the audience was not Carlyle's speciality, mongrel pre-fox-terrier types, which and there were times when his specula- was in the habit of obtruding its prestions and language were too transcen- ence in ways detrimental to conversadental to be understanded of immature tion and to the visitor's temper. youth. The intelligence must, however, The revolutionary events of 1848 have been dull, indeed, that was not were, of course, the frequent subjects struck by his phenomenal command of of Carlyle's talk. With the "oppressed words, the variety and aptness of his nationalities" of the period he had metaphors and illustrations, and by the little sympathy; partial exceptions to torrents of racy, humorous expression his indifference had a personal origin, which poured from his lips. Mr. and were owing to his acquaintance Froude's verdict that in conversation with Louis Blanc, Mazzini, and other Carlyle was No. 1, and no one else refugees. He was very fond of making anywhere, may be open to revision. fun of Louis Philippe and Monsieur His impromptu style was, doubtless, Guizot, as the ensuing example shows. preferable to the "book-in-breeches,' "He mentioned that he had received two learnt-by-heart manner of Macaulay. hundred letters requesting him to lecture Still, good talk, in the Johnsonian sense, on this or that subject (subsequently, is unconstrained dialogue, and Carlyle's no doubt, to the course on heroes, was oratorical monologue, oracular as which was his fourth experiment of the the voice of Delphi, and calculated to kind), but that his rule was to decline, suggest meditation rather than reply. as the business was disagreeable, and, After an evening in Cheyne Row, Soc- in England, held to be undignified. He rates or Frederick the Great might would, however, now suggest that Guizot have said: "C'est magnifique, mais ce should go round lecturing on Revolun'est pas le guerre." Again, his voice, tion, showing the ex-king on the platthough of fair baritone resonance, was form as a kind of grand experimental hardly majestic, his delivery constantly illustration of his thesis. Thackeray sank into a sing-song recitative, his has said: "Women are great brutes to obligato laughter, or guffaw, was hearty, each other." According to my knowlbut had not the genuine Homeric ring, edge, historians are open to some little while his Border twang by no means reproach of this kind: their inter-vitusuggested to a Southron's ear the tone peration is endless. As to Carlyle, from of the eternal melodies." The flow first to last he was in the habit of of reason in Cheyne Row was power-speaking of Macaulay as a humbug; his fully and agreeably stimulated by Mrs. estimates of his rival's power and perCarlyle. At this time, if there were formances always required the applicaany remains of the beauty with which tion of a multiplier of at least ten to she has been credited, she was some- bring them within the neighborhood of what worn for her years, was always the truth. When the first two volumes witty, spoke with a strong infusion of of the "History of England" appeared, the accent of Caledonia stern and wild, the Rev. F. D. Maurice, with whom I had great stores of miscellaneous knowl- was acquainted, praised the work to me edge, and was rated by some who had in a warm and adequate manner, access to the intellectual queens of the marking that it showed a marked London society of the time as "the advance, both in substance and style, deverest of all the clever women." But on the brilliant but less solid "Essays.' she did not carry the heavy conversa- Carlyle would not hear of this, and tional guns which Mrs. Grote, for in- contemptuously replied: "Reading Mastance, would sometimes bring to bear, caulay is like going into Howell and making her utterances sound like the James's shop." For the judgments of deliverances of wisdom heard in some Mr. Maurice he had otherwise some hoary Grecian temple. Regard for her esteem. He expressed high approval could not make her intimates love her of the little periodical called Politics for VOL. LXXX. 4128 LIVING AGE. re that it has many good qualities in esse and Of your manner of writing I will say only in posse, and that I know no rule so impor- the People, a cheap organ of Christian | things your eye will discover if it look earquasi-democracy, which Mr. Maurice nestly; such things are the real poems and had just started in conjunction with dramas (God himself the author), which it Kingsley, but thought that the hewers best of all beseems a man to try if he can of wood and drawers of water, to whom do a little towards interpreting. it was addressed, would not read it, which was so. Of Kingsley, as poet at least, his opinion was very low. He said that he had stuck at the third page of the "Saints' Tragedy," called it "delightful" in the sarcastic sense, and spoke of the book as worthless except for the presence of Maurice's admirable preface. If the whole of Carlyle's correspondence with members of the several branches of our family had been preserved it would have filled a chest. T. CARLYLE. But carelessness, liberality to collectors of autographs, and systematic habits of Some modern critics would say that in the "Frederick the letter-burning have reduced the original Great" the bulk to a very small residue, of which maxim "Be wisely brief" is seriously surviving fraction only a portion is suit- transgressed. When involved in that able for present publication. I quote a work, Carlyle's conversation and correletter addressed by Carlyle in 1848 to spondence were thickly larded with the eldest of my brothers, who had growls at the "nightmare king and his published an essay on Hamlet," "in century: What have I to do with this which he preferred the interpretations man," he said, "or he with me?" My of Coleridge against those of Goethe: avocations having called me to Stuttgart, I made some report to Carlyle on Chelsea: 20 December, 1848. the local situation. His reply, of which portions are appended, shows the pessimism with which he regarded his prospects of success in his great enter- . prise : 66 Chelsea, London: 5 june, 1857. ... I got a very pleasant letter from Stuttgard a long while ago, giving pleasant intimations of the scene round you in that old Würtemberg metropolis. . . . One thing is very certain to me: If you are as well off as my wishes for you indicate, there will be nothing to complain of. I will hope not only that you are happy for the present time; but that you are daily gathering new culture, experience, solidity, and not only knowledge but wisdom-daily new ability to do your work in this world well-which by and by may amount to something far better than being happy. Oremus, I looked over the copy you gave me (for which were, silently, sent many thanks) when it arrived here: I had much to praise in the gentle, assiduous, and pious spirit with which the task had been undertaken and performed; a really careful, industrious, lucid, and luminous reading of the play of " Hamlet ;" and I pleased myself with the hope that your literary tendency would yet lead you into still fruitfuller fields, towards the reading and interpretation of objects much more in need of being "read" (some of them), and better worth reading too, than the play of "Hamlet." "Amlethus," I find from. old Saxon, is nothing but a Norse myth, adumbrating the course of the sun and annual seasons; a dream of the human brain, instead of a created fact of the Almighty Maker; towards which latter class of objects, I persist in believing, the thought and reading-speremus. faculty of all serious men decidedly directs I can send you no news of England, nor itself. What say you now to taking up a any even of myself-life with me, for these biography of some noble man, unknown or twelve or twice twelve months past, having misknown to the vulgar, much to their been but a dark and indeed almost deadly damage; some bit of authentic historical struggle in the abyss of German historical narrative and delineation, worthy of a hu- stupor-endeavoring (with almost no sucman soul's taking trouble with it? Such cess at all) to extract some human record of |