it has a great effect on me. But upon the whole I am as well as I can expect, thank God. I have sent a little butter and a few cakes with a box to bring home your clothes. Send them all home that I may wash and sort them once more. Oh, man, could I but write! I'll tell ye a' when we meet, but I must in the meantime content myself. Do send me a long letter; it revives me greatly and tell me honestly if you read your chapter e'en and morn, lad. You mind I hod if not your hand, I hod your foot of it. Tell me if there is anything you want in particular. I must run to pack the box, so I am Your affectionate mother, Irving was still anxious. To him Carlyle laid himself bare in all his shifting moods, now complaining, now railing at himself for want of manliness. Irving soothed him as he could, always avoiding preachment. I see (he wrote 10) you have much to bear, and perhaps it may be a time before you clear yourself of that sickness of the heart which afflicts you; but strongly I feel assured it will not master you, that you will rise strongly above it and reach the place your genius destines you to. Most falsely do you judge yourself when you seek such degrading similitudes to represent what you call your' whining.' And I pray you may not again talk of your distresses in so desperate, and to me disagreeable, manner. My dear Sir, is it to be doubted that you are suffering grievously the want of spiritual communion, the bread and water of the soul? and why, then, do you, as it were, mock at your calamity or treat it jestingly? I declare this is a sore offence. You altogether mistake at least my feeling if you think I have anything but the kindest sympathy in your case, in which sympathy I am sure there is nothing degrading, either to you or to me. Else were I degraded every time I visit a sick bed in endeavouring to draw forth the case of a sufferer from his own lips that I may if possible administer some spiritual consolation. But oh! I would be angry, or rather I should have a shudder of unnatural feeling, if the sick man were to make a mockery to me of his case or to deride himself for making it known to any physician of body or mind. Excuse my freedom, Carlyle. I do this in justification of my own state of mind towards your distress. I feel for your condition as a brother would feel, and to see you silent about it were the greatest access of painful emotion which you could cause me. I hope soon to look back with you over this scene of trials as the soldier does over a hard campaign, or the restored captives do over their days of imprisonment. Again, on the receipt of some better account of his friend's condition, Irving wrote on the 26th of April: I am beginning to see the dawn of the day when you shall be plucked by the literary world from my solitary, and therefore more clear, admiration; and when from almost a monopoly I shall have nothing but a mere shred of your praise. They will unearth you, and for your sake I will rejoice, though for my own, I may regret. But I shall always have the pleasant superiority that I was your friend and admirer, through good and through bad report, to continue, so I hope, unto the end.. Yet our honest Demosthenes, or shall I call him Chrysostom (Boanerges would fit him better)," seems to have caught some glimpse of your inner man, though he had few opportunities; for he never ceases to be inquiring after you. You will soon shift your quarters, though for the present I think your motto should be, 'Better a wee bush than na bield.' If you are going to revert to teaching again, which I heartily deprecate, I know nothing better than Swan's conception, although success in it depends mainly upon offset and address, and the studying of humours, 1 Dr. Chalmers. 10 March 15, 1821. which, though it be a good enough way of its kind, is not the way to which I think you should yet condescend. Friends and family might console and advise, but Carlyle himself could alone conquer the spiritual maladies which were the real cause of his distraction. In June of this year, 1821, was transacted what in Sartor Resartus he describes as his conversion,' or new birth,' when he authentically took the Devil by the nose,' when he achieved finally the convictions, positive and negative, by which the whole of his later life was governed. Nothing in Sartor Resartus (he says) is fact; symbolical myth all, except that of the incident in the Rue St. Thomas de l'Enfer, which occurred quite literally to myself in Leith Walk, during three weeks of total sleeplessness, in which almost my one solace was that of a daily bathe on the sands between Leith and Portobello. Incident was as I went down; coming up I generally felt refreshed for the hour. I remember it well, and could go straight to about the place. As the incident is thus authenticated, I may borrow the words in which it is described, and so close what may be called the period of Carlyle's apprenticeship. But for me so strangely unprosperous had I been, the net result of my workings amounted as yet simply to-nothing. How, then, could I believe in my strength when there was as yet no mirror to see it in? Ever did this agitating, yet, as I now perceive, quite frivolous question remain to me insoluble: Hast thou a certain faculty, a certain worth, such as even the most have not; or art thou the completest dullard of these modern times? Alas, the fearful unbelief is unbelief in yourself; and how could I believe? Had not my first last faith in myself, when even to me the Heavens seemed laid open, and I dared to love, been all too cruelly belied? The speculative mystery of life grew ever more mysterious to me: neither in the practical mystery had I made the slightest progress, but been everywhere buffeted, foiled, and contemptuously cast out. A feeble unit in the middle of a threatening infinitude, I seemed to have nothing given me but eyes whereby to discern my own wretchedness. Invisible yet impenetrable walls, as of enchantment, divided me from all living. Now when I look back it was a strange isolation I then lived in. The men and women round me, even speaking with me, were but figures; I had practically forgotten that they were alive, that they were not merely automatic. In the midst of their crowded streets and assemblages, I walked solitary, and (except as it was my own heart, not another's, that I kept devouring) savage also as the tiger in his jungle. Some comfort it would have been could I, like Faust, have fancied myself tempted and tormented of the devil; for a hell as I imagine, without life, though only diabolic life, were more frightful: but in our age of downpulling and disbelief, the very devil has been pulled down, you cannot so much as believe in a devil. To me the universe was all void of life, of purpose, of volition, even of hostility: it was one huge, dead, immeasurable steam-engine, rolling on in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb. Oh, the vast gloomy, solitary Golgotha and mill of death! Why was the living banished thither companionless, conscious? Why, if there is no devil, nay, unless the devil is your god? From suicide a certain aftershine (Nachschein) of Christianity withheld me, perhaps also a certain indolence of character; for was not that a remedy I had at any time within reach? Often, however, there was a question present to me: should some one now at the turning of that corner blow thee suddenly out of space into the other world or other no-world by pistol-shot, how were it? ... So had it lasted, as in bitter protracted death-agony through long years. The heart within me, unvisited by any heavenly dewdrop, was smouldering in sulphurous slow-consuming fire. Almost since earliest memory I had shed no tear; or once only when I, murmuring half audibly, recited Faust's death-song, that wild Selig der, den er im Siegesglanze findet, Happy whom he finds in battle's splendour, and thought that of this last friend even I was not forsaken, that destiny itself could not doom me not to die. Having no hope, neither had I any definite fear, were it of man or devil; nay, I often felt as if it might be solacing could the arch-devil himself, though in Tartarean terrors, but rise to me, that I might tell him a little of my mind. And yet, strangely enough, I lived in a continual indefinite pining fear; tremulous, pusillanimous apprehension of I knew not what. It seemed as if all things in the heavens above and the earth beneath would hurt me; as if the heavens and the earth were but boundless jaws of a devouring monster, wherein I palpitating waited to be devoured. Full of such humour was I one sultry dogday after much perambulation toiling along the dirty little Rue St. Thomas de l'Enfer in a close atmosphere and over pavements hot as Nebuchadnezzar's furnace; whereby doubtless my spirits were little cheered; when all at once there rose a thought in me, and I asked myself: What art thou afraid of? wherefore, like a coward, dost thou for ever pip and whimper, and go cowering and trembling? Despicable biped! what is the sum total of the worst that lies before thee? Death? Well, death; and say the pangs of Tophet too, and all that the devil and man may, will, or can do against thee! Hast thou not a heart? canst thou not suffer whatsoever it be; and as a child of freedom, though outcast, trample Tophet itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee? Let it come, then, and I will meet it and defy it.' And as I so thought, there rushed like a stream of fire over my whole soul, and I shook base fear away from me for ever. I was strong; of unknown strength; a spirit; almost a god. Ever from that time, the temper of my misery was changed; not fear or whining sorrow was it, but indignation and grim fire-eyed defiance. Thus had the everlasting No (das ewige Nein ') pealed authoritatively through all the recesses of my being, of my ME; and then it was that my whole ME stood up in native god-created majesty, and with emphasis recorded its protest. Such a protest, the most important transaction in my life, may that same indignation and defiance, in a psychological point of view, be fitly called. The everlasting No had said: Behold, thou art fatherless, outcast, and the universe is mine (the devil's); to which my whole ME now made answer; I am not thine but free, and for ever hate thee. It is from this hour I incline to date my spiritual new birth: perhaps I directly thereupon began to be a man. J. A. FROUDE. NEW MARKETS FOR BRITISH PRODUCE. MR. ECROYD'S remarkable triumph at Preston, and the threats of the Bradford hands to 'Boycott' French goods, are distinct signs that people in England are awaking to the necessity of England's retaining access to markets outside the British Isles. It is commonly acknowleged that since its adoption of the principles that now regulate its commercial policy, the English nation has enjoyed forty years of unexampled growth and prosperity. But what is not so often acknowledged is the equally important fact that the nation in this prosperous development has appropriated vast unoccupied tracts of the earth's surface; and that these appropriations, which, not many years ago, were penal settlements, struggling whaling stations, or distant trading factories, have now grown into communities, whose wealth, success, and importance already give them claim to take rank among the prominent nations of the earth. This rapid growth of the oversea portion of our Empire is at the present moment silently but surely making its weight felt in the most important interests and works of the nation. Among them none holds so important a place as the interchange of the products of industry. Natural and human forces exist in so vast a variety of combinations that each country seems always able to supply to every other country some definite products at a profit; and it is on this natural exchange that the progress of the human race in prosperity seems to depend. These forces at present at work in England make us produce a large surplus of manufactures. And if we cannot sell this surplus our labour is in vain, and the product of our energy absolutely valueless. What we must have is access to markets. But if we sell in markets in other communities we can only do so by obtaining access on terms settled by these other communities, and often dictated by considerations which have but little relation to commercial or even to economic needs. The terms of this access in Holland not so long ago, and in France at the present moment, depend rather on the political strategy of ministries than on the economic advantages of the nations concerned. And yet our export manufacturers are putting forth all their vigour to prevent a rise in the French tariff. Our whole manufacturing body freely and liberally supports the efforts and expenses of our Foreign Office in its endeavours to keep low on the European continent the price of access to continental markets. England spares no effort and no expense to maintain this established custom.' But up to the present, England has paid only too little heed to a new 'custom,' springing up in unlooked-for directions, a new connection' which bids fair year by year to rival and to supplant this older connection. Probably few of our manufacturers are aware of the following recorded results:: TABLE I.-Value of English manufactures exported to― TABLE II.— Value of total trade of United Kingdom with— From these two tables we learn two lessons. The first is that our own colonies are growing into markets not only already equalling in magnitude the older established markets of other lands, but possessed of the further admirable attribute of unlimited future growth. Our trade with France dwindles and dwindles; our trade with our Australian Colonies by itself already equals our trade with France. With France we have no reasonable prospect of a larger trade, because France is fully peopled and fully developed. With Australia our prospects of increased trade are commensurate with the fact that in Australia we have a continent capable by its own inherent fertility of supporting in prosperity a population of 300,000,000 human beings, and at present yielding wealth to a bare three millions of human workers. We make every effort to secure access to the dwindling French market; we make no public or appreciable effort to secure access to this realmarket of the future' that invites us in Australia. And what holds true of France and of Australia holds true of the whole of Europe contrasted with the whole of our Colonial Empire. In Europe we have a market old-established indeed, but in communities themselves fully developed, and moreover of natural and human forces very similar to those of our own islands. In our colonies we have all this new grand possibility of markets (of which we have an earnest in their present rapid growth) in communities differing essentially in the character of their natural and human forces; and therefore of far more certain value in the natural interchange of pro |