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To John Carlyle.

Chelsea: February 16, 1835.

The honest task, which I thank God is henceforth not so obscure to me, I will study to do. The talent which God has given me shall not rust unused. But must booksellers, able editors, and the glar1 company of suchlike individuals be a new set of middlemen between me and my task? I positively do not care that periodical literature shuts her fist against me in these months. Let her keep it shut for ever, and go to the devil, which she mostly belongs to. The matter had better be brought to a crisis. There is perhaps a finger of Providence in it. . . . The secret of the whole matter is froth, and grounds itself in bubbles and unreality. The inference gems to be 'Walk out of this;' if even into the knapping of stones, which is a reality. We will do nothing rashly, but have our eyes open and study to do all things fitly. My only new scheme, since last letter, is a hypothesis-little more yet -about National Education. The newspapers had m advertisement about a Glasgow' Educational Association 'which wants a man that would found a Normal School, first going over England and into Germany to get light on that natter. I wrote to that Glasgow Association afar off, enquiring who they were, what manner of man they expected, testifying myself very friendly to their project, and so forth-no answer as yet. It is likely they will want, as Jane says, a 'Chalners and Welsh' kind of character, in which case Va ben, feice notte. If otherwise, and they (almost by miracle) had the heart, I am the man for them. Perhaps my name is so heterodox in that circle, I shall not hear at all. . . . if I stir in any public matter, it must be in this (of national education). Radicalism goes on as fast as any sane metal could wish it, without help of mine. Conservatism I camot attempt to conserve, believing it to be a portentous >mbodied sham, accursed of God, and doomed to destructon, 1 See note, p. 285.

as all lies are; but woe the while if the people are not taught; if not their wisdom, then their brutish folly will incarnate itself into the frightfullest reality.

My grand immediate concern is to get the 'French Revolution' done. I cannot tell thee what I think of the book. It is certainly better some ways than any I have hitherto written; contains no falsehood, singularity, or triviality that I can help; has probably no chance of being liked by any existing class of British men. Nevertheless, I toil on, searching diligently, doing what I can, in old Samuel's faith that useful diligence will at last prevail.' . . . Mill is very friendly. He is the nearest approach to a real man that I find here— nay, as far as negativeness goes, he is that man, but unhappily not very satisfactory much farther. It is next to an impossibility that a London-born man should not be a stunted one. Most of them, as Hunt, are dwarfed and dislocated into the merest imbecilities. Mill is a Presbyterian's grandson, or he were that too. Glory to John Knox! Our isle never saw his fellow.

Letters seldom went to John without a few words. from Mrs. Carlyle. She adds:

Dearest of created doctors,-I would fain cull a few flowers to make thee a dainty postscript, but the soil, alas! only yields dry thistles, for I am in the pipeclay state,' as Carlyle has designated a state too common with those who are too well furnished with bile. I went the other day, distracted that I was, to a great modern fashionable horrible dinner. It was at Mrs. -'s. There was huge venison to be eaten, and new service of plate to be displayed, and Mrs. the Aarts (Arts), and the great Sir John R with idears' on the Peel administration; and next day my head ached, and I was ready to imprecate the fire of heaven on the original inventor of a modern dinner.' We are going to-morrow to Mrs. X.'s, whom I would like that you knew, and could tell me whether to fall desperately in love with or no.

talked about favoured us

So Carlyle's first winter in London was passing away. His prospects were blank, and the society in

which he moved gave him no particular pleasure, but it was good of its kind, and was perhaps more agreeable to him than he knew. His money would hold out till the book was done at the rate at which it was progressing. The first volume was finished. On the whole he was not dissatisfied with it. It was the best that he could do, and he was, for him, in moderately fair spirits. But the strain was sharp; his 'labour-pains' with his books were always severe. He had first to see that the material was pure, with no dross of lies in it, and then to fuse it all into white heat before it would run into the mould, and he was in no condition to bear any fresh burden. Alas for him, he had a stern taskmistress. Providence or destiny (he himself always believed in Providence, without reason as he admitted, or even against reason) meant to try him to the utmost. Not only was all employment closed in his face, save what he could make for himself, but it was as if something said Even this too you shall not do till we have proved your mettle to the last.' A catastrophe was to overtake him, which for a moment fairly broke his spirit, so cruel it seemed-for the moment, but for the moment only. It served in fact to show how admirably, though in little things so querulous and irritable, he could behave under real misfortunes.

John Mill, then his closest and most valuable friend, was ardently interested in the growth of the new book. He borrowed the manuscript as it was thrown off, that he might make notes and suggestions, either for Carlyle's use, or as material for an early review. The completed first volume was in his hands for this purpose, when one evening, the 6th of March, 1835, as

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THE BURNT MANUSCRIPT.

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Carlyle was sitting with his wife, after working all day like a nigger' at the Feast of Pikes, a rap was heard at the door, a hurried step came up the stairs, and Mill entered deadly pale, and at first unable to speak. Why, Mill,' said Carlyle,' what ails ye, man? What is it?' Staggering, and supported by Carlyle's arm, Mill gasped out to Mrs. Carlyle to go down and speak to some one who was in a carriage in the street. Both Carlyle and she thought that a thing which they had long feared must have actually happened, and that Mill had come to announce it and to take leave of them. So genuine was the alarm that the truth when it came out was a relief. Carlyle led his friend to a seat the very picture of desperation.' He then learnt in broken sentences that his manuscript, left out in too careless a manner after it had been read,' was, ' except four or five bits of leaves, irrevocably annihilated.' That was all, nothing worse; but it was ugly news enough, and the uglier the more the meaning of it was realised. Carlyle wrote always in a highly wrought quasi-automatic condition both of mind and nerves. He read till he was full of his subject. His notes, when they were done with, were thrown aside and destroyed; and of this unfortunate volume, which he had produced as if possessed' while he was about it, he could remember nothing. Not only were 'the fruits of five months of steadfast, occasionally excessive, and always sickly and painful toil' gone irretrievably, but the spirit in which he had worked seemed to have fled too, not to be recalled; worse than all, his work had been measured carefully against his resources, and the household purse might now be empty before the loss could be made good. The carriage and its occupant

drove off-and it would have been better had Mill gone too after he had told his tale, for the forlorn pair wished to be alone together in the face of such a calamity. But Carlyle, whose first thought was of what Mill must be suffering, made light of it, and talked of indifferent things, and Mill stayed and talked too-stayed, I believe, two hours. At length he left them. Mrs. Carlyle told me that the first words her husband uttered as the door closed were: Well, Mill, poor fellow, is terribly cut up; we must endeavour to hide from him how very serious this business is to us.'

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He left us (Carlyle writes the next day in his Journal) in a relapsed state, one of the pitiablest. My dear wife has been very kind, and has become dearer to me. The night has been full of emotion, occasionally of sharp pain (something cutting or hard grasping me round the heart) occasionally with sweet consolations. I dreamt of my father and sister Margaret alive; yet all defaced with the sleepy stagnancy, swollen hebetude of the grave, and again dying in some strange rude country; a horrid dream, the painfullest too is when you wake first. But on the whole should I not thank the Unseen? For I was not driven out of composure, hardly for moments. Walk humbly with thy God.' How I longed for some psalm or prayer that I could have uttered, that my loved ones could have joined me in! But there was none. Silence had to be my language. This morning I have determined so far that I can still write a book on the French Revolution, and will do it. Nay, our money will still suffice. It was my last throw, my whole staked in the monstrosity of this life-for too monstrous, incomprehensible, it has been to me. I will not quit the game while faculty is given me to try playing. I have written to Fraser to buy me a 'Biographie Universelle' (a kind of increasing the stake) and fresh paper: mean to huddle up the Fête des Piques and look farther what can be attempted.