of all this.

Why should I dwell on such a matter? I mean to go and see your brave father's grave, too, and I will speak no word about it-you shall hold it done without my speaking.

This was written from Edinburgh on September 2. The 3rd was to be given to Dunbar, and along with Dunbar was to be combined the pilgrimage to that last solemn spot to which he referred with so fine delicacy. Without staying to see any Edinburgh acquaintance except David Laing, he went on direct to Haddington, where he was to be the guest of his wife's old and dear friends, the Miss Donaldsons of Sunny Bank. The thoughts which he had brought from Crawford attended him still as he came among the scenes of Mrs. Carlyle's childhood, where he and she had first looked in each other's faces.

To Jane Welsh Carlyle.

Haddington: September 4, 1843. These two days the image of my dear little Jeannie has hovered incessantly about me, waking and sleeping, in a sad yet almost celestial manner, like the spirit, I might say, of a beautiful dream. These were the streets and places where she ran about, a merry, eager little fairy of a child: and it is all gone away from her now, and she from it: and of all her possessions, poor I am, as it were, all that remains to her. My dearest, while I live, one soul to trust in shall not be wanting. My poor little Jeannie! How solemn is this Hall of the Past, beautiful and mournful; the miraculous river of existence rolling its grand course here, as elsewhere in the most prophetic places, now even as of old; godlike, though dark with death.

Carlyle feeling and writing with such exquisite tenderness, and Carlyle a fortnight later when he was in Cheyne Row making a domestic earthquake and

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driving his wife distracted because a piano sounded too loud in the adjoining house, are beings so different, that it seemed as if his soul was divided, like the Dioscuri, as if one part of it was in heaven, and the other in the place opposite to heaven. But the misery had its origin in the same sensitiveness of nature which was so tremulously alive to soft and delicate emotion. Men of genius have acuter feelings than common men; they are like the wind-harp, which answers to the breath that touches it, now low and sweet, now rising into wild swell or angry scream, as the strings are swept by some passing gust.

The rest of this letter describes the expedition to Dunbar, and is written at a more ordinary pitch. September 3 was a Sunday.

No coaches going to Dunbar on that day, I had to resolve on doing the thing by walking. Before quitting Edinburgh, I had gone to David Laing, and refreshed all my recollections by looking at his books, one of which he even lent me out hither. Fortified with all studies and other furtherances, I took a stick from the lobby here and set forth about halfpast nine; the morning grey and windy, wind straight in my back. To Linton the walk was delightful; the rich autumn country and Sabbath solitude altogether solacing to me. At Linton, a shoal, or rather endless shoals, of ragged Irish reapers made the highway thenceforth too populous for Indeed, between Musselburgh and Dunbar they have made all thoroughfares a continued Donnybrook, every variety of ragged savagery and squalor-the finest peasantry in the world. There is not work for a fourth part of them— wages one shilling a day. They seemed to subsist on the plunder of turnips and beanfields. They did not beg: only asked me now and then for the toime, plaise sur,' seeing I had a watch. It was curious to see at Linton the poor remnant of Highland shearers all lying decently in rows on the

me.

green, while the Irish were hovering they knew not whither, without plan, without repose.

At Dunbar I found the battle-ground much more recognisable than any I had yet seen; indeed, altogether what one would call clear. It is at the foot and further eastward along the slope of the hill they call the doun that the Scots stood, Cromwell at Broxmouth (Duke of Roxburghe's place), where he saw the sun rise over the sea,' and quoted a certain Psalm. I had the conviction that I stood on the very ground. Having time to spare (for dinner was at six), I surveyed the old Castle, washed my feet in the sea-smoking the while — took an image of Dunbar with me as I could, and then set my face to the wind and the storm, which had by this time risen to a quite tempestuous pitch. No rougher work have I had for a long time, boring through it with my broadbrim, not perpendicular to it; face parallel to the highway-that was the only possible method, except sometimes that I set the broadbrim on my breast and walked bare-headed; the only ill effect of which is that it has filled my hair with sand till the sea-water wash it out again.

Duties all finished, there remained now to get back to Chelsea. The cheapest, and to Carlyle the pleasantest, way was by sea. A day could be given to Edinburgh, two to the Ferguses at Kirkcaldy. Thence he could go to Mr. Erskine and stay at Linlathen till the 15th, when a steamer would sail for Dundee. After the sight of the battle-fields, the 'Cromwell' enterprise seemed no longer impossible. He was longing to be at home and at work; at home with Goody and her new house and her old heart.' The boat would be forty-five hours on the way. He would be at Chelsea by the 19th, and his long pilgrimage be ended.' He had seen many things in the course of it, but nothing half as good as his own Goody.' In the most amiable mood he called on everyone that

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he knew in Edinburgh-called on his wife's aunts at Morningside, called on Jeffrey at Craigcrook, to whom he was always grateful as his first active friend.

I found him (he says) somewhat in a deteriorated state. The little Duke had lamed his shin; sate lean, disconsolate, irritable, talkative, and argumentative as ever, with his foot laid on a stool. Poor old fellow! I talked with him chiefly till two o'clock, and then they drove me off in their carriage.

The days with Erskine in his quiet house at Linlathen were an enjoyment and amusement. Erskine officiating as a country gentleman, as chief commander of a squire's mansion, was a novel spectacle, the most gentle of men and yet obliged to put on the air of authority, and doing it dreadfully ill.' But Carlyle's thoughts were riveted on home. He had been irritable and troublesome before he went away in the summer. He was returning with the sense that in Cheyne Row only was paradise, where he would never be impatient again.

Oh Goody! (he exclaimed in his last letter) I wish I was with thee again. We will go into a room together, and have a little talk about time and space. Thou wilt hardly know me again. I am brown as a berry, face and hands; terribly bilious-sick even, yet with a feeling that there is a good stock of new health in me had I once leave to subside. Courage! in a few hours more it will be done.

CHAPTER XII.

A.D. 1843-4. ET. 48-49.

A repaired house-Beginnings of Cromwell '-Difficulties-The Edinburgh students-Offer of a professorship-The old mother at Scotsbrig-Lady Harriet Baring-A day at Addiscombe-Birthday present-Death of John Sterling.

ALAS for the infirmity of mortal resolution! Between the fool and the man of genius there is at least this symptom of their common humanity. Carlyle came home with the fixed determination to be amiable and good and make his wife happy. No one who reads his letters to her can doubt of his perfect confidence in her, or of his childlike affection for her. She was the one person in the world besides his mother whose character he completely admired, whose judgment he completely respected, whose happiness he was most anxious to secure; but he came home to drive her immediately distracted, not by unkindness-for unkind he could not be but through inability to endure with ordinary patience the smallest inconveniences of life. These were times when Carlyle was like a child, and like a very naughty one.

During the three months of his absence the house in Cheyne Row had undergone a thorough repair.' This process, which the dirt of London makes necessary