servants, the gratitude of the poor, and the respect and love with which she is regarded by all her neighbours and friends, is a proof of the sweetness of her nature and of her goodness.

While the influence of woman must always be greatest in her own home, which is the sphere where all the good qualities of her heart and disposition have full sway, in the case of Princess May the stronger qualities of her character will have an important influence on those with whom she comes in contact, and on the development which must follow when she takes her true position much of the success and happiness of her life will depend. Strength and decision of character we know she possesses, and a high sense of duty, great rectitude, and strong affections. Her natural reserve with strangers, verging on great shyness, has prevented many people from knowing her well, and she is therefore less likely to be influenced except by those on whose judgment, experience, and affection she can depend. Her very quick insight into characteroften candidly expressed-proves that she is not likely to be imposed on by inferior mediocrities, and in her choice of friends she has always shown discretion and wisdom. Her position, which, no doubt, has up till now been a very trying one, has fitted her excellently for her future, and when once she assumes the assured one of the Duchess of York the distrust of herself (which may we say ?-she sometimes allows to extend to other people) will disappear, and the sense of security she will experience must alter the whole aspect from which she views life. Perhaps, deep down in her heart, and hardly expressed, lies the feeling that a simpler life, with less of splendour and responsibility, would have been her choice, for her nature is essentially a simple one; but if irksome, and not her ideal, she will always do her duty thoroughly and conscientiously. In many ways she and the Duke have the feeling in common that had they been consulted, the life of an English gentleman and gentlewoman, with its smaller but still important interests, would have been their choice, for neither by training nor disposition were they intended for the place they are called on to fill; and the publicity, as well as the intolerable curiosity, of modern life has destroyed all possibility of seclusion and privacy in those of public characters. To people of the disposition of Princess May and the Duke of York such a penalty to pay for greatness is severe, but it is the price exacted from those in their position.

In every marriage the centre of interest is the bride, and one tries in imagination to picture what the future life of the girl-Princess we all

Indeed,

love will be. We all feel she is worthy of the life before her. were the Duke of York not the most magnanimous and generous of lovers, he might be sensitive as to the open way in which we have shown him that he is the luckiest of men; but on these occasions men can afford to be generous. We cannot but look to the future, which we trust may be distant, when they will occupy the greatest throne in the world, though we prefer to dwell on the more immediate future, when, unburdened by the cares, pomp, and responsibility of Empire, they can lead in a great measure a life sympathetic and full of interest to themselves and of great usefulness to their people—a life in which their example will be more powerful for good than one can easily describe. It must necessarily be less important and less public than that of the Prince and Princess of Wales, but there is also a wide field for the Duke and Duchess of York. They can divide a great deal of public work with the Prince and Princess of Wales, and thus relieve them of what is almost overburdening, and they can select objects and interests of their own which will fill their lives. In their entourage and their choice of their friends they can set an example of what the lives of young married people should be, for their conduct will be eagerly watched and criticised. The position of those so near the throne is one always of great responsibility, and nothing will stimulate the interest and affection with which they are regarded more than the evidence on their part that they realise how much power for good or evil lies in their hands. In the earnest way in which the Duke of York has taken up and accepted his unlooked-for position lies the best guarantee we can have of his determination to do his duty, and nowhere will he find a more ready sympathiser and willing helper than in his young wife, whose generous and unselfish nature will warm to the task of assisting her husband in all his endeavours after the good of the people over whom he will one day reign.

Standing on the threshold of her new life, with its large and important duties, Princess May may be assured that the prayers and wishes of the people of this country are given her in no unstinted spirit. She has been chosen by the country for its future Queen as deliberately as any lover ever chose his bride, and the trust and affection of England belong to her as they have never belonged to any other Princess. Within the sound of marriage bells one hardly likes to dwell on the dark side of the picture, but when the curtain fell on the hopes of the people eighteen months ago, and the hand of death parted the betrothed, the grief and sympathy of the country were as much the result of dis

appointment at shattered hopes as of sorrow for the widowed bride. It has watched her narrowly since that time, and the dignity with which she filled a most terribly trying position for so young a woman has convinced the country more than ever that in her were the qualities that would make a good and brave wife for their future King, as well as the mother of Kings to come. We are confident the country has not made a mistake, that its choice will be justified, and that the girl-bride of the Duke of York will, in her more responsible position, develop qualities of heart and head which will, if possible, endear her more than ever to the people whose one desire was that she should some day be their Queen,

REMINISCENCES OF CARLYLE, WITH SOME

ΤΗ

HE memoirs and correspondence of Carlyle give such prominence to his intimacy with the Strachey's and Bullers that the personal circumstances to which the present analecta owe their origin scarcely require explanation here. Our family reminiscences and traditions respecting certain portions of his life, with illustrative letters from his pen, have already appeared in print. They were thought to have placed some of the debated sides of Carlyle's character in a new and favourable light. And they were allowed to have demolished the mythical nexus between Margaret Gordon and the Blumine of Sartor Resartus, by proving the identity of the Rose Goddess with Miss Aurora Kirkpatrick, who figures as the dawn beauty in Wotton Reinfred,* the early novel from which Carlyle borrowed in such wholesale fashion for the love episode in the biography of Diogenes Teufelsdröckh. The present narrative descends to Carlyle's later years; it includes fresh epistolary contributions from our family archives. Publication of the complete texts is prevented, temporarily at least, by the intimate character of parts of the correspondence.

Carlyle's writings, formal or familiar, abound in anathemas against literary work, which, he said, was as appalling as labour in mines. In flagrant breach of his own maxim, that a man should consume his own smoke," he went on wailing, crescendo, against his particular walk in life, until he had written finis to his thirty-fourth volume. A premonitory note in the key in question is struck in the following extract from a letter to my eldest brother, which refers to an inquiry made on behalf of a lady who was looking for employment as a translator:

Chelsea, 27 May, 1841.

I rather fancy the chief difficulty is to fix on some book likely to succeed; which, of course, is the translator's own task: there is seldom any

* Published in the NEW REVIEW, January-March, 1892.

VOL. IX.-No. 50.

C

offer of a given book to be translated; or indeed if there were, I suppose hundreds are ready for it on bread-and-water terms. Translation I doubt is no very good resource, indeed literature in any shape, without some express vocation and necessity, is a thing not to be recommended to anyone, to a young lady least of all. My own prosecution of it was entered upon by the sternest compulsion, and has been a life-and-death wrestle all along. Whosoever does not think lightly of starvation in comparison with several things which he will see practised, ought to keep aloof altogether from that province.

Like many of Carlyle's descriptions of his own state and feelings, these last sentences must be diminished by an effective subtrahend before they can be brought into the neighbourhood of fact. They have not the tragic reality of Dr. Johnson's "impransus," or of Schumann's complaint that he can neither afford to have his hair cut, nor to have his piano tuned, nor to buy a pistol to blow his brains out. But they have their value as Carlyle's commentary, by anticipation, on the idea that he regarded himself as a literary Mahomet with a message from Heaven. Here, as in numerous other places, he expressly states that he wrote, not under the impetus of the sting of the divine gadfly, but for bread and butter's sake. The philosophy of Comely Bank and Cheyne Row was in this respect identical with that of Friedrichsruhe Not long since Prince Bismarck replied to a deputation which was interviewing him in a high ethical tone: " After all, our first affair is to get our dinners." About this time Carlyle was engaged on the preliminaries of his Cromwell, and it happened that my brother heard of a most venerable relic of the Protector, viz., his skull. According to John Evelyn, the body of Cromwell was dragged out of Westminster Abbey at the Restoration, hung on a gallows at Tyburn for some hours, and then buried in a pit. Macaulay says that the remains were dug up, hanged, and quartered. Some writers assert that the head was cut off and set up on a pike over the gate of Westminster Hall. By others Cromwell is buried on the battlefield of Naseby, or sunk in the Thames, or walled up in masonry at Newburgh House by Lady Fauconberg; while the last investigator of the subject, Mr. Frederic Harrison, treats it as hopelessly involved in legend, and suggests that if the present proprietor of Newburgh would knock down part of his house we might possibly recover Oliver's remains, which would then, of course, be re-sepulchred with pomp of kings in Westminster Abbey. One of the stories above quoted includes the assertion that the head was blown down from Westminster Hall and carried away by the sentry. On behalf of the skull of which report reached my