over Annandale, Cumberland, Durham, gone all now into the uttermost wreck, absorbed into Douglasdom, Drumlanrigdom, and the devil knows what. Two of us have written plays, one could carve organs, sculpture horses; Mrs. Jameson's old Carlyle was cousin of Bridekirk. I suppose I, too, must have been meant for a Duke, but the means were dropped in the passage.

He had small respect for dukes and such-like, and perhaps Templand would not have answered with him if he had kept it; but he had a curious pride also in his own family. There was reason to believe that his own father was the actual representative of the Lords Carlyle of Torthorwald; and, though he laughed when he spoke of it, he was clearly not displeased to know that he had noble blood in him.. Rustic as he was in habits, dress, and complexion, he had a knightly, chivalrous temperament, and fine natural courtesy; another sure sign of good breeding was his hand, which was small, perfectly shaped, with long fine fingers and aristocratic finger-nails. He knew well enough, however, that with him, as he was, pedigrees and such-like had nothing to do. The descent which he prized was the descent from pious and worthy parents, and the fortunes and misfortunes of the neighbouring peasant families were of more real interest to him than aristocratic genealogies.

To Jane Welsh Carlyle.

Scotsbrig: May 3, 1842.

My dear Wife,―This is to be the last note I write to you from Scotsbrig on the present occasion. Nothing new is to be communicated. The day has passed over to this hour, four o'clock, without recordable incident. upon the moor since six, when I awoke.

I have been twice
I have seen poor

ANNANDALE INCIDENTS.

253

cattle straying over these barren bogs; poor ploughmen toiling in the red furrow, their ploughshares gleaming in the sun-a most innocuous flash; they and their huts, and their whole existence looking sad, almost pathetic to me. They are very poor in person, poor in purpose, principle, for the most part in all that makes the wealth of a man.

Poor devils! The farmer of Stennybeck, the next place to this, has a mother stone-blind, whom I remember out of infancy as a brisk, buxom lass that sate in the kirk with me. Utter poverty-financiering equal to a Chancellor's of the Exchequer has attended them these many years, even in the near background a gaol; and now yesterday the poor blind woman, searching down some heavy churn from the garret-for she works and bustles all over the housetumbled through a trapdoor and nearly killed herself. Unfortunate souls! The man asked Jamie one day, 'What d'ye think will come of me?' Peel's tariff has taken some twenty pounds from him, and—his Laird is rioting through the world like a broken blackguard. I am wae to look on poor old Annandale, poor old England-the devil is busy with us all.

What a pity a man cannot sleep, and so live something like other men! For the rest, it is no secret to me that he ought still to keep a bridle on himself, and not let insomnolence nor any other perversity drive him beyond limits.

Yesterday I got my hair cropped, partly by my own endeavours in the front, chiefly by sister Jenny's in the rear. I fear you will think it rather an original cut.

It was on Carlyle's return from Scotland, a day or two after the date of this last letter, that he paid the visit to Rugby of which Dean Stanley speaks in his life of Dr. Arnold. Arnold, it will be remembered, had written to Carlyle after reading the French Revolution.' He had sympathised warmly also with his tract on Chartism,' and his views as to the mights or rights of English working men. Cromwell, who was to be the next subject, was equally interesting to

-A

Arnold; and hearing that Carlyle would be passing Rugby, he begged him to pause on the way, when they could examine Naseby field together.

Carlyle, on his side, had much personal respect for the great Arnold-for Arnold himself as a man, though very little for his opinions. He saw men of ability all round him professing orthodoxy and holding office in the Church, while they regarded it merely as an institution of general expediency, with which their private convictions had nothing to do. Such men aimed only at success in the world, and if they chose to sell their souls for it, the article which they parted with was of no particular value. But Arnold was of a higher stamp. While a Liberal in politics and philosophy, and an historical student, he imagined himself a real believer in the Christian religion, and Carlyle was well assured that to men of Arnold's principles it had no ground to stand on, and that the clear-sighted among them would, before long, have to choose between an honest abandonment of an untenable position and a trifling with their own understandings, which must soon degenerate into conscious insincerity. Arnold, Carlyle once said to me, was happy in being taken away before the alternative was forced upon him. He died, in fact, six weeks after the visit of which the following letter contains the account.

To Mrs. Aitken, Dumfries.

Chelsea: May 10, 1842.

I had from Scotsbrig appointed to pause about seventy miles from London, and pay a visit to a certain Oxford dignitary of distinction, one Dr. Arnold, Master of Rugby School. I would willingly have paid five pounds all the day

to be honourably off; but it clearly revealed itself to me 'thou should'st veritably go,' so at Birmingham I booked myself and went. Right well that I did so, for the contrary would have looked like the work of a fool; and the people all at Rugby were of especial kindness to me, and I was really glad to have made their acquaintance. Next day they drove me over some fifteen miles off to see the field of Naseby fight-Oliver Cromwell's chief battle, or one of his chief. It was a grand scene for me-Naseby. A venerable hamlet, larger than Middlebie, all built of mud, but trim with high peaked roofs, and two feet thick of smooth thatch on them, and plenty of trees scattered round and among. It is built as on the brow of the Hagheads at Ecclefechan; Cromwell lay with his back to that, and King Charles was drawn up as at Wull Welsh's-only the Sinclair burn must be mostly dried, and the hollow much wider and deeper. They flew at one another, and Cromwell ultimately brashed him all to roons.' I plucked two gowans and a cowslip from the burial heaps of the slain, which still stand as heaps, but sunk away in the middle. At seven o'clock they had me home again, dinnered, and off in the last railway train.

CHAPTER X.

A.D. 1842. ET. 47.

Return to London-Sees the House of Commons-Yachting trip to Ostend-Bathing adventure-Church at Bruges-Hotel at GhentReflections on modern music-Walk through the town-A lace girl— An old soldier-Artisans at dinner-The Vigilant and her crewVisit from Owen-Ride in the Eastern counties-Ely Cathedral— St. Ives-Past and Present.

THE season was not over when Carlyle was again at home after his long absence, but the sad occupations of the spring, and the sad thoughts which they had brought with them, disinclined him for society. The summer opened with heat. He had a room arranged for him at the top of his house at the back, looking over gardens and red roofs and trees, with the river and its barges on his right hand, and the Abbey in the distance. There he sate and smoked, and read books on Cromwell, the sight of Naseby having brought the subject back out of the abysses.' Forster's volumes were not sent back to him. Visitors were not admitted, or were left to be entertained in the drawing-room.

June 17.

I sit here (he wrote to his mother), and think of you many a time and of all imaginable things. I say to myself, 'Why should'st thou not be thankful? God is good; all