ing him as he walked about the streets.

London and its giddy whirl of life, that too might become as Paris had been. Ah! and what was it all but a pageant passing from darkness into darkness?

The world (he said in these weeks) looks often quite spectral to me; sometimes, as in Regent Street the other night (my nerves being all shattered), quite hideous, discordant, almost infernal. I had been at Mrs. Austin's, heard Sydney Smith for the first time guffawing, other persons prating, jargoning. To me through these thin cobwebs Death and Eternity sate glaring. Coming homewards along Regent Street, through street-walkers, through-Ach Gott! unspeakable pity swallowed up unspeakable abhorrence of it and of myself. The moon and the serene nightly sky in Sloane Street consoled me a little. Smith, a mass of fat and muscularity, with massive Roman nose, piercing hazel eyes, huge cheeks, shrewdness and fun, not humour or even wit, seemingly without soul altogether. Mrs. Marcet ill-looking, honest, rigorous, commonplace. The rest babble, babble.

Woe's me that I in Meshech am! To work.

Drawing-room society to a man engaged in painting the flowers of hell which had grown elsewhere on a stock of the same genus was not likely to be agreeable. Sydney Smith especially he never heartily liked, thinking that he wanted seriousness. Gad, sir, he believes it all,' Sydney had been heard to say of Lord John Russell when speaking of some grave subject. Amidst such spectral' feelings the writing of the "French Revolution' went on. By August 10 Carlyle was within sight of the end of the unfortunate volume which had cost him so dear, and could form a notion of what he had done. His wife, an excellent judge, considered the second version better than the first. Carlyle himself thought it worse, but not much

Some

worse; at any rate he was relieved from the load, and could look forward to finishing the rest. times he thought the book would produce an effect; but he had hoped the same from Sartor,' and he did not choose to be sanguine a second time. On September 23 he was able to tell his brother that the last line of the volume was actually written, that he was entirely exhausted and was going to Annandale to recover himself.

To John Carlyle.

Chelsea: September 23, 1835. By the real blessing and favour of Heaven I got done with that unutterable MS. on Monday last, and have wrapped it up there to lie till the other two volumes be complete. The work does not seem to myself to be very much worse than it was. It is worse in the style of expression, but better compacted in the thought. On the whole I feel like a man who had nearly killed himself in accomplishing zero. What a deliverance! I shall never without a kind of shudder look back at the detestable state of enchantment I have worked in for these six months and am now blessedly delivered from. The rest of the book shall go on quite like child's play in comparison. Also I do think it will be a queer book, one of the queerest published in this century, and can, though it cannot be popular, be better than that. My Teufelsdröckh humour, no voluntary one, of looking through the clothes, finds singular scope in this subject. Remarkable also is the 'still death-defiance' I have settled into, equivalent to the most absolute sovereignty conceivable by the mind. I say 'still death-defiance,' yet it is not unblended with a great fire of hope unquenchable, which glows up silent, steady, brighter and brighter. My one thought is to be done with this book. Innumerable things point all that way. My whole destiny seems as if it lost itself in chaos there (for my money also gets done then)-in chaos which I am to recreate or perish miserably—an arrangement which I really regard

as blessed comparatively. So I sit here and write, composed in mood, responsible to no man and no thing; only to God and my own conscience, with publishers, reviewers, hawkers, bill-stickers indeed on the earth around me, but with the stars and the azure eternity above me in the heavens. Let us be thankful. On the whole I am rather stupid; or rather I am not stupid, for I feel a fierce glare of insight in me into many things. Not stupid, but I have no sleight of hand, a raw untrained savage-for every trained civilised man has that sleight, and is a bred workman by having it, the bricklayer with his trowel, the painter with his brush, the writer with his pen. The result of the whole is one must just do the best he can for a living, boy,' or, in my mother's phrase, 'Never tine heart,' or get provoked heart, which is likewise a danger.

The journal adds:

On Monday last, about four o'clock on a wet day, I finished that MS. I ought to feel thankful to Heaven, but scarcely do sufficiently. The thing itself is no thing. Nevertheless, the getting done with it was all in all. I could do no other or better. The book, it is to be hoped, will now go on with some impetus. It is not enchanted work, but fair daylight aboveboard work, though hard work, and with a poor workman. I am now for Scotland, to rest myself and see my mother. What a year this has been! I have suffered much, but also lived much. Courage! hat firmly set on head, foot firmly planted. Fear nothing but fear. I fancy I shall go in an Edinburgh smack; not the worst way, and the cheapest though slowest

CHAPTER III.

A.D. 1835-6. ET. 40-41.

Visit to Scotland-Hard conditions of life-Scotsbrig-Return to London-Effort of faith-Letter from his mother-Schemes for employment-Offer from Basil Montagu-Polar bears-Struggles with the book-Visit from John Carlyle-Despondency-Money anxieties-Mrs. Carlyle in Scotland-Letters to her- Diamond Necklace' printed- French Revolution' finished.

In the first week in October Carlyle started for his old home, not in a smack, though he had so purposed, but in a steamer to Newcastle, whence there was easy access, though railways as yet were not, to Carlisle and Annandale. His letters and diary give no bright picture of his first year's experience in London, and fate had dealt hardly with him; but he had gained much notwithstanding. His strong personality had drawn attention wherever he had been seen. He had been invited with his wife into cultivated circles, literary and political. The Sterlings were not the only new friends whom they had made. Their poverty was unconcealed; there was no sham in either of the Carlyles, and there were many persons anxious to help them in any form in which help could be accepted. Presents of all kinds, hampers of wine, and suchlike poured in upon them. Carlyle did not speak of these things. He did not feel them less than

other people, but he was chary of polite expressions which are so often but half sincere, and he often seemed indifferent or ungracious when at heart he was warmly grateful. Mrs. Carlyle, when disappointed of her trip to Scotland, had been carried off into the country by the Sterlings for a week or two. In August Mrs. Welsh came, and stayed on while Carlyle was away. She was a gifted woman, a little too sentimental for her sarcastic daughter, and troublesome with her caprices. They loved each other dearly and even passionately. They quarrelled daily and made it up again. Mrs. Carlyle, like her husband, was not easy to live with. But on the whole they were happy to be together again after so long a separation. They had friends of their own who gathered about them in Carlyle's absence. Mrs. Carlyle occupied herself in learning Italian, painting and arranging the rooms, negotiating a sofa out of her scanty allowance, preparing a pleasant surprise when he should come back to his work. He on his part was not left to chew his own reflections. He was to provide the winter stock of bacon and hams and potatoes and meal at Scotsbrig. He was to find a Scotch lass for a servant and bring her back with him. He was to dispose of the rest of the Craigenputtock stock which had been left unsold, all excellent antidotes against spectral visions. He had his old Annandale relations to see again, in whose fortunes he was eagerly interested, and to write long stories about them to his brother John. In such occupation, varied with daily talks and smokes with his mother, and in feeding himself into health on milk or porridge, Carlyle passed his holiday. He