reach of eye, that his very faults become beautiful, and that of his worth there is no measure.'

I will make no comment on this passage further than to say that I have considered the principles here laid down by Carlyle to be strictly obligatory upon myself in dealing with his own remains. The free judgments which he passed on men and things were part of himself, and I have not felt myself at liberty to suppress them. Remarks which could injure any man-and very few such ever fell from Carlyle's lips-I omit, except where indispensable. Remarks which are merely legitimate expressions of opinion I leave for the most part as they stand. As an illustration of his own wishes on this subject, I may mention that I consulted him about a passage in one of Mrs. Carlyle's letters describing an eminent living person. Her judgment was more just than flattering, and I doubted the prudence of printing it. Carlyle merely said, 'It will do him no harm to know what a sensible woman thought of him.'

As to the biography generally, I found that I could not myself write a formal Life of Carlyle within measurable compass without taking to pieces his own Memoirs and the collection of Mrs. Carlyle's letters; and this I could not think it right to attempt. Mr. Forster and John Carlyle having both died, the

responsibility was left entirely to myself. A few weeks before Mr. Carlyle's death, he asked me what I meant to do. I told him that I proposed to publish the Memoirs as soon as he was gone-those which form the two volumes of the Reminiscences.' Afterwards I said that I would publish the letters about which I knew him to be most anxious. He gave his full assent, merely adding that he trusted everything to me. The Memoirs, he thought, had better appear immediately on his departure. He expected that people would then be talking about him, and that it would be well for them to have something authentic to guide them.

These points being determined, the remainder of my task became simplified. Mrs. Carlyle's letters are a better history of the London life of herself and her husband than could be written either by me or by anyone. The connecting narrative is Carlyle's own, and to meddle with his work would be to spoil it. It was thus left to me to supply an account of his early life in Scotland, the greater part of which I had written while he was alive, and which is contained in the present volumes. The publication of the letters will follow at no distant period. Afterwards, if I live to do it, I shall add a brief account

of his last years, when I was in constant intercourse with him.

It may be said that I shall have thus produced no Life,' but only the materials for a Life.' That is true. But I believe that I shall have given, notwithstanding, a real picture as far as it goes; and an adequate estimate of Carlyle's work in this world is not at present possible. He was a teacher and a prophet in the Jewish sense of the word. The prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah have become a part of the permanent spiritual inheritance of mankind, because events proved that they had interpreted correctly the signs of their own times, and their prophecies were fulfilled. Carlyle, like them, believed that he had a special message to deliver to the present age. Whether he was correct in that belief, and whether his message was a true message, remains to be seen. He has told us that our most cherished ideas of political liberty, with their kindred corollaries, are mere illusions, and that the progress which has seemed to go along with them is a progress towards anarchy and social dissolution. If he was wrong, he has misused his powers. The principles of his teaching are false. He has offered himself as a guide upon a road of which he had no knowledge; and his own. desire for himself would be the speediest oblivion

both of his person and his works. If, on the other hand, he has been right; if, like his great predecessors, he has read truly the tendencies of this modern age of ours, and his teaching is authenticated by facts, then Carlyle, too, will take his place among the inspired seers, and he will shine on, another fixed star in the intellectual sky.

Time only can show how this will be:

ἁμέραι ἐπίλοιποι μάρτυρες σοφώτατοι.