recollect much troubling him in that way), I would find the family still at breakfast, ten A.M. or later; and have seen poor Jeffrey emerge in flowered dressing-gown, with a most boiled and suffering expression of face, like one who had slept miserably, and now awoke mainly to paltry misery and bother; poor Official man! "I am made a mere Post-Office of!" I heard him once grumble, after tearing open several Packets, not one of which was internally for himself.'[11]

Mrs Carlyle joined her husband on the 1st of October 1831, and they took lodgings at 4 Ampton Street, Gray's Inn Lane, with a family of the name of Miles, belonging to Irving's congregation. Jeffrey was a frequent visitor there, and sometimes the Carlyles called at Jermyn Street. Carlyle says that they were at first rather surprised that Jeffrey did not introduce him to some of his 'grand literary figures,' or try in some way to be of help to one for whom he evidently had a value. The explanation, Carlyle thinks, was that he himself 'expressed no trace of aspiration that way'; that Jeffrey's 'grand literary or other figures' were clearly by no means 'so adorable to the rustic hopelessly Germanised soul as an introducer of one might have wished.' Besides, Jeffrey was so 'heartily miserable,' as to think Carlyle and his other fellow-creatures happy in comparison, and to have no care left to bestow upon them.

Here is a characteristic outburst in the 'Reminiscences': 'The beggarly history of poor "Sartor" among the blockheadisms is not worth my recording or remembering—least of all here! In short, finding that whereas I had got £100 (if memory serve) for "Schiller" six or seven years before, and for "Sartor," at least thrice as good, I could not only not get £200, but even get no Murray, or the like, to publish it on half-profits (Murray, a most stupendous object to me; tumbling about, eyeless, with the evidently strong wish to say "yes and no"; my first signal experience of that sad human predicament); I said, "We will make it No, then; wrap up our MS.; wait till this Reform Bill uproar abate."'[12]

On Tuesday, January 26th, 1832, Carlyle received tidings of the death of his father. He departed on the Sunday morning previous 'almost without a struggle,' wrote his favourite sister Jane. It was a heavy stroke for Carlyle. 'Natural tears,' he exclaimed shortly afterwards, 'have come to my relief. I can look at my dear Father, and that section of the Past which he has made alive for me, in a certain sacred, sanctified light, and give way to what thoughts rise in me without feeling that they are weak and useless.' Carlyle determined that the time till the funeral was past (Friday) should be spent with his wife only. All others were excluded. He walked 'far and much,' chiefly in the Regent's Park, and considered about many things, his object being to see clearly what his calamity meant—what he lost, and what lesson that loss was to teach him. Carlyle considered his father as one of the most interesting men he had known. 'Were you to ask me,' he said, 'which had the greater natural faculty,' Robert Burns or my father, 'I might, perhaps, actually pause before replying. Burns had an infinitely wider Education, my Father a far wholesomer. Besides, the one was a man of Musical Utterance; the other wholly a man of Action, even with Speech subservient thereto. Never, of all the men I have seen, has one come personally in my way in whom the endowment from Nature and the Arena from Fortune were so utterly out of all proportion. I have said this often, and partly know it. As a man of Speculation—had Culture ever unfolded him—he must have gone wild and desperate as Burns; but he was a man of Conduct, and Work keeps all right. What strange shapeable creatures we are!'[13] Nothing that the elder Carlyle undertook to do but he did it faithfully, and like a true man. 'I shall look,' said his distinguished son, 'on the houses he built with a certain proud interest. They stand firm and sound to the heart all over his little district. No one that comes after him will ever say, "Here was the finger of a hollow eye-servant." They are little texts for me of the gospel of man's free will. Nor will his deeds and sayings in any case be found unworthy—not false and barren, but genuine and fit. Nay, am not I also the humble James Carlyle's work? I owe him much more than existence; I owe him a noble inspiring example (now that I can read it in that rustic character). It was he exclusively that determined on educating me; that from his small hard-earned funds sent me to school and college, and made me whatever I am or may become. Let me not mourn for my father, let me do worthily of him. So shall he still live even here in me, and his worth plant itself honourably forth into new generations.'[14] One of the wise men about Ecclefechan told James Carlyle: 'Educate a boy, and he grows up to despise his ignorant parents.' His father once told Carlyle this, and added: 'Thou hast not done so; God be thanked for it.' When James Carlyle first entered his son's house at Craigenputtock, Mrs Carlyle was greatly struck with him, 'and still farther,' says her husband, 'opened my eyes to the treasure I possessed in a father.'

The last time Carlyle saw his father was a few days before leaving for London. 'He was very kind,' wrote Carlyle, 'seemed prouder of me than ever. What he had never done the like of before, he said, on hearing me express something which he admired, "Man, it's surely a pity that thou should sit yonder with nothing but the eye of Omniscience to see thee, and thou with such a gift to speak."' In closing his affectionate tribute, Carlyle exclaims: 'Thank Heaven, I know and have known what it is to be a son; to love a father, as spirit can love spirit.'

The last days of March 1832 found the Carlyles back at Craigenputtock. A new tenant occupied the farm, and their days were lonelier than ever. Meanwhile 'Sartor Resartus' was appearing in Fraser's Magazine. The Editor reported that it 'excited the most unqualified disapprobation.' Nothing daunted, Carlyle pursued the 'noiseless tenor of his way,' throwing off articles on various subjects. Finding that Mrs Carlyle's health suffered from the gloom and solitude of Craigenputtock, they removed to Edinburgh in January 1833. Jeffrey was absent in 'official regions,' and Carlyle notes that they found a 'most dreary contemptible kind of element' in Edinburgh. But their stay there was not without its uses, for in the Advocates' Library Carlyle found books which had a great effect upon his line of study. He collected materials for his articles upon 'Cagliostro' and the 'Diamond Necklace.' At the end of four months, the Carlyles were back again at Craigenputtock.

August was a bright month for Thomas Carlyle, for it was then that Ralph Waldo Emerson visited him at his rural retreat. The Carlyles thought him 'one of the most lovable creatures' they had ever seen, and an unbroken friendship