and by his singularly beautiful essay on “Burns” (1828). Other essays in the same periodical followed, as well as articles in the “Foreign Quarterly Review,” which was established in 1828, and shorter articles of less importance in Brewster’s “Edinburgh Encyclopedia,” then in course of publication. Externally, in short, at this time, Mr. Carlyle was a writer for reviews and magazines, choosing to live, for the convenience of his work and the satisfaction of his own tastes, in a retired nook of Scotland, whence he could correspond with his friends, occasionally visit the nearest of them, and occasionally also receive visits from them in turn. Among the friends whom he saw in his occasional visits to Edinburgh, were Jeffrey, Wilson, and other literary celebrities of that capital (Sir Walter Scott, we believe, he never met otherwise than casually in the streets); among the more distant friends who visited him, none was more welcome than the American Emerson, who, having already been attracted to him by his writings, made a journey to Dumfries-shire, during his first visit to England, expressly to see him; and of his foreign correspondents, the most valued by far was Göthe, whose death in 1832, and that of Scott in the same year, impressed him deeply, and were finely commemorated by him.

Meanwhile, though thus ostensibly but an occasional contributor to periodicals, Mr. Carlyle was silently throwing his whole strength into a work which was to reveal him in a far other character than that of a mere literary critic, however able and profound. This was his “Sartor Resartus;” or, an imaginary History of the Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh, an eccentric German professor and philosopher. Under this quaint guise (the name “Sartor Resartus” being, it would appear, a translation into Latin of “The Tailor done over,” which is the title of an old Scottish song), Mr. Carlyle propounded, in a style half-serious and half-grotesque, and in a manner far more bold and trenchant than the rules of review-writing permitted, his own philosophy of life and society in almost all their bearings. The work was truly an anomaly in British literature, exhibiting a combination of deep, speculative power, poetical genius, and lofty moral purpose, with wild and riotous humor and shrewd observation and satire, such as had rarely been seen; and coming into the midst of the more conventional British literature of the day, it was like a fresh but barbaric blast from the hills and moorlands amid which it had been conceived. But the very strangeness and originality of the work prevented it from finding a publisher; and after the manuscript had been returned by several London firms to whom it was offered, the author was glad to cut it into parts and publish it piecemeal in “Frazer’s Magazine.” Here it appeared in the course of 1833-34, scandalising most readers by its Gothic mode of thought and its extraordinary torture, as it was called, of the English language; but eagerly read by some sympathetic minds, who discerned in the writer a new power in literature, and wondered who and what he was.

With the publication of the “Sartor Resartus” papers, the third period of Mr. Carlyle’s literary life may be said to begin. It was during the negotiations for the publication that he was led to contemplate removing to London—a step which he finally took, we believe, in 1834. Since that year—the thirty-ninth of his life—Mr. Carlyle has permanently resided in London, in a house situated in one of the quiet streets running at right angles to the River Thames, at Chelsea. The change into the bustle of London, from the solitude of Craigenputtoch was, externally, a great one. In reality, however, it was less than it seemed. A man in the prime of life, when he came to reside in the metropolis, he brought into its roar and confusion, not the restless spirit of a young adventurer, but the settled energy of one who had ascertained his strength, and fixed his methods and his aims.

Among the Maginns and others who contributed to “Frazer,” he at once took his place as a man rather to influence than be influenced; and gradually, as the circle of his acquaintances widened so as to include such notable men as John Mill, Sterling, Maurice, Leigh Hunt, Browning, Thackeray, and others of established or rising fame in all walks of speculation and literature, the recognition of his rare personal powers of influence became more general and deep. In particular, in that London circle, in which John Sterling moved, was his personal influence great, even while as yet he was but the anonymous author of the “Sartor Resartus” papers, and of numerous other contributions, also anonymous, to “Frazer’s Magazine,” and the “Edinburgh,” “Foreign Quarterly,” “British and Foreign,” and “Westminster,” Reviews. It was not till 1837, or his forty-second year, that his name, already so well known to an inner circle of admirers, was openly associated with a work fully proportional to his powers. This was his “French Revolution: a History,” in three volumes, the extraordinary merits of which as at once a history and a gorgeous prose-epic, are known to all. In 1838, the “Sartor Resartus” papers, already re-published in the United States, were put forth, collectively, with his name; and, in the same year, his various scattered articles in periodicals, after having similarly received the honor of re-publication in America, were given to the world in four volumes, in their chronological series from 1827 to 1837, under the title of “Miscellanies.” Mr. Carlyle’s next publication was his little tract on “Chartism,” published in 1839, in which, to use the words of one of his critics, “he first broke ground on the Condition of England question.”

During the time when these successive publications were carrying his name through the land, Mr. Carlyle appeared in a new capacity, and delivered four courses of lectures in London to select but crowded audiences, including many of the aristocracy both of rank and of literature: the first, a course on “German Literature,” delivered at Willis’s Rooms in 1837; the second, a course on “The History of Literature, or the Successive Periods of European Culture,” delivered in Edward-street, Portman-square, in 1838; the third, a course on “the Revolutions of Modern Europe,” delivered in 1839; and the fourth, a course on “Heroes, Hero-worship, and the Heroic in History,” delivered in 1840. This last course alone was published; and it became more immediately popular than any of the works which had preceded it. It was followed, in 1843, by “Past and Present,” a work contrasting, in a historico-philosophical spirit, English society of the middle ages with English society in our own day; and this again, in 1845, by “Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches, with elucidations and a connecting narrative;” such being the unpretending form which a work, originally intended to be a history of Cromwell and his times, ultimately assumed. By the year 1849, this work had reached a third edition. In 1850, appeared the “Latter-Day Pamphlets,” in which, more than in any previous publication, the author spoke out in the character of a social and political censor of his own age. From their very nature, as stern denunciations of what the author considered contemporary fallacies, wrongs, and hypocrisies, these pamphlets produced a storm of critical indignation against Mr. Carlyle, which was still raging, when, in 1851, he gave to the world his “Life of John Sterling.” While we write