of character with such a sense of sharing it, and into the valley and shadow of death with such a reflection of solemnity and awe and the mystery of departure upon his own head, that our interest is awakened much more strongly for him, than by any distinct perception we have of his predecessor. It is impossible not to be touched and impressed by this duality of being, this tremulous solemn absorption of self in the shadowy resemblance; but the real man whom we are supposed to be contemplating, shapes very confused through those mists. This sketch, too, was made in the immediate shock of loss, while yet the relations of the dead to ourselves are most clear, strengthened rather than diminished by their withdrawal out of our sight. At such a moment it would be strange indeed if the light were clear enough and the hand steady enough to give due firmness to the outline. That good craftsman, that noble peasant, looms out of those mists a hero and prophet like those reflections upon the mountains which turn a common figure into that of a giant. A tear is as effectual in this way as all the vapors of the Alps. Looking back through this haze it is no wonder that the gifted son with all the reverential recollections of his childhood roused and quickened, should see the figures of his kindred and ancestors, his father chief of all, like patriarchs in the country which in his consciousness had produced nothing nobler. "They were among the best and truest men (perhaps the very best) in their district and craft," they were men of "evidently rather peculiar endowment." The father was "one of the most interesting men I have known," the pleasantest man I had to speak with in all Scotland," a man of perhaps the very largest natural endowment of any it has been my lot to converse with.' 99 66 ever All this is very touching to read; and it is infinitely interesting and fine to see a man so gifted, whose genius has given him access out of the lowliest to the highest class of his contemporaries, thus turning back with grateful admiration and love to the humble yet noble stock from which he sprang. But with all this it is not a portrait, nor are we much the wiser as to the individual portrayed. "I call him a natural man, singularly free from all manner of affectation,' Carlyle proceeds, as if the children and the friends were all met together to render honor to the dead, and could respond out of their own experience with emphatic "Ayes!" with sympathetic shakings of the head, "he was among the best of the true men which Scotland on the old system produced or can produce; a man healthy in body and mind, fearing God and diligently working on God's earth with contented hope and unwearied resolution." It is an eloquent éloge, like those which in France are pronounced over the grave in the hearing of friends specially qualified to assent, and to confirm the truth. But at the very highest that can be said of it this is description merely, and James Carlyle never stands before us-let us not say as Cromwell does, but even like Father Andreas in "Sartor Resartus,' who was partly, no doubt, drawn from him, and who with half the pains comes out before us a veritable man. * The difference between this descriptive treatment and distinct portraiture could scarcely be better shown than by the following delightful story recalled to me by a noble lady, an older friend than myself, as told by When they Mrs. Carlyle of her father-in-law. 66 met after her marriage, she offered him a filial kiss, which the old man felt to be too great an honor. Na, na, Mistress Jean," he said too respectful of his son's lady-wife to call her bluntly by her Christian name, "I'm no fit to kiss the like of you.' Hoot, James," his wife cried, distressed by the rudeness, though not without her share in the feeling, you'll no refuse her, when it's her pleasrepeated old Carlyle, softly putting away the pretty young gentlewoman with his hand. He disappeared for some time after this, then returned, clean-shaven and 44 ure. Na, na, in his best Sunday clothes, blue coat, most likely with metal buttons, and all his rustic bravery, and approached her with a smile. "If you'll give me a kiss now!" he said. Could there be a more delightful instance of the most chivalrous delicacy of feeling? It is worth a whole volume of panegyric. this purpose, an imagination not limited by details so well remembered, a mind more free, a heart less deeply engaged was necessary. It is not in nature that we should look upon the figures which walk by our side through life, and share every variety of our existence, as we behold others more distant.. Carlyle had neither the cold blood nor the deliberate purpose which would have made such a piece of intellectual vivisection possible. Goethe could do it, but not the enthusiast who fixed his worship upon that heathen demi-god, the being of all others most unlike himself in all the lists of fame. It is hard to understand why Carlyle took Irving in hand at all. It was in the heat and urgency of troubled thoughts, when his wife's death had stirred up all the ancient depths, and carried him back to his youth and all its associations and many a beautiful stretch of that youth, of walks and talks, of poetic wanderings, of dreams and musings which we should have been sorry to lose, is to be found in the long and discursive chapter of recollections which he has inscribed with his friend's name; but of Irving little, not much more than a silhouette of him, dark against the clear background of those spring skies. It may perhaps be supposed that I am scarcely likely to touch upon this subject without bias; but I do not think there was the slightest unwillingness in my mind to receive a new light upon it, nor any anticipation of hostility in the eagerness with which I turned over those pages coming from the hand of a beloved Master, as much nearer to Edward Irving as he was superior to any of us. But here, save by glimpses, and those mostly of the silhouette kind as has been said, is no Irving. There is but a vague comrade of Carlyle's youth, mostly seen on his outer side, little revealing any passion, prophetic or otherwise, in him, a genial stalwart companion, of whom the writer is unwilling to allow even so much as that the light which led him astray was light from heaven. And yet it is with no petty intention of pulling down from its elevation the figure of his friend that this is done, but rather to vindicate him as far as possible from the folly with which he threw himself into what was nothing but wretched imposture and hysterical shrieking and noise to the other. Rather that it should be made out to be mere excitement, the ever quickening tide of a current from which the victim could not escape, than that any possibility of consideration should be awarded to those strange spiritual influences which swayed him. But not to enter into this question, upon which it was natural that there should be no mutual comprehension mutual comprehension between the friends, we think the reader will make very little of the man who occupies nominally the greater part of one of these volumes. His open-air aspect, his happy advent when he came on his early visits to Annandale, giving to Carlyle delightsome openings out of his little farmhouse circle, afford a succession of breezy sketches; and we see with pleasure the two young men strolling along "the three miles down that bonny river's bank, no sound but our own voices amid the lullaby of waters and the twittering of birds;" or sitting together among the peat-hags" of Drumclog Moss "under the silent bright skies." All these are pictures "pretty to see,' as Carlyle says. But there is no growing of acquaintance with this big friendly figure, and when we see him in London, always against a background more distinct than himself, though no longer now of "bright silent skies," but of hot interiors full of crowding faces, mostly (alas for the careless record made in an unhappy moment !) represented as of the ignoble sort-it is less and less possible to identify him, or make out, except that he is always true and noble, amid every kind of pettiness and social vulgarity, what manner of man he was. This difficulty is increased by the continual crossing and re-crossing of Carlyle himself over the space nominally consecrated to Irving, sometimes striking him out altogether, and always throwing him back so that even the silhouette fails us. Had he lived a hundred years earlier the historian perhaps would have been no more tolerant of the Tongues or the miracles: but he would have picked out of the manifold ravings of the time, however dreary or unintelligible, such a picture of the heroic and stainless soul deceived, as should have moved us to the depths of our heart: perhaps thrown some new light upon spiritual phenomena ever recurring, whether as a delusion of the devil, or a mortal mistake and blunder; at least have set the prophet before us in a flood of illumination, of reverence, and compunction and tenderness. But this gift which has made Abbot Sampson one of our dearest friends, stands us in no stead with the man who stood by the writer's elbow, whose breath was on his cheek, who was the friend and companion of his early years. Strange and yet so natural, that we have only to interrogate ourselves to understand such a disability. He knew his friend far too well to know him at all in this way. He was not indifferent enough to perceive the tendencies of his being or the workings of his mind. These tendencies moved him, not to calm observation, but to hot opposition and pain, and anxious thought of the results to the anger and the impatience of affection, not to the tolerance and even creative enjoyment of the poet who finds so noble a subject ready to his hand. In a very different fashion which is yet the same, the prolonged sketch of his wife, which almost fills one volume, and more or less runs through both, will fail to give to the general reader any idea of a very remarkable woman full of character and genius. This menoir shares the ineffectiveness of the others, and labors under the same disadvantages, with this additional, that his "dearest and beautifulest," his "little darling," his "bonnie little woman, continues always young to him, more or less surrounded with the love-halo of their youth, a light which, after the rude tear and wear of the world which they both went through, it is hard to understand as existing thus unmodified either in his eyes or about her remarkable and most individual person. To many of those who loved her there must be a painful want of harmony between the woman they knew, not old because of her force and endless energy, but worn into the wrinkles and spareness of age. with her swift caustic wit, her relentless insight, and potent humor-and all those gentle epithets of tenderness, and the pretty air of a domestic idol, a wife always enshrined and beautiful which surrounds her in these pages. That such was her aspect to him we learn with thankfulness for her sake; though it is very doubtful how far she realized that it was so; but this was not her outside aspect, and I shrink a little, as if failing of respect to so dear and fine a memory, when I read out the sentences in which she appears, though with endless tributes of love and praise, as the nimble, sprightly, dauntless, almost girlish figure, which she seems to have always appeared to him. It must be added that a strong compunction runs through the tale, perhaps not stronger than the natural compunction with which we all remember the things we half left unsaid, the thanks unrendered, the tenderness withheld, as soon as the time has come when we can show our tenderness no longer; but which may make many believe, and some say, that Carlyle's thousand expressions of fondness were a remorseful make up for actual neglect. I am not one of those who think so; but it would be natural enough. That he had any intention of neglect, or that his heart ever strayed from her I am very little disposed to believe; but there were circumstances in their life which to him, the man, were very light, but to her were not without their bitterness, little appreciated or understood by him. Here is one case for instance. "We went pretty often, I think I myself far the oftener, as usual in such cases my loyal little darling taking no manner of offence not to participate in my lionings, but behaving like the royal soul she was. I, dullard, egoist, taking no special recognition of such nobleness.' She "took no manner of offence, was far too noble and genuine to take offence. Yet with a little humorous twitch at the corner of her eloquent mouth would tell sometimes of the fine people who left her out in their invitations as the great man's insignificant wife, with a keen mot which told of individual feeling not extinguished, though entirely repressible and under her command. And Carlyle did what most men--what almost every human creature does when attended by such a ministry in life as hers: accepted the service and sacrifice of all her faculties which she made to him, with at the bottom, a real understanding and appreciation no doubt, but, on the surface, a calm ease of acquiescence as if it had been the most natural thing in the world. She for her part-let us not be misunderstood in saying so-contemplated him, her great companion in life, with a certain humorous curiosity not untinged with affectionate contempt and wonder that a creature so big should be at the same time so little, such a giant and commanding genius with all the same so many babyish weaknesses for which she liked him all the better! Women very often, more often than not, do regard their heroes so-admiration and the confidence of knowledge superior to that of any one else of their power and bright qualities, permitting this tender contempt for those vagaries of the wise and follies of the strong. To see what he will do next, the big blundering male creature, unconscious entirely of that fine scrutiny, malin but tender, which sees through and through him, is a constant suppressed interest which gives piquancy to life, and this Carlyle's wife took her full enjoyment of. He was never in the least conscious of it. I believe few of its subjects are. Thus she would speak of "The Valley of the Shadow of Frederick" in her letters, and of how the results of a bad day's work would become apparent in the shape of a gloomy apparition, brow lowering, mouth shut tight, cramming down upon the fire, not a word said-at least till after this burnt-offering, the blurred sheets of unsuccessful work. Never a little incident she told but the listener could see it, so graphic, so wonderful was her gift of narrative. It did not matter what was the subject, whether that gaunt figure in the gray coat, stalking silently in, to consume on her fire the day's work which displeased him, or the cocks and hens which a magnanimous neighbor sacrificed to the rest of the Sage; whether it was the wonderful story of a maid-of-all-work, most accomplished of waiting-maidens, which kept the hearer breathless, or the turning outside in of a famed philosopher. Scherazade was nothing to this brilliant story-teller; for the Sultana required the aid of wonderful incident and romantic adventure, whereas this modern gentlewoman needed nothing but life, of which she was so profound and unpretending a student. I have never known a gift like hers, except far off in the person of another Scotch gentlewoman, unknown to fame, of whom I have been used to say that I remembered the incidents of her youth far more vividly than my own. The story of the cocks and hens above referred to is a very good illustration both of the narrator and her gift, though I cannot pretend to give it the high dramatic completeness, the lively comic force of the original. There is another incident of a similar character mentioned in these Reminiscences, when the heroic remedy of renting the house next door in order to get rid of the fowls was seriously thought of. But in the case which she used to tell, there were serious complications. The owners of the poultry were women-alas, not of a kind to be recognized as neighbors. How it came about that members of this unfortunate class should have domiciled themselves next door to the severe philosopher in the blameless atmosphere of Cheyne Row I cannot tell; but there they were, in full possession. Nor do I remember how they discovered that Mr. Carlyle's rest, always so precarious, was rendered altogether impossible by the inhabitants of their little fowl-house. When, however, a night or two of torture had driven the household frantic, this intelligence was somehow conveyed to the dwellers next door; and the most virtuous of neighbors could not have behaved more nobly. That very evening a cab drove up to the door, and, all the inhabitants crowding to the windows to see the exodus-a cackling and frightened procession of fowls was driven, coaxed, and carried into it, and sent away with acclamations. Mrs. Carlyle pondered for some time what to do, but finally decided that it was her duty to call and thank the author of this magnanimous sacrifice. Entirely fearless of remark by nature, past the age, and never of the temperament to be alarmed by any idea. of indecorum, she was also, it must be allowed, a little curious about these extraordinary neighbors. She found a person noted among her kind, a bright and capable creature, as she described her, with sleeves rolled up on her round arms making a pie! almost, one would have said, a voucher of respectability: who accepted her thanks with simplicity and showed no alarm at the sight of her. * It was characteristic that any thought of missionary usefulness, of persuading the cheerful and handsome sinner to abandon her evil life, never seems for a moment to have suggested itself. Was it something of that disgust with the hollowness of the respectable, and indignant sense of the depths that underlie society, and are glossed over by all decorous chroniclers, which appears in everything her husband wrote, that produced this strange impartiality? It would be hard to say; but she was a much closer student of actual life than he, and with a scorn beyond words for impurity, which to her was the most impossible thing in life, had sufficient experience of its existence elsewhere to give her something of a cynical indifference to this more honest turpitude. She went with no intention of judging or criticising, but with a frank gratitude for service done, and (it cannot be denied) a little curiosity, to see how life under such circumstances was made possible. And there must have been perceptions (as the visitor perceived) in the other woman; she showed her gratitude for this human treatment of her by taking herself and her household off instantly into more congenial haunts. Even this incident, so small as it is, will show how little in her characteristic force such a woman is represented by Carlyle's compunctions, tender apostrophes to his "little darling." The newspaper tributes to his "gentle wife," and the “feminine softness" which she shed about him, which abounded at the time of her death, struck me with a sort of scorn and pain as more absurdly conventional and fictitious, in reference to her, than any blind panegyrics I had ever heard the sort of adjectives which are applied indiscriminately, whether the subject of them is a heroic Alcestis or a mild housewife. It was to the former, rather than the latter, character that Mrs. Carlyle belonged, notwithstanding the careful orderliness of which * I have been told a most characteristic anecdote on this point; how returning one evening alone from a friend's house, in her dauntless way, she was accosted, being then a young and pretty woman, by some man in the street. She looked at him with, one can well imagine what immeasurable scorn, uttered the one word" Idiot!" and went upon her way. her husband was so proud-the gracefulness and fitness with which she made her home beautiful, of which he brags with many a tender repetition and that fine gift of household economy which carried them safe through all their days of struggle. Her endless energy, vivacity, and self-control, her mastery over circumstances, and undaunted acceptance for her own part in life of that mingled office of protector and dependant, which to a woman conscious of so many powers must have been sometimes bitter if sometimes also sweet-it is perhaps beyond the power of words to set fully forth. It is a position less uncommon than people are aware of; and the usual jargon about gentle wives and feminine influences is ludicrously inapplicable in cases where the strongest of qualities and the utmost force of character are called into play. Equally inadequate, but far more touching, are those prolonged maunderings (forgive, oh Master revered and venerable, yet foolish too in your greatness as the rest of us!) of her distracted and desolate husband over his Jeanie, which one loves him the better for having poured forth in sacred grief and solitude, like heaped-up baskets of flowers, never too many or too sweet, over her grave, but which never should have been produced to the common eye by way of showing other generations and strange circles what this woman was. It will never now in all likelihood be known what she was, unless her letters, which we are promised, and the clearer sight of Mr. Carlyle's biographer accomplish it for us a--hope which would have been almost certainty but for this publication, which makes us tremble lest Mr. Froude should have breathed so long the same atmosphere as the great man departedto whom he has acted the part of the best of sons-as to blunt his power of judgment, and the critical perception, which in such a case is the highest proof of love. Doubtless he felt Carlyle's own utterances too sacred to tamper with. We can only with all our hearts regret the natural but unfortunate superstition. It has been said that these Reminiscences are full of compunction. Here is one of the most distinct examples of the husband's inadvertence-so common, so daily recurring-an inadvertence of |