custom; whereupon Carlyle led the way into the garden, and said, as he offered the pipe and tobacco :

HIGH TARIFFS AND SMUGGLING.

"People in moderate circumstances in this country can not afford to offer their friends a good cigar, and I suppose only what you would consider very middling tobacco. The Government finds it needful to have such a revenue that it must needs lay a tax of some hundreds per cent. upon the poor man's pipe, while the rich man's glass of wine pays scarcely one-tenth of this impost. But I learn that there is as much tobacco smuggled into England as pays the duty. Thus, as you see, it is as it ever will be when the laws are unjust and onerous; for the Smuggler is the Lord Almighty of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, saying to him, 'Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed.'"

After a long "flash of brilliant silence,” occupied in pipe-devotion, Carlyle inquired, “You are a Wesleyan, Sir, I understand?" "I am; or rather, as we are called in America, a Methodist."

METHODISM.

"I must tell you, Sir," said Carlyle, "that I have ceased to think as highly of that people as I used to do. It was formerly my fortune, whenever I went to service, to attend their chapels. We've a queer place in this country called the Derbyshire Peaks; and I was there some years ago for a part of the summer, and went on the Lord's day to the Wesleyan chapel; and a man got

up and preached with extraordinary fluency and vehemence, and I was astonished at his eloquence. And they told me that he was a nail-maker; that he wrought six days in the week with his own hands for his daily bread, and preached upon the seventh without charge. And when he had ended, another man came forward and prayed; and I was greatly moved by the unction of his prayer. And they told me that he was a rope-maker, and that he toiled as the other.

"But the sum and end of all the fluency and vehemence of the sermon, and of all the fervor of the prayer, was: 'Lord, save us from hell!' and I went away musing, sick at heart, saying to myself: 'My good fellows, why all this bother and noise? If it be God's will, why not go and be damned in quiet, and say never a word about it? And I, for one, would think far better of you.' So it seemed to me that your Wesleyans made cowards; and I would have no more to do with their praying and their preaching."

In quite another vein was the next outburst. The conversation happened to turn upon the associations connected with that quarter of London; whereupon Carlyle said:

FRANKLIN'S SWIMMING-SCHOOL.

"Well, Sir, this part of the town, I think, should have an interest for people from your side of the water, for it has associations connected with a certain countryman of yours named Benjamin Franklin. When he was toiling as a journeyman printer in the metropolis, more than a century ago, he was accustomed to stroll upon the Sunday afternoon along the banks of Father Thames,

and this end of this Cheyne Row was usually his goal. One day, as he walked discoursing with a friend, he declared himself able to swim from here to London Bridge, distant about five miles. His friend offered a wager that it was impossible; and he, upon the instant stripping, plunged boldly in, and started for his mark, while his friend, bearing the clothes, strode down the bank; and a great multitude of spectators, growing ever greater as he proceeded, followed to see the feat.

"He, with brave stroke and lusty sinew buffeting the tide, gained the bridge and the wager. Whereupon, amidst great acclamations, the people suggested that he should start a swimming-school. But God had other work for him to do: for in later years he was to teach the people of your continent how, by Frugality and Labor, and Patience and Courage, any man might buffet the waves of Fortune, and swim straight on to prosperity and success. And that was the swimming-school which he was to establish."

These "table-talks" which Milburn has reproduced took place in about 1860, when Carlyle had reached the age of three-score and five. A Scottish journalist, not many years before, gave a penand-ink picture of the outward aspect of the man, which we give, with much abridgment: "The long spare figure is before me, wiry too and elastic, stretched at careless ease in his elbowchair, yet ever with strong natural motions and starts, as the inward spirit stirs. The face too is before me-long and thin, with a certain tinge of paleness, but no sickness or attenuation; pensive,

almost solemn, yet open and cordial and tender. The eye, as generally happens, is the chief outward index of the soul-an eye not easy to describe, but felt even after one has looked thereon and therein. It is dark and full, shadowed over by a compact and prominent forehead. The expression is, so to speak, heavy-laden-as if betokening untold burdens of thought, and long fiery struggles resolutely endured-endured until they had been in some practical manner overcome. The whole form and expression remind one of Dante. It wants the classic element and the mature and matchless harmony which distinguish the countenance of the great Florentine. something in the cast and the look, especially in the heavy-laden but dauntless eye, is very much alike. Thus does the presence of Thomas Carlyle rise before me."

But

Few faces are better known from engravings than that of Thomas Carlyle. Beginning from about 1834, when Count D'Orsay sketched his likeness making him look almost like a dandy, or when his portrait appeared among the contributors to "Fraser's Magazine," seated at a banquet given by Maginn, its clever punch-loving editor, down to our own day, when we see him shaggy and bowed by age and infirmity, a considerable gallery of Carlyle portraits might be collected from the illustrated newspapers. In late days until the weight of years pressed heavily upon him,

his tall gaunt figure, in a long, brown, horn-buttoned coat, and broad-brimmed slouched felt hat, with a huge walking-stick in his hand, might often be seen in the quiet streets which surrounded his house in London, as late at night he took his meditative constitutional walk under the stars; for his days were given to hard and persistent work, and he was ever loath to be intruded upon. Travelers of a literary turn, especially from this side of the water, often pressed themselves upon him. These he was wont to receive courteously, although he once complained bitterly of a certain "blatherskite American who has taken away from me two mortal hours which I shall never get back to all eternity." His "Life of Frederick" was then upon his hands, and a man thus engaged could ill afford to lose two hours.

A residence of more than forty years in London has not modified the strong Scottish enunciation which Carlyle brought with him from his native Dumfriesshire. The vowels come out broad and full; the gutturals--which are so sadly clipped in modern English speech, depriving it of all masculine vigor-have their due prominence. His manner in talking is striking and peculiar ; now bursting into Titanic laughter at some odd conceit; now swelling into fierce wrath at some meanness or wrong; now sinking into low tones of the tenderest pathos; but running through all is a rhythmic flow, a sustained recitative, like that