itself why his letters should bo dotainod and opened." Whereupon Carlyle spontaneously stopped into the arena and paid the following tribute to his friend's character: 66 SIR, "To the Editor of The Times. "In your observations in yesterday's Times on the late disgraceful affair of Mr. Mazzini's letters and the Secretary Mazzini. of State, you mention that Mr. Mazzini is entirely unknown to you, entirely indifferent to you; and add, very justly, that if he were the most contemptible of mankind, it would not affect your argument on the subject. "It may tend to throw farther light on this matter if I now certify you, which I in some sort feel called upon to do, that Mr. Mazzini is not unknown to various competent persons in this country; and that he is very far indeed from being contemptible-noue farther, or very few of living meu. I have had the honour to know Mr. Mazzini for a series of years; and, whatever I may think of his practical insight and skill in worldly affairs, I can with great freedom testify to all men that he, if I have ever seen one such, is a man of genius and virtue, a man of sterling veracity, humanity, and nobleness of mind; one of those rare men, numerable unfortunately but as units in this world, who are worthy to be called martyr-souls; who, in silence, piously in their daily life, understand and practise what is meant by that. "Of Italian democracies and young Italy's sorrows, of extraneous Austrian Emperors in Milan, or poor old chimerical Popes in Bologna, I know nothing, and desire to know nothing; but this other thing I do know, and can here declare publicly to be a fact, which fact all of us that have occasion to comment on Mr. Mazzini and his affairs may do well to take along with us, as a thing leading towards new clearness, and not towards new additional additional darkness, regarding him and them. "Whether the extraneous Austrian Emperor and miserable old chimera of a Pope shall maintain themselves in Italy, or be obliged to decamp from Italy, is not a question in the least vital to Englishmen. But it is a question vital to us that sealed letters in an English postoffice be, as we all fancied they were, respected as things sacred; that opening of men's letters, a practice near of kin to picking men's pockets, and to other still viler and far fataller forms of scoundrelism, be not resorted to in England, except in cases of the very last extremity. When some new Gunpowder Plot may be in the wind, some double-dyed high treason, or imminent national wreck not avoidable otherwise, then let us open letters-not till then. "To all Austrian Kaisers and such like, in their time of trouble, let us answer, as our fathers from of old have answered:-Not by such means is help here for you. Such means, allied to picking of pockets and viler forms of scoundrelism, are not permitted in this country for your behoof. The right hon. Secretary does himself detest such, and even is afraid to employ them. He dare not: it would be dangerous for him! All British men that might chance to come in view of such a transaction, would incline to spurn it, and trample on it, and indignantly ask him what he meant by it? "I am, Sir, "Chelsea, June 18." "Your obedient Servant, "THOMAS CARLYLE. We saw a little while back how Carlyle wrote to Charles Dickens in 1842, during the visit of the latter to America. Their intimacy seems to have increased during the two succeeding years, • The Times, Wednesday, June 19th, 1844. if we are to judge from such evidence as the following. Mr. Forster writes: "The last incident before Dickens's departure for Italy (July 1844) was a farewell dinner to him at Greenwich. Carlyle and Carlyle did not come; telling me in his reply to the invitation that he truly loved Dickens, having discerned in the inner man of him a real music of the genuine kind; but that he'd rather testify to this in some other form than that of dining out in the dog-days." Poor John Sterling (Carlyle's closest friend, perhaps, during this first decade of his London life) was now gradually fading away. On 1st September 1844 Sterling writes:-"There was a note from Carlyle not long since, I think the noblest and tenderest thing that ever came from human pen." On the 18th of the same month he passed away from life, in his Death of John thirty-ninth year. It was not till some time afterwards that Carlyle was led by circumstances to undertake the task of writing his biography. Of that in its proper place. In the October number of Fraser for this year (1844) appeared Carlyle's paper, "An Election to the Long Parliament,"-a side matter con • Forster's Life of Dickens, vol. ii. p. 86. ↑ Hare, vol. i. p. 216. nected with the great Cromwell work which he was now nigh on finishing. This autumn, too, there came out in an English edition a second series of Emerson's Essays, to which Carlyle prefixed a prefatory notice, much briefer than the former one, but very characteristic, and well worth quoting :— Preface to second series Essays. "Here is a new volume of Essays by Emerson; concerning which I am to certify that this English edition of them seems to be correctly printed; that the of Emerson's English publisher is one appointed by the author himself, and is under contract with him as to the pecuniary results. To Emerson's readers in England I am to certify so much; leaving the inference from it to their own honourable and friendly thought. To unauthorized reprinters, and adventurous spirits inclined to do a little in the pirate line, it may be proper to recal the known fact, which should be very present to us all without recalling, that theft in any sort is abhorrent to the mind of mau;-that theft is theft, under whatever meridian of longitude, in whatever'nation,' foreign or domestic, the man stolen from may live; and whether there be any treadmill and gallows for the thief, or no apparatus of that kind! Such suggestion may perhaps have its weight with |