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be inhospitable and cruel, as often indeed happens to a tenderhearted, striving young creature, you will also find there are noble hearts who will look kindly on you; and their help will be precious to you beyond price. You will get good and evil as you go on, and have the success that has been appointed you.

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I will wind-up with a small bit of verse, which is from Goethe also, and has often gone through my mind. To me it has something of a modern psalm in it, in some measure. is deep as the foundations, deep and high, and it is true and clear:-no clearer man, or nobler and grander intellect has lived in the world, I believe, since Shakspeare left it. This is what the poet sings ;—a kind of road-melody or marching-music of mankind:

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Work, and despair not: Wir heissen euch hoffen, 'We bid you

be of hope!'-let that be my last word. Gentlemen, I thank you for your great patience in hearing me; and, with many most kind wishes, say Adieu for this time.

FINIS OF RECTORSHIP.-' Edinburgh University. Mr. Carlyle ex'Lord Rector of the University of Edinburgh, has been asked to deliver a valedictory address to the students, but has declined. The following ' is a copy of the correspondence.

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'2 S.-W. Circus Place, Edinburgh, 3d December 1868.

'SIR, On the strength of being Vice-President of the Com'mittee for your election as Lord Rector of the University of Edinburgh, I have been induced to write to you, in order to 'know if you will be able to deliver a Valedictory Address to 'the Students. Mr. Gladstone gave us one, and we fondly hope you will find it convenient to do so as well. Your Inaugural 'Address is still treasured up in our memories, and I am sure nothing could give us greater pleasure than once more to lis'ten to your words. I trust you will pardon me for this intrusion; and hoping to receive a favourable answer, I am, &c. 'A. ROBERTSON, M.A.

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'T. CARLYLE, ESQ.'

'Chelsea, 9th December 1868.

'DEAR SIR,—I much regret that a Valedictory Speech from me, in present circumstances, is a thing I must not think of. • Be pleased to assure the young Gentlemen who were so friendly

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' towards me, that I have already sent them, in silence, but with emotions deep enough, perhaps too deep, my loving Farewell, and that ingratitude, or want of regard, is by no means among 'the causes that keep me absent. With a fine youthful enthu'siasm, beautiful to look upon, they bestowed on me that bit ' of honour, loyally all they had; and it has now, for reasons one and another, become touchingly memorable to me,

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touchingly, and even grandly and tragically,—never to be forgotten for the remainder of my life.

'Bid them, in my name, if they still love me, fight the good fight, and quit themselves like men, in the warfare, to which they are as if conscript and consecrated, and which lies ahead.

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Tell them to consult the eternal oracles (not yet inaudible, nor ever to become so, when worthily inquired of); and to 'disregard, nearly altogether, in comparison, the temporary 'noises, menacings and deliriums. May they love Wisdom as Wisdom, if she is to yield her treasures, must be loved,'piously, valiantly, humbly, beyond life itself or the prizes of life, with all one's heart, and all one's soul:-in that case (I 'will say again), and not in any other case, it shall be well with ' them.

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'Adieu, my young Friends, a long adieu.

'Yours with great sincerity,

'A. ROBERTSON, ESQ."

'T. CARLYLE.

1 Edinburgh Newspapers of December 12-13, 1868.

SHOOTING NIAGARA: AND AFTER ?1

[August 1867.]

I.

THERE probably never was since the Heptarchy ended, or almost since it began, so hugely critical an epoch in the history of England as this we have now entered upon, with universal self-congratulation and flinging-up of caps; nor one in which, -with no Norman Invasion now ahead, to lay hold of it, to bridle and regulate it for us (little thinking it was for us), and guide it into higher and wider regions, the question of utter death or of nobler new life for the poor Country was so uncertain. Three things seem to be agreed upon by gods and men, at least by English men and gods; certain to happen, and are now in visible course of fulfilment.

1° Democracy to complete itself; to go the full length of its course, towards the Bottomless or into it, no power now extant to prevent it or even considerably retard it,―till we have seen where it will lead us to, and whether there will then be any return possible, or none. Complete "liberty" to all persons; Count of Heads to be the Divine Court of Appeal on every question and interest of mankind; Count of Heads to choose a Parliament according to its own heart at last, and sit with Penny Newspapers zealously watching the same; said Parliament, so chosen and so watched, to do what trifle of legislating and administering may still be needed in such an England, with its hundred-and-fifty millions 'free' more and more to follow each his own nose, by way of guide-post in this intricate world.

2° That, in a limited time, say fifty years hence, the Church, all Churches and so-called religions, the Christian Religion it1 Reprinted from Macmillan's Magazine, for August 1867. With some Additions and Corrections.

self, shall have deliquesced,—into "Liberty of Conscience," Progress of Opinion, Progress of Intellect, Philanthropic Movement, and other aqueous residues, of a vapid badly-scented character;—and shall, like water spilt upon the ground, trouble nobody considerably thenceforth, but evaporate at its leisure.

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3° That, in lieu thereof, there shall be Free Trade, in all senses, and to all lengths: unlimited Free Trade,-which some take to mean, Free racing, ere long with unlimited speed, in the career of Cheap and Nasty;'-this beautiful career, not in shop-goods only, but in all things temporal, spiritual and eternal, to be flung generously open, wide as the portals of the Universe; so that everybody shall start free, and everywhere, 'under enlightened popular suffrage,' the race shall be to the swift, and the high office shall fall to him who is ablest if not to do it, at least to get elected for doing it.

These are three altogether new and very considerable achievements, lying visibly ahead of us, not far off,—and so extremely considerable, that every thinking English creature is tempted to go into manifold reflections and inquiries upon them. My own have not been wanting, any time these thirty years past, but they have not been of a joyful or triumphant nature; not prone to utter themselves; indeed expecting, till lately, that they might with propriety lie unuttered altogether. But the series of events comes swifter and swifter, at a strange rate; and hastens unexpectedly,' velocity increasing' (if you will consider, for this too is as when the little stone has been loosened, which sets the whole mountain-side in motion) 'as the square of the time:' —so that the wisest Prophecy finds it was quite wrong as to date; and, patiently, or even indolently waiting, is astonished to see itself fulfilled, not in centuries as anticipated, but in decades and years. It was a clear prophecy, for instance, that Germany would either become honourably Prussian or go to gradual annihilation: but who of us expected that we ourselves, instead of our children's children, should live to behold it; that a magnanimous and fortunate Herr von Bismarck, whose dispraise was in all the Newspapers, would, to his own amazement, find the thing now doable; and would do it, do the essential of it, in a few of the current weeks? That England would have to take the Niagara leap of com

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