we have been told by leading journalists that it was the manuscript of the first volume to which the disaster befell, and that what became of it was never exactly known. "Mrs Taylor," according to the Times, "left it for some days on her writing table; when wanted, it could nowhere be found; and the most probable explanation of its disappearance was the suggestion that a servant had used the manuscript to light the fire. Carlyle at once set to work to reproduce from his notes the lost volume. He swiftly finished his task, but he always thought that the first draft was the best." Another journal, labouring under the same misconception as to its being the initial volume that was destroyed, says: "The author bravely passed the matter off with some soothing pleasantry, and sat down and re-wrote the whole piece, page by page, from memory. It was a terrible effort, but the struggle brought its reward, for of the three volumes it has often been noticed there is none that can match with the first for intensity of feeling, concentration of thought, directness of statement, and compressed wealth of picturesque description." Thus each authority has a quite different story to tell; yet the perplexed reader is not without consolation when he finds the obvious fiction furnishing a good moral which the fact refuses to yield.

CHAPTER XIII.

ENTERS THE FIELD OF CONTEMPORARY POLITICS-HIS "CHARTISM"-THE STUDENT'S VOCATION—HIS "HEROWORSHIP "-GODWIN'S IDEA-" PAST AND PRESENT -MAZZINI'S ESSAY CARLYLE'S DEFENCE OF THE EXILE-SWINBURNE AND MACLEOD CAMPBELL-THE LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS."

WITH the lectures and the collection of the multitudinous materials for a history of the French Revolution, to say nothing of the passing through the press of Sartor and the arranging of the first English edition of the Miscel lanies-a vigilant eye being meanwhile kept on Cromwell and the great Puritan struggle-it might be supposed that these opening years at Chelsea were sufficiently crowded with work. But before the close of 1839 we find the diligent worker, now at the very height of his productive power, breaking ground in quite a new direction by the publication of his little volume on Chartism, which was issued from the press of James Fraser. True, it may be described as a pamphlet rather than a book; and it partook of the character of journalistic work, discussing the political questions of the day. To very many of his warmest admirers, brought bitter disappointment-such as afterwards came to his orthodox readers, in ecstacies over his Cromwell when that apparently Calvinistic biography was suc

ceeded by the Life of John Sterling, a bombshell which suddenly turned their joy into mourning. Close students of Sartor had fancied that the man who wrote it was a Radical Reformer; and so he was, doubtless, but not in their sense. On none of the movements in which they were then engaged with a view to heal the diseases of the body politic, did he bestow the slightest word of encouragement; on the contrary, he spoke of them all-their demands for an extended suffrage, and other popular agitations-with absolute contempt. Its assault upon the governing classes was too strong to win for Chartism the approval of the Tory press; and the maxims laid down in it, distinctly favouring a despotic rule as hard and mechanical as that of the Pharaohs, were condemned with entire unanimity by the Liberal journals. Both parties were at one in regarding the somewhat sulphurous little book as totally unpractical in its character. Now, however, while we detect in those fiery pages the germs of a theory of government that is antagonistic to our Constitutional system, even the staunchest Radical must admit that two, if not three, beneficial ideas of great practical importance were by that book first forced upon the attention of the public, two at least of them taking root with ultimate production of good fruit that we are happily enjoying, or about to enjoy, to-day. The most prominent of these three ideas came at once to be formulated under the title of the Condition of England Question, which doubtless had its origin in the indignant appeals of that pamphlet. The two fundamental remedies for the most pressing national wants on which Carlyle insisted were Universal Education and General Emigration. He lived to see that his

The Vocation of the Student.

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advocacy of the former had not been in vain; but his notions with respect to the latter have not yet been permitted to enter what is called, in the cant language of our day, the domain of practical politics. The Adminstrative Reform movement, unhappily abortive, and which still remains to be taken up in right earnest, may also be said to date its birth from Carlyle's first raid into the field of politics. The "strong government" theory which he then promulgated was afterwards illustrated and enforced in forms that gave pain to all friends of Constitutional freedom; and a young poet of our time has attempted in one of his prose essays to account for the obvious degradation of Mr Carlyle's genius, as displayed in his later manifestoes, by laying down the principle that no student can enter the field of contemporary thought and action without incurring such a loss of sanity and power. It is the business of the student, this writer contends, to stand apart from the turmoil of his time-to seek, not contemporary but eternal truth; he is to regard the heavens, not to delve in the earth and unless he preserves this attitude of isolation, we are told that he is doomed to sink to the level of the bawling throng. We may be allowed to question the validity of this theory of the student's vocation when we look back to the days of Milton, the deepest thinker of his time and one of our two greatest poets, yet the right-hand man of Cromwell; when we see Dante not only going on embassies, but so mixing himself with the affairs of Florence as to secure banishment; when we call to mind the part played in politics by John Knox, who, far from being weakened by his active leadership in that stormy time, set a mark on his nation that cannot be effaced till that nation

has ceased to be. Emerson, whom this essayist admires for his power of self-isolation, has certainly shown no want of sympathy with the public movements of his age and nation. Though it has been the fashion to call him "the Hermit of Concord," he has never been backward in throwing himself into contemporary conflicts. Indeed, he has been more of a public man in America than Carlyle ever was in England. In the controversy which almost rent his country in twain he took a steady and consistent part, so that when the strife came to a close, and the victory had been won, his was the pen chosen to write the victor's hymn of praise for Emancipation:

"Pay ransom to the owner!

Fill the cup to the brim!

Who is the owner? The slave is owner,

And always was. Pay him!"

With all deference to Mr Robert Buchanan, we are constrained, by the experience of the past as well as by the fundamental principles on which society is based, to decline acceptance of his postulate. The student, to do his highest work, must not withdraw himself from that conflict of which "only God and the angels can be the spectators." Not a few of our best men of thought at this moment, as in the past, are robust men of action. The author of the Reign of Law, is he not the most powerful orator in the House of Lords and an active administrator? Mr Gladstone, like the late Lord Derby, is one of our most accomplished scholars. John Stuart Mill's too brief presence in the Parliamentary arena, and his constant political activity out of it, inflicted no injury on the powerful mind or on the calm temper of that philosopher. It is not in his descent to mingle in the con