*

"Tak a Gude Look at Him!"

349 while the banker addressed the lady, explaining how, as she had so distinguished a visitor, he could not resist taking the liberty of coming up, in the hope that he might have the great honour of seeing her guest. Thereupon Carlyle, who had heard all that was passing, turned round, and, addressing the hero-worshipper in his most sarcastic tone, said, "Weel, noo that you are here, be sure and tak' a gude look at him! Be sure that you'll ken him the next time you see him!" The poor banker was glad to get out of the great man's presence as quickly as possible. The coachman who daily drove Carlyle out in Stirlingshire that year, kept a careful record of all the places and distances. He was suffered to pass no mansion or scene of a striking character, without giving a complete account of it to the lively octogenarian; and when he happened to be in ignorance as to its name, etc., he was obliged to pull up and receive an elaborate rebuke for his unpardonable ignorance. One evening, in another part of the country, Carlyle was present at a social party, where the old homely custom of calling on each member of the company for a song, or, failing that, a story, was observed. A learned minister of the Kirk, who, under a veil of the most perfect pastoral gravity, carries a rich fund of quaint humour, sang the old ballad, "Oor gude

* A kindred story is current in Chelsea. While Carlyle was one morning taking his customary walk, a well dressed man approached him, with the question, "Are you really the great Thomas Carlyle, author of the French Revolution?" "I am Thomas Carlyle," was the reply, “and I have written a history of the French Revolution." “Indeed! Pray pardon a stranger for speaking to you; but I was so anxious to have a look at you.' "Look on, man!" quoth the philosopher, as he resumed his walk; "look on! it will do me no harm, and you no good."

man cam' hame at e'en, and hame cam' he," and gave the piece with a naïveté which charmed the sage, who asked to have it over again. Many a year had passed since he last heard the song, and it touched the spring of old memories. A few days afterwards he met the reverend vocalist on a country road, and gave his hearty greeting as they neared each other by merrily chanting the first line of his song. It seems to have been the clergy of the Establishment he came most into contact with during these visits to Scotland; he thought the Secession Kirk was not now what it had been in his young days, and as for the other great Presbyterian denomination, his favourite formula when describing it was, "That compendium of all righteousness, the Free Kirk !" From which we may infer that he had no excessive liking for it.

He was in his 84th year when he paid his last visit to his native country; and on this occasion he went thither for the purpose of being present at the marriage of the niece who had acted as his amanuensis and housekeeper during the whole of his widowed life. The bridegroom was one of her Canadian cousins, Mr Alexander Carlyle, B.A., of Bield, Brentfield, Ontario. The marriage ceremony, which took place on August 21, 1879, according to the Scottish custom, was performed in the house of the bride's father, Mr James Aitken, of The Hill, Dumfries, always one of his homes when he visited Scotland; and after the ceremony Carlyle, who was in excellent health and spirits, entered into conversation with the officiating clergyman, the Rev. James A. Campbell, parish minister of Troqueer, remarking, with tears, that he felt grateful to Almighty God for having spared him so many years. He

At his Niece's Wedding.

351

also spoke of the work of John Knox, and of his being monumentally commemorated. Mr Campbell was deeply impressed with the Christian earnestness of the illustrious veteran. The newly-married pair took up their residence at Chelsea under the same roof with their venerated relative. He had become so habituated to the gentle ministrations of his niece that her departure from the home which her presence had brightened for upwards of twelve years was a simple impossibility. Before his death there was, to the great delight of the old man, another Thomas Carlyle in the Chelsea home.

CHAPTER XXIII.

CHELSEA ANECDOTES- JENNY KISSED ME"-NOISE AND NOCTURNAL WALKING—A RUSKIN EPISODE-PEOPLE'S EDITION OF HIS WORKS-LITERARY ANA-THE BOOTMAKER AND THE TANNER SHARP SAYINGS-HIS THOUGHTS ON MAZZINI'S DEATH-OFFICIAL HONOURS -A SCOTTISH SCHOOLBOY'S VISIT-HIS LAST YEAR— DEATH OF CARLYLE.

MANY are the stories, humorous and pathetic, that cluster round No. 5 Cheyne Row. One of the prettiest is that relating to Leigh Hunt's graceful little poem, "Jenny Kissed Me!" Poor Hunt had come one day in hot haste to the Carlyles, to tell them of some rare bit of good fortune that had just happened either to himself or them; whereupon Mrs Carlyle sprang from her chair, threw her arms about the old poet's neck, and gave him a cordial kiss; hence the poem. That Carlyle was exceedingly sensitive to noise has been already attested by the fact that at Edinburgh the Erskines were obliged to stop the clock in his chamber while he was thinking out his Rectorial address. In the graphic sketch of Carlyle in his London home in the Englische Charakterbilder, Berlin, 1860, by Dr Frederick Althaus, one of the German translators of Carlyle's Frederick, an account is given of the historian's workshop-a large noise-proof chamber forming the top storey of the house, which he built specially for the purpose of securing quiet and

Nocturnal Walking.

353

freedom from interruption. A lady residing close by kept Cochin China fowls, whose crowing was such a nuisance that Carlyle sent in a complaint. But the message of the philosopher only moved her to indignation. "Why," she exclaimed, "the fowls only crow four times a day, and how can Mr Carlyle be seriously annoyed at that ?" "The lady forgets," was his rejoinder, "the pain I suffer in waiting for those four crows." Like Dean Swift, Christopher North, Charles Dickens, and some other eminent men of letters, Carlyle was a great nocturnal pedestrian before the infirmities of old age crept upon him. His favourite beat was the riverside district in which he dwelt; he carried an enormous stick on these occasions, and walked with his eyes fixed on the ground. He kept to this habit all through the time of the garotting panic, though friends warned him that the History of Frederick, on which he was then engaged, might be suddenly cut short some night if he did not give up his midnight rambles. This walking was his specific for procuring sleep. Mr Ruskin once sent a letter to the papers on the subject of the alleged bad manners of the English people, as compared with those of the continental nations; and he stated, as an illustration of this, that Carlyle could not walk out in the streets of Chelsea without being subjected to insult by the "roughs" of that region. Carlyle at once wrote to say that there was no truth in the allegation; in fact, he penned no fewer than three notes contradicting the report, an exhibition of candour that did not pass without comment, especially among those who could recall the time when Carlyle was wont to sally forth on horseback every Wednesday