cess. He translated Legendre's Geometry from the French, prefixing a valuable Introduction; translated Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister," and several volumes of tales from the German; and wrote for Encyclopædias, Reviews, and Magazines. At thirty he married Jane Welch, whose moderate fortune relieved him from the necessity of doing task-work for his daily bread. In 1828 he took up his abode at Craigenputtoch, a lonely estate among the granite hills and black morasses which stretch westward through Galloway almost to the Irish Sea. In a letter to Goethe he describes the reasons which led him to take up his abode in this solitary spot, and his mode of life there:

"In this wilderness of heath and rock our estate stands forth a green oasis, a tract of plowed, partly inclosed and planted ground, where corn ripens and trees afford a shade, although surrounded by sea-mews and rough-wooled sheep. Here, with no small effort, have we built and furnished a neat and substantial dwelling; here, in the absence of professional or other office, we live to cultivate literature according to our strength, and in our own peculiar way. We wish a joyful growth to the roses and flowers of our garden; we hope for health and peaceful thoughts to further our aims. This nook of ours is the loneliest in Britain, six miles removed from any one who would be likely to visit me. But I came with the design to simplify my way of life, and to secure the independence through which I could be enabled to remain true to myself. Nor is the solitude of so great importance, for a stage-coach takes me speedily to Edin

burgh. And have I not too, at this moment, piled up upon the table of my little library, a whole cart-load of French, German, American, and English periodicals— whatever may be their worth!"

At Craigenputtoch, during the six years preceding Emerson's visit, were written the greater part and certainly the best of those critical and biographical essays which showed him to be "the latest and strongest contributor to the critical journals." Unlike Coleridge and Wordsworth, the aspect and bearing of the man more than confirmed the high estimate which Emerson had formed of the writer. He describes this first meeting :

CARLYLE AT CRAIGENPUTTOCH.

"From Edinburgh I went to the Highlands. On my return I came from Glasgow, to Dumfries, intent on delivering a letter which I had brought from Rome, and inquired for Craigenputtoch. It was a farm in Nithsdale, in the parish of Dunscore, sixteen miles distant. No public coach passed near it, so I took a private carriage from the inn. I found the lonely house amid desolate heathery hills, where the lonely scholar nourished his mighty heart. Carlyle was a man from his youth; an author who did not need to hide from his readers; and as absolute a man of the world, unknown and exiled on that hill-farm, as if holding on his own terms what was best in London.

"He was tall and gaunt, with a cliff-like brow; holding his extraordinary powers in easy control; clinging to his northern accent with evident relish; full of lively

anecdote, and with a streaming humor which floated everything he looked upon. His talk, playfully exalting the familiar objects, put the companion at once into acquaintance with his Lares and Lemurs, and it was very pleasant to learn what was destined to be a pretty mythology.

"Few were the objects, and lonely the man; 'not a person to speak to except the minister of Dunscore'; so that books universally made his topics. He had names of his own for all the matters familiar to his discourse. Blackwood's was the 'Sand Magazine'; Fraser's, a nearer approach to possibility of life, was the 'Mud Magazine.' A piece of road near by, that marked some failed enterprise, was the 'Grave of the Last Sixpence.' When too much praise of any genius annoyed him, he professed hugely to admire the genius of his pig. He had spent much time and contrivance in confining the poor beast to one enclosure of the pen; but pig, by a great stroke of judgment, had found out how to let a board down, and had foiled him. For all that, he still thought man 'the most plastic little fellow on the planet.' He liked Nero's death ('Qualis artifex pereo-What an artist do I die) better than most history. He worships a man that will manifest any truth to him. At one time he had inquired and read much about America, whither he had thoughts of emigrating. Landor's principle was mere rebellion, and that, he feared, was the American principle. The best thing he knew of the country was that in it a man can have meat for his labor. He had read in Stewart's book that, when he inquired in a New York hotel for 'Boots,' he had been shown across the street, and had found Mungo in his own house, dining on roast turkey.

"He talked of books. Plato he does not read, and he despised Socrates; and, when pressed, persisted in making Mirabeau a hero. Gibbon he called 'the splendid bridge from the old world to the new.' His own reading had been multifarious. 'Tristram Shandy' was one of his first books after 'Robinson Crusoe,' and Robertson's 'America' an early favorite. Rousseau's 'Confessions' had discovered to him that he was not a dunce. It was now ten years since he had learned German, by the advice of a man who told him that in that language he would find what he wanted. He took despairing or satirical views of literature at this moment; recounted the great sums paid in one year by the great booksellers for puffing. 'Hence it comes that no newspaper is trusted now; no books are bought, and the booksellers are on the verge of bankruptcy.'

"He still returned to English pauperism; the crowded state of the country, and the selfish abdication by public men of all that public persons should perform. 'Government,' he said, 'should direct poor men what to do. Poor Irish folk come wandering over these moors. My dame makes it a rule to give to every son of Adam bread to eat, and supplies his wants to the next house. But here are thousands of acres which might give them all meat; and nobody to bid these poor Irish to go to the moor and till it. They burned the stacks, and so found a way to force the rich people to attend to them.'

"We went to walk over the long hills, and looked at Criffel-then without his cap-and down into Wordsworth's country. There we sat down, and talked of the immortality of the soul. It was not Carlyle's fault that we talked on that topic; for he had the natural disinclination of every nimble spirit to bruise himself against

walls, and did not like to place himself where no step can be taken. But he was honest and true, and cognizant of the subtle links that bind ages together; and saw how every event affects the future. 'Christ,' he said, 'died on the tree; that built Dunscore yonder; that brought you and me together. Time has only relative existence.'

"He was already turning his eye toward London, with a scholar's appreciation. 'London,' he said, ‘is the heart of the world, wonderful only from the mass of human beings. I like the huge machine. Each keeps its own round. The baker's boy brings muffins to the window at a fixed hour every day; and that is all that the Londoner knows or wishes to know of the subject. But it turns out good men.' He named certain individuals, especially one man of letters, his friend, the best man he knew, whom London had well served.”

This first meeting with Carlyle, in 1833, brief as it was, resulted in a warm personal friendship which was never broken until Carlyle was laid in his grave four-and-forty years after. Emerson, by his collection of the "Sartor Resartus " papers, a few years later, was the first to fairly make Carlyle known upon this side of the Atlantic. Carlyle had vainly ransacked London to find a publisher who would print them in a book. The best that any bookseller's "reader" could say of it was, that "The author is a person of talent. His work displays, here and there, some felicity of thought and expression, considerable fancy and knowledge; but whether it would take with the