purse, which he was quite ready to share with his younger brother, John.

Carlyle had performed some rather notable literary work. Foremost among this was the Life of Schiller, which came out at first in separate numbers of the London Magazine, and not long after as a volume by itself. This deserves some notice as being the first book by Carlyle. It is by no means a great work. Twenty years afterward, when he put forth a second edition, much enlarged, he styled it "an insignificant Book; very imperfect but also very harmless; one which can innocently instruct those who are more ignorant than itself." The closing paragraphs of this Life of Schiller are, however, among the noblest things ever written by Carlyle.

THE CAREER OF SCHILLER.

On the whole, we may pronounce him happy. His days passed in the contemplation of ideal grandeur, he lived among the glories and solemnities of universal Nature; his thoughts were of sages and heroes and scenes of Elysian beauty. It is true he had no rest, no peace; but he enjoyed the fiery consciousness of his own activity, which stands in place of it for men like him. It is true he was long sickly; but did he not even then conceive and body forth Max Piccolomini, and The Maid of Orleans, and the scenes of Wilhelm Tell. It is true he died early; but the student will exclaim with Charles XII. in another case, "Was it not enough of life when he had conquered Kingdoms?" These Kingdoms which Schiller conquered were not from one nation at the expense of suffering to another; they were soiled by no patriot's blood, no widow's, no orphan's tear : they are Kingdoms conquered from the barren realms of Darkness, to increase the happiness, and dignity, and power of all men new forms of Faith, new maxims of VOL. V.-15

Wisdom, new images of Beauty "won from the void and formless Infinite : a "possession forever" to all the generations of the earth.-Life of Schiller.

The translation of Wilhelm Meister was completed in 1824. For it Carlyle received £180 upon the publication of the first edition; if a second edition was called for, he was to be paid £250 more for 1,000 copies; the work after that to be his own absolute property. No second edition was for a long time called for; "but," he says, "any way, I am sufficiently paid for my labor." In the Summer of 1824 Carlyle went to London for the first time, having been invited by Mrs. Buller to resume the tutorship of her sons; but nothing came of this proposition. Carlyle's visit to London lasted until the next January, during which time he made a flying trip to Paris. This and two visits to Germany, of a month each, long after, when he was writing his Life of Frederick, were the only occasions upon which Carlyle ever set foot outside the British Islands. Upon this visit to London Carlyle renewed his intimacy with Irving; met with many of the literary celebrities of the day-of whom he speaks in an altogether disparaging way; and made arrangements with publishers for several works, prominent among which were a series of translations which were published next year in four volumes under the title Specimens of German Romance.

Carlyle had in the meanwhile become engaged to Jane Welsh. The engagement was once or twice nearly broken off, owing mainly to Carlyle's impracticable humors. He would not make his

home with the mother of Miss Welsh, nor should she have a home with him and her daughter. He said: "I cannot live in a house of which I am not head; I should be miserable, and make all about me miserable." But the disputes were smoothed over, and Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh were married in October, 1826, he being thirty-one and she six years younger. They took up their residence at Comely Bank, in the suburbs of Edinburgh, in a little house the rent of which was paid by Mrs. Welsh, who also provided the necessary furnishing. Carlyle had now about £200 in cash, with a reasonable prospect of earning a moderate subsistence by his pen.

The eighteen months of their residence at Comely Bank appears to have been the happiest period in the joint lives of Carlyle and his wife. Jane Carlyle-delicately reared-developed the rare faculty, which she retained ever afterward, of making a little go a great way, as it soon became needful to do, for the book-trade was in a very depressed state. The Life of Schiller, Wilhelm Meister, and the German Romance went off slowly, and publishers were not disposed to make new ventures in the direction to which Carlyle's work had tended. He tried to strike out some new path. He began a novel, but threw it up, after writing a few chapters. He projected a Literary Annual Register, to be edited and mainly written by himself; but no bookseller would risk money in its publication. With Carlyle it was all outgo and no income, and his £200 were rapidly being eaten up. Before long he reverted to an

idea which had been before considered and laid aside. This was that they should take up their residence at Craigenputtock ("Hawkscliff"), a wild moorland farm belonging to Mrs. Carlyle (or, at present to her mother), the tenant of which was about to be dispossessed, not being able to pay his rent. "Here," urged Carlyle, "I can have my horse, pure milk-diet, and go on with lit erature and my life-task generally in the absolute solitude and pure silence of Nature, with nothing but loving and helpful faces around me." His wife at last consented, and the movement was

decided upon. Alexander Carlyle, a younger

brother of Thomas, was to take the farm and manage it. He actually went there in May, 1827; his brother and wife expected to follow soon.

But just then things took a new turn. Carlyle received an introduction to Jeffrey, who asked him to contribute to the Edinburgh Review. The next number was nearly all printed; but there was yet space for a short article, and Carlyle wrote the paper on Richter, which appeared in October, 1827, being the first of Carlyle's contributions to the Edinburgh Review; and the subjects of future papers were agreed upon. Jeffrey remained ever afterward a stanch friend of the Carlyles. Something of this is doubtless to be attributed to the honest admiration which the dapper elderly literary autocrat (Jeffrey was several years beyond fifty) formed for the bright, clever Jane Carlyle. Quite as much is to be attributed to his high estimate of the genius of Carlyle himself: an estimate all the higher that

Jeffrey never could quite understand Carlyle. Carlyle also found in the Foreign Review a market for several other papers upon themes connected with German literature. In March, 1828, he wrote to his brother:

EDINBURGH versus CRAIGENPUTTOCK.

This Edinburgh is getting more and more agreeable to me-more and more a sort of home; and I can live in it, if I like to live perpetually unhealthy, and strive forever against becoming a hack; for that I cannot be. On the other hand, I should have liberty and solitude for all I like best among the moors; only Jane-though, like a good wife, she says nothing-seems more and more averse to the whole enterprise.

The matter was, however, decided for them, not by them. Carlyle dallied about renewing his lease of Comely Bank, and the owner leased the house to another tenant. The Carlyles had to leave, and Craigenputtock was still open to them. To Craigenputtock they went, arriving there near the close of May, 1828. Of this new home of theirs Mr. Froude says:

FROUDE'S DESCRIPTION OF CRAIGENPUTTOCK.

Craigenputtock is the dreariest spot in all the British dominions. The nearest cottage is more than a mile from it. The elevation-700 feet above the sea-stunts the trees, and limits the garden-produce to the hardiest vegetables. The house is gaunt and hungry-looking. It stands, with the scanty fields attached, as an island in a sea of morass; the landscape, unredeemed by either grace or grandeur, mere undulating hills of grass. and heather, with peat-bogs in the hollows between them. The belts of firs, which now relieve the eye, were scarcely planted when the Carlyles took possession. The Spring is late in Scotland. In May, on the