should be no biography, and that these letters and these letters alone should be the future record of him. Within a few weeks or months, however, he discovered that various persons who had been admitted to partial intimacy with him were busy upon his history. If he was to figure before the world at all after his death he preferred that there should be an authentic portrait of him; and therefore at the close of this same year (1873) again, without note or warning, he sent me his own and his wife's private papers, journals, correspondence, reminiscences,' and other fragments, a collection overwhelming from its abundance, for of his letters from the earliest period of his life his family and friends had preserved every one that he had written, while he in turn seemed to have destroyed none of theirs. Take them,' he said. ' and do what you can with them. All I can say to you is, Burn freely. If you have any affection for me, the more you burn the better.'

to me,

I burnt nothing, and it was well that I did not, for a year before his death he desired me, when I had done with these MSS. to give them to his niece. But indeed everything of his own which I found in these papers tended only to raise his character. They showed him, in all his outward conduct, the same noble, single-minded, simple-hearted, affectionate man which I myself had always known him to be; while his inner nature, with this fresh insight into it, seemed ever grander and more imposing.

The new task which had been laid upon me complicated the problem of the 'Letters and Memorials.' My first hope was, that, in the absence of further definite instructions from himself, I might interweave

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parts of Mrs. Carlyle's letters with his own correspondence in an ordinary narrative, passing lightly over the rest, and touching the dangerous places only so far as was unavoidable. In this view I wrote at leisure the greatest part of the first forty years of his life. The evasion of the difficulty was perhaps cowardly, but it was not unnatural. I was forced back, however, into the straighter and better course.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

A.D. 1872. ET. 77.

Weariness of life-History of the Norse Kings-Portrait of John Knox -Death of John Mill and the Bishop of Winchester-Mill and Carlyle Irish policy of Mr. Gladstone-The Prussian Order of Merit-Offer of the Grand Cross of the Bath-Why refused-Lord Beaconsfield and the Russo-Turkish war-Letter to the Times.'

CARLYLE lived on after this more easy in his mind, but otherwise weary and heavy laden'; for life, after he had lost the power of working, was become a mere burden to him. Often and often he spoke enviously of the Roman method of taking leave of it. He had read of a senator in Trajan's time who, slipping upon the pavement from infirmity, kissed the ground, exclaiming 'Proserpine, I come!' put his house in order, and ended. Greatly Carlyle approved of such a termination, and regretted that it was no longer permitted. He did not conceive, he said, that his Maker would resent the voluntary appearance before Him of a poor creature who had laboured faithfully at his task till he could labour no more. He made one more effort to produce something. He had all along admired the old Norsemen, hard of hand and true of speech, as the root of all that was noblest in the English nation. Even the Scandinavian gods were nearer to him than the Hebrew. With someone to write for him, he put together a sketch of the Norse

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kings. The stories, as he told them to me, set off by his voice and manner, were vigorous and beautiful; the end of Olaf Trygveson, for instance, who went down in battle into the fiord in his gilded armour. But the greater part of them were weakened by the process of dictation. The thing, when finished, seemed diluted moonshine, and did not please him.

Journal.

February 15, 1872.- Finished yesterday that long rigmarole upon the Norse Kings. Uncertain now what to do with it; if not at once throw it into the fire. It is worth nothing at all, has taught me at least how impossible the problem is of writing anything in the least like myself by dictation; how the presence of a third party between my thoughts and me is fatal to any process of clear thought.

He wrote also a criticism on the portraits of John Knox, in which he succeeded in demolishing the authority of the accepted likenesses, without, how ever, completely establishing that of another which he desired to substitute for them. He had great insight into the human face, and into the character which lay behind it.Aut Knox aut Diabolus,' he said, in showing me the new picture; if not Knox who can it be? A man with that face left his mark behind him. But physiognomy may be relied upon too far, and the outward evidence was so weak that in his stronger days he would not have felt so confident.

This, with an appendix to his 'Life of Schiller,' was the last of his literary labours. He never tried any thing again. The pencil entries in the Journal grew scantier, more illegible, and at last ceased altogether.

The will was resolute as ever, but the hand was powerless to obey. I gather up the fragments that remain.

July 12, 1872.-A long interval filled only with pitiful miseries and confusions best forgotten. Empty otherwise, except for here and there an hour of serious, penitent reflection, and of a sorrow which could be called loving, calm, and in some sort sacred and devout! Pure clear black amidst the general muddy gloom. Item, generally if attainable, two hours (after 10.30 P.M.) of reading in some really good bookShakespeare latterly-which amidst the silence of all the Universe is a useful and purifying kind of thing. Reminiscences too without limit. Of prospects nothing possible except what has been common to me with all wise old men since the world began. Close by lies the great secret, but impenetrable (is, was, and must be so) to terrestrial thoughts for evermore. Perhaps something! Perhaps not nothing, after all. God's will, there also, be supreme. If we are to meet! Oh, Almighty Father, if we are, but silence! silence!

The end of the summer of 1872 was spent at Seaton with Lady Ashburton, whose affectionate care was unwearied. In a life now falling stagnant it is unnecessary to follow closely henceforth the occupation of times and seasons. The chief points only need be row noted. The rocket was burnt out and the stick falling. In November of that year Emerson came again to England, and remained here and on the Continent till the May following. He had brought his daughter with him, and from both of them Carlyle received a faint pleasure. But even a friend so valued could do little for him. His contemporaries were dropping all round; John Mill died; Bishop Wilberforce died; everyone seemed to die except himself.