When I restored the precious packet to the kind friend who had lent it, I was asked whether I had made any transcripts. While confessing my transgression, if transgression it could be called, I was allowed to retain what I had copied on the distinct understanding that during Carlyle's lifetime not a line should be allowed to get into print. This pledge I have strictly kept. A few years ago the matter was mentioned to the venerable writer of the letters by a common friend. His deliverance on the matter was a hearty laugh, accompanied with an expression of surprise, not unmingled with satisfaction, that there was any one, at that early time, who felt so much interest in him and his doings as to have taken the trouble to preserve these records of his youthful thoughts and feelings and struggles.

In conclusion, let me say that I thought it due to Mr. Froude to submit these extracts to him, and to place them at his disposal for use in the forthcoming "Life and Letters" from his pen, in case the original letters themselves should not come into his possession-at the same time asking to be allowed to make them public, in the event of his not being able to use the whole of them, from the abundance of material likely to be in his hands. I need not say that I should regret the withholding of a single sentence of these extracts, they are so characteristic

throughout. Mr. Froude has been so kind as to say that there can be no objection to their publication, as it is most desirable that the fullest light should be thrown on every period of Carlyle's life.

ALEXANDER IRELAND.

INGLEWOOD, Bowdon, Cheshire, April 14th, 1881.

LETTERS OF THOMAS CARLYLE.

TO THOMAS MITCHELL AND THOMAS MURRAY.

1.

"August, 1814.

"But-O Tom! what a foolish, flattering creature thou art! To talk of future eminence in connection with the literary history of the nineteenth century to such a one as me! Alas! my good lad, when I and all my fancies and reveries and speculations shall have been swept over with the besom of oblivion, the literary history of no century will feel itself the worse. Yet think not, because I talk thus, I am careless about literary fame. No, Heaven knows that ever since I have been able to form a wish, the wish of being known has been the foremost. O Fortune! thou that givest unto each his portion in this dirty planet, bestow (if it shall please thee), coronets and crowns, and principalities and purses, and pudding and power upon the great and noble and fat ones of the earth; grant me that, with a heart of independence, unyielding to thy favors and unbending to thy frowns, I may attain to literary fame-and,

though starvation be my lot, I will smile that I have not been born a king!!! But, alas! my dear Murray, what am I, or what are you, or what is any other poor unfriended stripling in the ranks of learning? "Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb,' etc., etc.

"The more I know her and her species, the more heartily I despise them. It is strange, but it is true, that by a continued and unvarying exercise of affectation, those creatures in the end entirely lose any kind of real feeling which they might originally have possessed. Ignorant, formal, conceited, their whole life is that of an automaton, without sense, and almost without soul! Once, for instance, I recollect that to fill up one of those awful hiatus in conversation that occur at times in spite of all one's efforts to the contrary, and to entertain Miss M

I took up a 'Tristram Shandy,' and read her one of the very best jokes within the boards of the book. Ah-h-h-h! sighed Miss M, and put on a look of right tender melancholy! Now, did the smallest glimmering of reason appear here? But I have already wasted too much time on her and those like her. Heaven be their comforter!

"I regret that Jeffrey should bestow so much of his time upon politics, and I rejoice in the prospect (for this is one of the advantages of Peace) that in a short time he will not have this in his power. He

must be an extraordinary man. No subject, however hackneyed, but he has the wit of extracting some new thought out of it. The introduction to the criticism on Byron is, in my opinion, admirable-so acute, so philosophical; none but a man of keen penetration and deep research could have written such a thing. Even the 'Present State of Europe' becomes interesting in his hands."

2.

"April, 1815.

"But the book I am most pleased with is 'Cicero de Finibus'-not that there is much new discussion in it, but his manner is so easy and elegant; and, besides, there is such a charm connected with attending to the feelings and principles of a man over whom the tide of years has rolled.' We are entertained even with a common sentiment; and when we meet with a truth which we ourselves had previously discovered, we are delighted with the idea that our minds are similar to that of the venerable Roman."

3.

"ANNAN, June 21, 1815. "The most disagreeable circumstance in a tutor's life is his want of society. There is no person in the family of equal rank with him except the governess; and as the aims and ends of her and him are