ncipal,
the Lord Rector, the Members of the Senate, and other gentlemen
advanced towards the platform, the cheering was vociferous and hearty.
The Principal occupied the chair of course, the Lord Rector on his
right, the Lord Provost on his left. Every eye was fixed on the
Rector. To all appearance, as he sat, time and labour had dealt
tenderly with him. His face had not yet lost the country bronze which
he brought up with him from Dumfriesshire as a student fifty-six years
ago. His long residence in London had not touched his Annandale look,
nor had it--as we soon learned--touched his Annandale accent. His
countenance was striking, homely, sincere, truthful--the countenance
of a man on whom 'the burden of the unintelligible world' had weighed
more heavily than on most. His hair was yet almost dark; his moustache
and short beard were iron grey. His eyes were wide, melancholy,
sorrowful; and seemed as if they had been at times a-weary of the
sun. Altogether in his aspect there was something aboriginal, as of
a piece, of unhewn granite, which had never been polished to any
approved pattern, whose natural and original vitality had never
been tampered with. In a word, there seemed no passivity about Mr.
Carlyle--he was the diamond, and the world was his pane of glass; he
was a graving tool rather than a thing graven upon--a man to set his
mark on the world--a man on whom the world could not set _its_ mark.
And just as, glancing towards Fife a few minutes before, one could not
help thinking of his early connection with Edward Irving, so seeing
him sit beside the venerable Principal of the University, one could
not help thinking of his earliest connection with literature.

"Time brings men into the most unexpected relationships. When the
Principal was plain Mr. Brewster, editor of the Edinburgh Cyclopaedia,
little dreaming that he should ever be Knight of Hanover and head
of the Northern Metropolitan University, Mr. Carlyle--just as little
dreaming that he should be the foremost man of letters of his day and
Lord Rector of the same University--was his contributor, writing for
said Cyclopaedia biographies of Montesquieu and other notables. And so
it came about that after years of separation and of honourable labour,
the old editor and contributor were brought together again--in new
aspects.

"The proceedings began by the conferring of the degree of LL.D. on Mr.
Erskine of Linlathen--an old friend of Mr. Carlyle's--on Profess