he soul, seated on the hill-tops
near Old Criffel, and looking down "into Wordsworth's country."
Carlyle had the natural disinclination of every nimble spirit to
bruise itself 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
subtile links that bind ages together, and saw how every event affects
all the future. "Christ died on the tree; that built Dunscore Kirk
yonder; that brought you and me together. Time has only a relative
existence."

Such is Emerson's account of his first visit to our author, whose eyes
were already turned towards London as the heart of the world, whither
he subsequently went, and where he now abides.

From Craigenputtock, with its savage rocks and moorlands, its
sheepwalk solitudes, its isolation and distance from all the
advantages of civil and intellectual life, to London and the living
solitude of its unnumberable inhabitants, its activities, polity, and
world-wide ramifications of commerce, learning, science, literature,
and art, was a change of great magnitude, whose true proportions it
took time to estimate. Carlyle, however, was not afraid of the huge
mechanism of London life, but took to it bravely and kindly, and was
soon at home amidst the everlasting whirl and clamor, the roar and
thunder of its revolutions. For although a scholar, and bred in
seclusion, he was also a genuine man of the world, and well acquainted
with its rough ways and Plutonic wisdom. This knowledge, combined with
his strong "common sense,"--as poor Dr. Beattie calls it, fighting for
its supremacy with canine ferocity,--gave Carlyle high vantage-ground
in his writings. He could meet the world with its own weapons, and
was cunning enough at that fence, as the world was very shortly
sensible. He was saved, therefore, from the contumely which vulgar
minds are always ready to bestow upon saints and mystics who sit aloof
from them, high enthroned amidst the truths and solemnities of
God. The secluded and ascetic life of most scholars, highly favorable
as it undoubtedly is to contemplation and internal development, has
likewise its disadvantages, and puts them, as being undisciplined in
the ways of life, at great odds, when they come to the actual and
practical battle. A man should be armed at all points, and not subject
himself, like good George Fox, Jacob Behmen, and other holy men, to
the taunts of the mob, on account of any awkward gait, mann