on of man with man means. His was the
freest, brotherliest, bravest human soul mine ever came in contact with.
I call him, on the whole, the best man I have ever, after trial enough,
found in this world, or now hope to find."

'In a very few minutes after the doors were opened, the large hall was
filled in every part; and when up the central passage the Principal, 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. When the platform gentlemen had taken
their seats, 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....
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 Professors
Huxley, Tyndall, and Ramsay, and on Dr Rae, the Arctic explorer. That
done, amid a tempest of cheering and hats enthusiastically waved, Mr
Carlyle, slipping off his Rectorial robe--which must have been a very
shirt of Nessus to him--advanced to the table, and began to speak in
low, wavering, melancholy tones, which were in accordance with the
melancholy eyes, and in the Annandale accent with which his play-fellows
must have been familiar long ago. So self-centred was he, so impregna