e more turned his
eyes towards London, where the remainder of his life was to be spent.
Before following him thither, it may be well to turn from the outer to
the inner side of Carlyle's life, and study the forces which went to the
making of his unique personality.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] _Reminiscences_, vol. ii. p. 30.

[8] _Reminiscences_, vol. ii. p. 31.

[9] _Reminiscences_, vol. ii. pp. 40, 41.

[10] _Reminiscences_, vol. ii. pp. 161, 162.

[11] _Reminiscences_, vol. ii. p. 47.

[12] _Reminiscences_, vol. ii. p. 162.

[13] _Reminiscences_, vol. i. p. 19.

[14] _Reminiscences_, vol. i. p. 6.

CHAPTER III

CARLYLE'S MENTAL DEVELOPMENT

Through all the material struggles Carlyle's mind at Craigenputtock was
gradually shaping itself round a theory of the Universe and Man, from
which he drew inspiration in his future life work. Through his
contributions to Magazines and Reviews there is traceable an original
vein of thought and feeling which had its origin in the study of German
literature. Carlyle's studies and musings took coherent, or, as some
would say incoherent, shape in _Sartor Resartus_,--a book which
appropriately was written in the stern solitude of Craigenputtock.

In order to acquire an adequate understanding of Carlyle as a thinker,
attention has to be paid to the two dominating influences of his mental
life--his early home training and German literature. In regard to the
former, ancestry with Carlyle counts for much. He came of a sturdy
Covenanting stock. Carlyle himself has left a graphic description of the
religious environment of the Burghers, to which sect his father
belonged. The congregation, under the ministry of a certain John
Johnston, who taught Carlyle his first Latin, worshipped in a little
house thatched with heath. Of the simple faith, the stern piety and the
rugged heroism of the old Seceders, Carlyle himself has left a
photograph: 'Very venerable are those old Seceder clergy to me now when
I look back.... Most figures of them in my time were hoary old men; men
so like evangelists in modern vesture and poor scholars and gentlemen of
Christ I have nowhere met with among Protestant or Papal clergy in any
country in the world.... Strangely vivid are some twelve or twenty of
those old faces whom I used to see every Sunday, whose names,
employments or precise dwellingplaces I never knew, but whose portraits
are yet clear to me as in a mirror. Their heavy-laden, patient,
ever-a