ife with a
calmer courage; that he was as incapable of conscious injustice,
unkindliness, or vindictiveness, as he was of insincerity or impurity;
that in pecuniary straits, even in despair, he never wrote a line that
he did not believe, never swerved by a hair's breadth from the noble
purposes which dominated his life and extinguished all selfish
ambition.

* * * * *

The following letter was written by Carlyle, in 1876, to a young man
who had asked his advice on the choice of a profession:

"Dear Sir,--I respect your conscientious scruples in regard to
choosing a profession, and wish much I had the power of giving you
advice that would be of the least service. But that, I fear, in my
total ignorance of yourself and the posture of your affairs, is pretty
nearly impossible. The profession of the law is in many respects a
most honorable one, and has this to recommend it, that a man succeeds
there, if he succeeds at all, in an independent and manful manner, by
force of his own talent and behavior, without needing to seek
patronage from anybody. As to ambition, that is, no doubt, a thing to
be carefully discouraged in oneself; but it does not necessarily
inhere in the barrister's profession more than in many others, and I
have known one or two who, by quiet fidelity in promoting justice, and
by keeping down litigation, had acquired the epithet of the 'honest
lawyer,' which appeared to me altogether human and beautiful.

"Literature, as a profession, is what I would counsel no faithful man
to be concerned with, except when absolutely forced into it, under
penalty, as it were, of death. The pursuit of culture, too, is in the
highest degree recommendable to every human soul, and may be
successfully achieved in almost any honest employment that has wages
paid for it. No doubt, too, the church seems to offer facilities in
this respect; but I will by no means advise you to overcome your
reluctance against seeking refuge _there_. On the whole, there is
nothing strikes me likelier for one of your disposition than the
profession of teacher, which is rising into higher request every day,
and has scope in it for the grandest endowments of human faculties
(could such hitherto be got to enter it), and of all useful and
fruitful employments may be defined as the usefullest, fruitfullest,
and also indispensablest in these days of ours.

"Regretting much that I can help you so infinitely little, biddin