Chapter III: Part 3

"Dr. Rae, the Arctic explorer and first discoverer of the fate of Sir John Franklin, who is an M.D. of Edinburgh, was now made LL.D. He is of tall, wiry, energetic figure, slightly baldish, with greyish, curly hair, keen, handsome face, high crown and sloping forehead, and his bearing is that of a soldier--of a man who has both given and obeyed commands, and been drilled to stand steady and upright. Carlyle himself was offered the degree of LL.D., but he declined the honour, laughing it off, in fact, in a letter, with such excuses as that he had a brother a Dr. Carlyle (an M.D., also a man of genius, I insert parenthetically, and known in literature as a translator of 'Dante'), and that if two Dr. Carlyles should appear at Paradise, mistakes might arise.

"After all the LL.D's had heard their merits enumerated, and had had a black hood or wallet of some kind, with a blue ribbon conspicuous in it, flung over their heads, Principal Brewster announced that the Lord Rector would now deliver his address. Thereupon Mr. Carlyle rose at once, shook himself out of his gold-laced rectorial gown, left it on his chair, and stepped quietly to the table, and drawing his tall, bony frame into a position of straight perpendicularity not possible to one man in five hundred at seventy years of age, he began to speak quietly and distinctly, but nervously. There was a slight flush on his face, but he bore himself with composure and dignity, and in the course of half an hour he was obviously beginning to feel at his ease, so far at least as to have adequate command over the current of his thought.

"He spoke on quite freely and easily, hardly ever repeated a word, never looked at a note, and only once returned to finish up a topic from which he had deviated. He apologised for not having come with a written discourse. It was usual, and 'it would have been more comfortable for me just at present,' but he had tried it, and could not satisfy himself, and 'as the spoken word comes from the heart,' he had resolved to try that method. What he said in words will be learned otherwise than from me. I could not well describe it; but I do not think I ever heard any address that I should be so unwilling to blot from my memory. Not that there was much in it that cannot be found in his writings, or inferred from them; but the manner of the man was a key to the writings, and for naturalness and quiet power, I have never seen anything to compare with it. He did not deal in rhetoric. He talked--it was continuous, strong, quiet talk--like a patriarch about to leave the world to the young lads who had chosen him and were just entering the world. His voice is a soft, downy voice--not a tone in it is of the shrill, fierce kind that one would expect it to be in reading the Latter-day Pamphlets.

"There was not a trace of effort or of affectation, or even of extravagance. Shrewd common sense there was in abundance. There was the involved disrupted style also, but it looked so natural that reflection was needed to recognise in it that very style which purists find to be un-English and unintelligible. Over the angles of this disrupted style rolled out a few cascades of humour--quite as if by accident. He let them go, talking on in his soft, downy accents, without a smile; occasionally for an instant looking very serious, with his dark eyes beating like pulses, but generally looking merely composed and kindly, and so, to speak, father-like. He concluded by reciting his own translation of a poem of Goethe--

"'The future hides in it gladness and sorrow.'

And this he did in a style of melancholy grandeur not to be described, but still less to be forgotten. It was then alone that the personality of the philosopher and poet were revealed continuously in his manner of utterance. The features of his face are familiar to all from his portraits. But I do not think any portrait, unless, perhaps, Woolner's medallion, gives full expression to the resolution that is visible in his face. Besides, they all make him look sadder and older than he appears. Although he be threescore and ten, his hair is still abundant and tolerably black, and there is considerable colour in his cheek. Not a man of his age on that platform to-day looked so young, and he had done more work than any ten on it."

The correspondent of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ gives some interesting particulars:--

"Mr. Carlyle had not spoken in public before yesterday, since those grand utterances on Heroes and Hero-worship in the institute in Edwards Street, Marylebone, which one can scarcely believe, whilst reading them, to have been, in the best sense, extemporaneously delivered. In that case Mr. Carlyle began the series, as we have heard, by bringing a manuscript which he evidently found much in his way, and presently abandoned. On the second evening he brought some notes or headings; but these also tripped him until he had left them. The remaining lectures were given like his conversation, which no one can hear without feeling that, with all its glow and inspiration, every sentence would be, if taken down, found faultless. It was so in his remarkable extemporaneous address yesterday. He had no notes whatever. 'But,' says our correspondent, in transmitting the report, 'I have never heard a speech of whose more remarkable qualities so few can be conveyed on paper. You will read of "applause" and "laughter," but you will little realize the eloquent blood flaming up the speaker's cheek, the kindling of his eye, or the inexpressible voice and look when the drolleries were coming out. When he spoke of clap-trap books exciting astonishment 'in the minds of foolish persons,' the evident halting at the word '_fools_,' and the smoothing of his hair, as if he must be decorous, which preceded the change to 'foolish persons,' were exceedingly comical. As for the flaming bursts, they took shape in grand tones, whose impression was made deeper, not by raising, but by lowering the voice. Your correspondent here declares that he should hold it worth his coming all the way from London in the rain in the Sunday night train were it only to have heard Carlyle say, "There is a nobler ambition than the gaining of all California, or the getting of all the suffrages that are on the planet just now!"' In the first few minutes of the address there was some hesitation, and much of the shrinking that one might expect in a secluded scholar; but these very soon cleared away, and during the larger part, and to the close of the oration, it was evident that he was receiving a sympathetic influence from his listeners, which he did not fail to return tenfold. The applause became less frequent; the silence became that of a woven spell; and the recitation of the beautiful lines from Goethe, at the end, was so masterly--so marvellous--that one felt in it that Carlyle's real anathemas against rhetoric were but the expression of his knowledge that there is a rhetoric beyond all other arts."

In the _Times_ the following leader appeared upon Mr. Carlyle's address:--

"There is something in the return of a man to the haunts of his youth, after he has acquired fame and a recognised position in the world, which is of itself sufficient to arrest attention. We are interested in the retrospect and the contrast, the juxtaposition of the old and the new, the hopes of early years, the memory of the struggles and contests of manhood, the repose of victory. A man may differ as much as he pleases from the doctrines of Mr. Carlyle, he may reject his historical teachings, and may distrust his politics, but he must be of a very unkindly disposition not to be touched by his reception at Edinburgh. It is fifty-four years, he told the students of the University, since he, a boy of fourteen, came as a student, 'full of wonder and expectation,' to the old capital of his native country, and now he returns, having accomplished the days of man spoken of by the Psalmist, that he may be honoured by students of this generation, and may give them a few words of advice on the life which lies before them.

"The discourse of the new Lord Rector squared very well with the occasion. There was no novelty in it. New truths are not the gifts which the old offer the young; the lesson we learn last is but the fulness of the meaning of what was only partially apprehended at first. Mr. Carlyle brought out things familiar enough to everyone who has read his works; there were the old platitudes and the old truths, and, it must be owned, mingled here and there with them the old errors. Time has, however, its recompenses, and if the freshness of youth seemed to be wanting in the address of the Rector, so also was its crudity. There was a singular mellowness in Mr. Carlyle's speech, which was reflected in the homely language in which it was couched. The chief lessons he had to enforce were to avoid cram, and to be painstaking, diligent, and patient in the acquisition of knowledge. Students are not to try to make themselves acquainted with the outsides of as many things as possible, and 'to go flourishing about' upon the strength of their acquisitions, but to count a thing as known only when it is stamped on their mind. The doctrine is only a new reading of the old maxim, _non multa sed multum_, but it is as much needed now as ever it was. Still more appropriate to the present day was Mr. Carlyle's protest against the notion that a University is the place where a man is to be fitted for the special work of a profession. A University, as he puts it, teaches a man how to read, or, as we may say more generally, how to learn. It is not the function of such a place to offer particular and technical knowledge, but to prepare a man for mastering any science by teaching him the method of all. A child learns the use of his body, not the art of a carpenter or smith, and the University student learns the use of his mind, not the professional lore of a lawyer or a physician. It is pleasant to meet with a strong reassertion of doctrines which the utilitarianism of a commercial and manufacturing age is too apt to make us all forget. Mr. Carlyle is essentially conservative in his notions on academic functions. Accuracy, discrimination, judgment, are with him the be-all and end-all of educational training. If a man has learnt to know a thing in itself, and in its relation to surrounding phenomena, he has got from a University what it is its proper duty to teach. Accordingly, we find him bestowing a good word on poor old Arthur Collins, who showed that he possessed these valuable qualities in the humble work of compiling a Peerage.

"The new Lord Rector is, however, as conservative in his choice of the implements of study as he is in the determination of its objects. The languages and the history of the great nations of antiquity he puts foremost, like any other pedagogue. The Greeks and the Romans are, he tells the Edinburgh students, 'a pair of nations shining in the records left by themselves as a kind of pillar to light up life in the darkness of the past ages;' and he adds that it would be well worth their while to get an understanding of what these people were, and what they did. It is here, however, that an old error of Mr. Carlyle's crops up among his well-remembered truths. He quotes from Machiavelli--evidently agreeing himself with the sentiment, though he refrained from asking the assent of his audience to it--the statement that the history of Rome showed that a democracy could not permanently exist without the occasional intervention of a Dictator. It is possible that if Machiavelli had had the experience of the centuries which have elapsed since his day, he would have seen fit to alter his conclusion, and it is to be regretted that the admiration which Mr. Carlyle feels for the great men of history will not allow him to believe in the possibility of a political society where each might find his proper sphere and duty without disturbing the order and natural succession of the commonwealth. His judgment on this point is like that of a man who had only known the steam-engine before the invention of governor balls, and was ready to declare that its mechanism would be shattered if a boy were not always at hand to regulate the pressure of the steam.

* * * * *

"We may turn, however, from this difference to another of Mr. Carlyle's doctrines, which mark at once his independence of thought and his respect for experience, where he declares the necessity for recognising the hereditary principle in government, if there is to be 'any fixity in things.' In the same way we find him almost lamenting the fact that Oxford, once apparently so fast-anchored as to be immovable, has begun to twist and toss on the eddy of new ideas.

"It is impossible to glance at Mr. Carlyle's Easter Monday discourse without recalling the oration which his predecessor pronounced on resigning office last autumn. * * * Mr. Carlyle is as simple and practical as his predecessor was dazzling and rhetorical. An ounce of mother wit, quotes the new Lord Rector, is worth a pound of clergy, and while he admires Demosthenes, he prefers the eloquence of Phocion. A little later he repeats his old doctrine on the virtue of silence, laments the fact that 'the finest nations in the world--the English and the American--are going all away into wind and tongue,' and protests that a man is not to be esteemed wise because he has poured out speech copiously. Mr. Carlyle has so often inculcated these sentiments in his books that there can be no suspicion of an _arrière pensée_ in their utterance now, but the contrast between him and his predecessor is at the least instructive. Each does, however, in some measure, supply what is deficient in the other. No one would claim for the Chancellor of the Exchequer the intensity of power of his successor, but in his abundant energy, his wide sympathy with popular movement, and his real, if vague and indiscriminating, faith in the activity and progress of modern life, he conveys lessons of trust in the present, and hopefulness in the future, which would be ill-exchanged for the patient and somewhat sad stoicism of Mr. Carlyle."

Carlyle was still in Scotland on April 21, and there the terrible and solemn news had to be conveyed to him of the sudden death of her who had been his true and faithful life-companion for forty years.

Mrs. Carlyle died on Saturday, April 21, under very peculiar circumstances. She was taking her usual drive in Hyde Park about four o'clock, when her little favourite dog--which was running by the side of the brougham--was run over by a carriage. She was greatly alarmed, though the dog was not seriously hurt. She lifted the dog into the carriage, and the man drove on. Not receiving any call or direction from his mistress, as was usual, he stopped the carriage and discovered her, as he thought, in a fit, or ill, and drove to St. George's Hospital, which was near at hand. When there it was discovered that she must have been dead some little time. Mrs. Carlyle's health had been for several months feeble, but not in a state to excite anxiety or alarm.

On the following Wednesday her remains were conveyed from London to Haddington for interment there, and the funeral took place on Thursday afternoon. Mr. Carlyle was accompanied from London (whither he had returned immediately on the receipt of that solemn message) by his brother, Dr. Carlyle, Mr. John Forster, and the Hon. Mr. Twistleton. The funeral cortège was followed on foot by a large number of gentlemen who had known Mrs. Carlyle and her father, Dr. Welsh, who was held in high estimation in the town, where he had practised medicine till his death, in 1819. The grave, which is the same as that occupied by Dr. Welsh's remains, lies in the centre of the ruined choir of the old cathedral at Haddington. In accordance with the Scottish practice, there was no service read, and Mr. Carlyle threw a handful of earth on the coffin after it had been lowered into the grave.

* * * * *

Carlyle wrote the following inscription to be placed on his wife's tombstone:--

"Here likewise now rests Jane Welsh Carlyle, spouse of Thomas
Carlyle, Chelsea, London. She was born at Haddington 14th
July, 1801; only child of the above John Welsh and of Grace
Welsh, Caplegell, Dumfriesshire, his wife. In her bright
existence she had more sorrows than are common, but also a
soft invincibility, a clearness of discernment, and a noble
loyalty of heart which are rare. For forty years she was the
true and loving helpmate of her husband, and by act and word
unweariedly forwarded him as none else could in all of worthy
that he did or attempted. She died at London, 21st April,
1866, suddenly snatched away from him, and the light of his
life as if gone out."

Later in the same year, weighed down as he was by his great sorrow, Carlyle nevertheless thought it a public duty to come forward in defence of Governor Eyre, when the quelling of the Jamaica insurrection excited so much controversy, and seemed to divide England into two parties. He acted as Vice-President of the Defence Fund. The following is a letter written to Mr. Hamilton Hume, giving his views on the subject in full:

"Ripple Court, Ringwould, Dover,

"_August 23_, 1866.

"SIR,

"The clamour raised against Governor Eyre appears to me to be disgraceful to the good sense of England; and if it rested on any depth of conviction, and were not rather (as I always flatter myself it is) a thing of rumour and hearsay, of repetition and reverberation, mostly from the teeth outward, I should consider it of evil omen to the country and to its highest interests in these times. For my own share, all the light that has yet reached me on Mr. Eyre and his history in the world goes steadily to establish the conclusion that he is a just, humane, and valiant man, faithful to his trusts everywhere, and with no ordinary faculty of executing them; that his late services in Jamaica were of great, perhaps of incalculable value, as certainly they were of perilous and appalling difficulty--something like the case of 'fire,' suddenly reported, 'in the ship's powder room,' in mid-ocean where the moments mean the ages, and life and death hang on your use or misuse of the moments; and, in short, that penalty and clamour are not the thing this Governor merits from any of us, but honour and thanks, and wise imitation (I will farther say), should similar emergencies arise, on the great scale or on the small, in whatever we are governing!

"The English nation never loved anarchy, nor was wont to spend its sympathy on miserable mad seditions, especially of this inhuman and half-brutish type; but always loved order, and the prompt suppression of seditions, and reserved its tears for something worthier than promoters of such delirious and fatal enterprises who had got their wages for their sad industry. Has the English nation changed, then, altogether? I flatter myself it is not, not yet quite; but only that certain loose, superficial portions of it have become a great deal louder, and not any wiser, than they formerly used to be.

"At any rate, though much averse, at any time, and at this time in particular, to figure on committees, or run into public noises without call, I do at once, and feel that as a British citizen I should, and must, make you welcome to my name for your committee, and to whatever good it can do you. With the hope only that many other British men, of far more significance in such a matter, will at once or gradually do the like; and that, in fine, by wise effort and persistence, a blind and disgraceful act of public injustice may be prevented; and an egregrious folly as well--not to say, for none can say or compute, what a vital detriment throughout the British Empire, in such an example set to all the colonies and governors the British Empire has!

"Farther service, I fear, I am not in a state to promise, but the whole weight of my conviction and good wishes is with you; and if other service possible to me do present itself, I shall not want for willingness in case of need. Enclosed is my mite of contribution to your fund."I have the honour to be yours truly,

"T. CARLYLE."

"To HAMILTON HUME, Esq.,
"Hon. Sec. 'Eyre Defence Fund.'"

In August, 1867, Carlyle broke silence again with an utterance in the style of the _Latter-Day Pamphlets_, entitled "Shooting Niagara: and After?" published anonymously (though everyone, of course, knew it to be his) in _Macmillan's Magazine_. Shortly afterwards it was reprinted as a separate pamphlet, with additions, and with the author's name on the title-page.

In February, 1868, Carlyle wrote some Recollections of Sir William Hamilton, as a contribution to Professor Veitch's Memoir of that accomplished metaphysician.

In November, 1870, he addressed a long and very remarkable letter to the _Times_, on the French-German war, which is reprinted in the latest edition of his collected Miscellanies.

Two years later (November, 1872) he added a very beautiful Supplement to the People's Edition of his "Life of Schiller," founded on Saupe's "Schiller and his Father's Household," and other more recent books on Schiller that had appeared in Germany.

His last literary productions were a series of papers on "The Early Kings of Norway," and an Essay on "The Portraits of John Knox," which appeared, in instalments, in _Fraser's Magazine_, in the first four months of 1875. On the 4th December of that year, Carlyle attained his eightieth year, and this anniversary was signalised by some of the more distinguished of his friends and admirers by striking a medal, the head being executed by Mr. Boehm, whose noble statue of Carlyle, exhibited in the Royal Academy in the previous year, had won so much merited praise from Mr. Ruskin and others. The medal was accompanied by an address, signed by the subscribers. Carlyle seems to have been much gratified with this honour, which took him quite by surprise, and he expressed his acknowledgments as follows:--

"This of the medal and formal address of friends was an altogether unexpected event, to be received as a conspicuous and peculiar honour, without example hitherto anywhere in my life.... To you ... I address my thankful acknowledgments, which surely are deep and sincere, and will beg you to convey the same to all the kind friends so beautifully concerned in it. Let no one of you be other than assured that the beautiful transaction, in result, management, and intention, was altogether gratifying, welcome, and honourable to me, and that I cordially thank one and all of you for what you have been pleased to do. Your fine and noble gift shall remain among my precious possessions, and be the symbol to me of something still more _golden_ than itself, on the part of my many dear and too generous friends, so long as I continue in this world.

"Yours and theirs, from the heart,

"T. CARLYLE."

Carlyle's last public utterances were a letter on the Eastern Question, addressed to Mr. George Howard, and printed in the _Times_ of November 28, 1876, and a letter to the Editor of the _Times_, on "The Crisis," printed in that journal on May 5, 1877.

He was now beginning to feel the effects of his great age. Yearly and monthly he grew more feeble. His wonted walking exercise had to be curtailed, and at last abandoned. He was affectionately and piously tended during these last years by his niece, Mary Aitken, now Mrs. Alexander Carlyle. In the autumn of 1879 he lost his brother, Dr. John Aitken Carlyle, the translator of Dante's "Inferno."

The end came at last, after a long and gradual decay of strength. The great writer and noble-hearted man passed away peacefully at about half-past eight o'clock on the morning of Saturday, February 5, 1881, in the eighty-sixth year of his age.

His remains were conveyed to Scotland, and were laid in the burial-ground at Ecclefechan, where the ashes of his father and mother, and of others of his kindred, repose. He had executed what is known in Scotch law as a "deed of mortification," by virtue of which he bequeathed to Edinburgh University the estate of Craigenputtoch--which had come to him through his wife--for the foundation of ten Bursaries in the Faculty of Arts, to be called the "John Welsh Bursaries." In his Will he bequeathed the books which he had used in writing on Cromwell and Friedrich to Harvard College, Massachusetts.

In less than a month after his death, with a haste on many accounts to be deplored, and which has excited much animadversion, his literary executor, Mr. James Anthony Froude, the historian, issued two volumes of posthumous "Reminiscences," written by Carlyle, partly in 1832, and partly in 1866-67. The first section consists of a memorial paper, written immediately after his father's death; the second contains Reminiscences of his early friend, Edward Irving, commenced at Cheyne Row in the autumn of 1866, and finished at Mentone on the 2nd January, 1867. The Reminiscences of Lord Jeffrey were begun on the following day, and finished on January 19. The paper on Southey and Wordsworth, relegated to the Appendix, was also written at Mentone between the 28th January and the 8th March, 1867. The Memorials of his wife, which fill the greater part of the second volume, were written at Cheyne Row, during the month after her death.

Of the earlier portraits of Carlyle three are specially interesting, 1. The full-length sketch by "Croquis" (Daniel Maclise) which formed one of the _Fraser_ Gallery portraits, and was published in the magazine in June, 1833. (The original sketch of this is now deposited in the Forster Collection at South Kensington.) 2. Count D'Orsay's sketch, published by Mitchell in 1839, is highly characteristic of the artist. It was taken when no man of position was counted a dutiful subject who did not wear a black satin stock and a Petersham coat. The great author's own favourite among the early portraits was 3. the sketch by Samuel Laurence, engraved in Horne's "New Spirit of the Age," published in 1844. Since the art of photography came into vogue, a series of photographs of various degrees of merit and success have been executed by Messrs. Elliott and Fry, and by Watkins. The late Mrs. Cameron also produced a photograph of him in her peculiar style, but it was not so successful as her fine portrait of Tennyson. An oil-painting by Mr. Watts, exhibited some fifteen years ago, and now also forming part of the Forster Collection at South Kensington, is remarkable for its weird wildness; but it gave great displeasure to the old philosopher himself! More lately we have a remarkable portrait by Mr. Whistler, who seized the _tout ensemble_ of his illustrious sitter's character and costume in a very effective manner. The _terra cotta_ statue by Mr. Boehm, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1875, has received such merited meed of enthusiastic praise from Mr. Ruskin that it needs no added praise of ours. It has been excellently photographed from two points of view by Mr. Hedderly, of Riley Street, Chelsea.

One of the best and happiest of the many likenesses of Mr. Carlyle that appeared during the last decade of his life was a sketch by Mrs. Allingham--a picture as well as a portrait--representing the venerable philosopher in a long and picturesque dressing-gown, seated on a chair and poring over a folio, in the garden at the back of the quaint old house at Chelsea, which will henceforth, as long as it stands, be associated with his memory. Beside him on the grass lies a long clay pipe (a churchwarden) which he has been smoking in the sweet morning air. So that altogether, as far as pictorial, graphic, and photographic art can go, the features, form, and bodily semblance of Carlyle will be as well known to future generations as they are to our own.

* * * * *

The impression of his brilliant and eloquent talk, though it will perhaps remain, for at least half a century to come, more or less vivid to some of those of the new generation who were privileged to hear it, will, of course, gradually fade away. But it seems hardly probable that the rich legacy of his long roll of writings--historical, biographical, critical--can be regarded as other than a permanent one, in which each succeeding generation will find fresh delight and instruction. The series of vivid pictures he has left behind in his "French Revolution," in his "Cromwell," in his "Frederick," can hardly become obsolete or cease to be attractive; nor is such power of word-painting likely soon to be equalled or ever to be surpassed. The salt of humour that savours nearly all he wrote (that lambent humour that lightens and plays over the grimmest and sternest of his pages) will also serve to keep his writings fresh and readable. Many of his _dicta_ and opinions will doubtless be more and more called in question, especially in those of his works which are more directly of a didactic than a narrative character, and in regard to subjects which he was by habit, by mental constitution, and by that prejudice from which the greatest can never wholly free themselves, incapable of judging broadly or soundly,--such, for instance, as the scope and functions of painting and the fine arts generally, the value of modern poetry, or the working of Constitutional and Parliamentary institutions.

RICHARD HERNE SHEPHERD.

_Chelsea, June, 1881_.

ON THE CHOICE OF BOOKS.

ADDRESS
DELIVERED TO THE
STUDENTS OF EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY,
APRIL 2, 1866.

GENTLEMEN,

I have accepted the office you have elected me to, and have now the duty to return thanks for the great honour done me. Your enthusiasm towards me, I admit, is very beautiful in itself, however undesirable it may be in regard to the object of it. It is a feeling honourable to all men, and one well known to myself when I was in a position analogous to your own. I can only hope that it may endure to the end--that noble desire to honour those whom you think worthy of honour, and come to be more and more select and discriminate in the choice of the object of it; for I can well understand that you will modify your opinions of me and many things else as you go on. (Laughter and cheers.) There are now fifty-six years gone last November since I first entered your city, a boy of not quite fourteen--fifty-six years ago--to attend classes here and gain knowledge of all kinds, I know not what, with feelings of wonder and awe-struck expectation; and now, after a long, long course, this is what we have come to. (Cheers.) There is something touching and tragic, and yet at the same time beautiful, to see the third generation, as it were, of my dear old native land, rising up and saying, "Well, you are not altogether an unworthy labourer in the vineyard: you have toiled through a great variety of fortunes, and have had many judges." As the old proverb says, "He that builds by the wayside has many masters." We must expect a variety of judges; but the voice of young Scotland, through you, is really of some value to me, and I return you many thanks for it, though I cannot describe my emotions to you, and perhaps they will be much more conceivable if expressed in silence. (Cheers.)

When this office was proposed to me, some of you know that I was not very ambitious to accept it, at first. I was taught to believe that there were more or less certain important duties which would lie in my power. This, I confess, was my chief motive in going into it--at least, in reconciling the objections felt to such things; for if I can do anything to honour you and my dear old _Alma Mater_, why should I not do so? (Loud cheers.) Well, but on practically looking into the matter when the office actually came into my hands, I find it grows more and more uncertain and abstruse to me whether there is much real duty that I can do at all. I live four hundred miles away from you, in an entirely different state of things; and my weak health--now for many years accumulating upon me--and a total unacquaintance with such subjects as concern your affairs here,--all this fills me with apprehension that there is really nothing worth the least consideration that I can do on that score. You may, however, depend upon it that if any such duty does arise in any form, I will use my most faithful endeavour to do whatever is right and proper, according to the best of my judgment. (Cheers.)

In the meanwhile, the duty I have at present--which might be very pleasant, but which is quite the reverse, as you may fancy--is to address some words to you on some subjects more or less cognate to the pursuits you are engaged in. In fact, I had meant to throw out some loose observations--loose in point of order, I mean--in such a way as they may occur to me--the truths I have in me about the business you are engaged in, the race you have started on, what kind of race it is you young gentlemen have begun, and what sort of arena you are likely to find in this world. I ought, I believe, according to custom, to have written all that down on paper, and had it read out. That would have been much handier for me at the present moment (a laugh), but when I attempted to write, I found that I was not accustomed to write speeches, and that I did not get on very well. So I flung that away, and resolved to trust to the inspiration of the moment--just to what came uppermost. You will therefore have to accept what is readiest, what comes direct from the heart, and you must just take that in compensation for any good order of arrangement there might have been in it.

I will endeavour to say nothing that is not true, as far as I can manage, and that is pretty much all that I can engage for. (A laugh.) Advices, I believe, to young men--and to all men--are very seldom much valued. There is a great deal of advising, and very little faithful performing. And talk that does not end in any kind of action, is better suppressed altogether. I would not, therefore, go much into advising; but there is one advice I must give you. It is, in fact, the summary of all advices, and you have heard it a thousand times, I dare say; but I must, nevertheless, let you hear it the thousand and first time, for it is most intensely true, whether you will believe it at present or not--namely, that above all things the interest of your own life depends upon being diligent now, while it is called to-day, in this place where you have come to get education. Diligent! That includes all virtues in it that a student can have; I mean to include in it all qualities that lead into the acquirement of real instruction and improvement in such a place. If you will believe me, you who are young, yours is the golden season of life. As you have heard it called, so it verily is, the seed-time of life, in which, if you do not sow, or if you sow tares instead of wheat, you cannot expect to reap well afterwards, and you will arrive at indeed little; while in the course of years, when you come to look back, and if you have not done what you have heard from your advisers--and among many counsellers there is wisdom--you will bitterly repent when it is too late. The habits of study acquired at Universities are of the highest importance in after-life. At the season when you are in young years the whole mind is, as it were, fluid, and is capable of forming itself into any shape that the owner of the mind pleases to order it to form itself into. The mind is in a fluid state, but it hardens up gradually to the consistency of rock or iron, and you cannot alter the habits of an old man, but as he has begun he will proceed and go on to the last. By diligence, I mean among other things--and very chiefly--honesty in all your inquiries into what you are about. Pursue your studies in the way your conscience calls honest. More and more endeavour to do that. Keep, I mean to say, an accurate separation of what you have really come to know in your own minds, and what is still unknown. Leave all that on the hypothetical side of the barrier, as things afterwards to be acquired, if acquired at all; and be careful not to stamp a thing as known when you do not yet know it. Count a thing known only when it is stamped on your mind, so that you may survey it on all sides with intelligence.

There is such a thing as a man endeavouring to persuade himself, and endeavouring to persuade others, that he knows about things when he does not know more than the outside skin of them; and he goes flourishing about with them. ("Hear, hear," and a laugh.) There is also a process called cramming in some Universities (a laugh)--that is, getting up such points of things as the examiner is likely to put questions about. Avoid all that as entirely unworthy of an honourable habit. Be modest, and humble, and diligent in your attention to what your teachers tell you, who are profoundly interested in trying to bring you forward in the right way, so far as they have been able to understand it. Try all things they set before you, in order, if possible, to understand them, and to value them in proportion to your fitness for them. Gradually see what kind of work you can do; for it is the first of all problems for a man to find out what kind of work he is to do in this universe. In fact, morality as regards study is, as in all other things, the primary consideration, and overrides all others. A dishonest man cannot do anything real; and it would be greatly better if he were tied up from doing any such thing. He does nothing but darken counsel by the words he utters. That is a very old doctrine, but a very true one; and you will find it confirmed by all the thinking men that have ever lived in this long series of generations of which we are the latest.

I daresay you know, very many of you, that it is now seven hundred years since Universities were first set up in this world of ours. Abelard and other people had risen up with doctrines in them the people wished to hear of, and students flocked towards them from all parts of the world. There was no getting the thing recorded in books as you may now. You had to hear him speaking to you vocally, or else you could not learn at all what it was that he wanted to say. And so they gathered together the various people who had anything to teach, and formed themselves gradually, under the patronage of kings and other potentates who were anxious about the culture of their populations, nobly anxious for their benefit, and became a University.

I daresay, perhaps, you have heard it said that all that is greatly altered by the invention of printing, which took place about midway between us and the origin of Universities. A man has not now to go away to where a professor is actually speaking, because in most cases he can get his doctrine out of him through a book, and can read it, and read it again and again, and study it. I don't know that I know of any way in which the whole facts of a subject may be more completely taken in, if our studies are moulded in conformity with it. Nevertheless, Universities have, and will continue to have, an indispensable value in society--a very high value. I consider the very highest interests of man vitally intrusted to them.

In regard to theology, as you are aware, it has been the study of the deepest heads that have come into the world--what is the nature of this stupendous universe, and what its relations to all things, as known to man, and as only known to the awful Author of it. In fact, the members of the Church keep theology in a lively condition (laughter), for the benefit of the whole population, which is the great object of our Universities. I consider it is the same now intrinsically, though very much forgotten, from many causes, and not so successful as might be wished at all. (A laugh.) It remains, however, a very curious truth, what has been said by observant people, that the main use of the Universities in the present age is that, after you have done with all your classes, the next thing is a collection of books, a great library of good books, which you proceed to study and to read. What the Universities have mainly done--what I have found the University did for me, was that it taught me to read in various languages and various sciences, so that I could go into the books that treated of these things, and try anything I wanted to make myself master of gradually, as I found it suit me. Whatever you may think of all that, the clearest and most imperative duty lies on every one of you to be assiduous in your reading; and learn to be good readers, which is, perhaps, a more difficult thing than you imagine. Learn to be discriminative in your reading--to read all kinds of things that you have an interest in, and that you find to be really fit for what you are engaged in. Of course, at the present time, in a great deal of the reading incumbent on you you must be guided by the books recommended to you by your professors for assistance towards the prelections. And then, when you get out of the University, and go into studies of your own, you will find it very important that you have selected a field, a province in which you can study and work.

The most unhappy of all men is the man that cannot tell what he is going to do, that has got no work cut out for him in the world, and does not go into it. For work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind--honest work, which you intend getting done. If you are in a strait, a very good indication as to choice--perhaps the best you could get--is a book you have a great curiosity about. You are then in the readiest and best of all possible conditions to improve by that book. It is analogous to what doctors tell us about the physical health and appetites of the patient. You must learn to distinguish between false appetite and real. There is such a thing as a false appetite, which will lead a man into vagaries with regard to diet, will tempt him to eat spicy things which he should not eat at all, and would not but that it is toothsome, and for the moment in baseness of mind. A man ought to inquire and find out what he really and truly has an appetite for--what suits his constitution; and that, doctors tell him, is the very thing he ought to have in general. And so with books. As applicable to almost all of you, I will say that it is highly expedient to go into history--to inquire into what has passed before you in the families of men. The history of the Romans and Greeks will first of all concern you; and you will find that all the knowledge you have got will be extremely applicable to elucidate that. There you have the most remarkable race of men in the world set before you, to say nothing of the languages, which your professors can better explain, and which, I believe, are admitted to be the most perfect orders of speech we have yet found to exist among men. And you will find, if you read well, a pair of extremely remarkable nations shining in the records left by themselves as a kind of pillar to light up life in the darkness of the past ages; and it will be well worth your while if you can get into the understanding of what these people were and what they did. You will find a great deal of hearsay, as I have found, that does not touch on the matter; but perhaps some of you will get to see a Roman face to face; you will know in some measure how they contrived to exist, and to perform these feats in the world; I believe, also, you will find a thing not much noted, that there was a very great deal of deep religion in its form in both nations. That is noted by the wisest of historians, and particularly by Ferguson, who is particularly well worth reading on Roman history; and I believe he was an alumnus in our own University. His book is a very creditable book. He points out the profoundly religious nature of the Roman people, notwithstanding the wildness and ferociousness of their nature. They believed that Jupiter Optimus--Jupiter Maximus--was lord of the universe, and that he had appointed the Romans to become the chief of men, provided they followed his commands--to brave all difficulty, and to stand up with an invincible front--to be ready to do and die; and also to have the same sacred regard to veracity, to promise, to integrity, and all the virtues that surround that noblest quality of men--courage--to which the Romans gave the name of virtue, manhood, as the one thing ennobling for a man.

In the literary ages of Rome, that had very much decayed away; but still it had retained its place among the lower classes of the Roman people. Of the deeply religious nature of the Greeks, along with their beautiful and sunny effulgences of art, you have a striking proof, if you look for it.

In the tragedies of Sophocles, there is a most distinct recognition of the eternal justice of Heaven, and the unfailing punishment of crime against the laws of God.

I believe you will find in all histories that that has been at the head and foundation of them all, and that no nation that did not contemplate this wonderful universe with an awe-stricken and reverential feeling that there was a great unknown, omnipotent, and all-wise, and all-virtuous Being, superintending all men in it, and all interests in it--no nation ever came to very much, nor did any man either, who forgot that. If a man did forget that, he forgot the most important part of his mission in this world.

In our own history of England, which you will take a great deal of natural pains to make yourselves acquainted with, you will find it beyond all others worthy of your study; because I believe that the British nation--and I include in them the Scottish nation--produced a finer set of men than any you will find it possible to get anywhere else in the world. (Applause.) I don't know in any history of Greece or Rome where you will get so fine a man as Oliver Cromwell. (Applause.) And we have had men worthy of memory in our little corner of the island here as well as others, and our history has been strong at least in being connected with the world itself--for if you examine well you will find that John Knox was the author, as it were, of Oliver Cromwell; that the Puritan revolution would never have taken place in England at all if it had not been for that Scotchman. (Applause.) This is an arithmetical fact, and is not prompted by national vanity on my part at all. (Laughter and applause.) And it is very possible, if you look at the struggle that was going on in England, as I have had to do in my time, you will see that people were overawed with the immense impediments lying in the way.

A small minority of God-fearing men in the country were flying away with any ship they could get to New England, rather than take the lion by the beard. They durstn't confront the powers with their most just complaint to be delivered from idolatry. They wanted to make the nation altogether conformable to the Hebrew Bible, which they understood to be according to the will of God; and there could be no aim more legitimate. However, they could not have got their desire fulfilled at all if Knox had not succeeded by the firmness and nobleness of his mind. For he is also of the select of the earth to me--John Knox. (Applause.) What he has suffered from the ungrateful generations that have followed him should really make us humble ourselves to the dust, to think that the most excellent man our country has produced, to whom we owe everything that distinguishes us among modern nations, should have been sneered at and abused by people. Knox was heard by Scotland--the people heard him with the marrow of their bones--they took up his doctrine, and they defied principalities and powers to move them from it. "We must have it," they said.

It was at that time the Puritan struggle arose in England, and you know well that the Scottish Earls and nobility, with their tenantry, marched away to Dunse-hill, and sat down there; and just in the course of that struggle, when it was either to be suppressed or brought into greater vitality, they encamped on the top of Dunse-hill thirty thousand armed men, drilled for that occasion, each regiment around its landlord, its earl, or whatever he might be called, and eager for Christ's Crown and Covenant. That was the signal for all England rising up into unappeasable determination to have the Gospel there also, and you know it went on and came to be a contest whether the Parliament or the King should rule--whether it should be old formalities and use and wont, or something that had been of new conceived in the souls of men--namely, a divine determination to walk according to the laws of God here as the sum of all prosperity--which of these should have the mastery; and after a long, long agony of struggle, it was decided--the way we know. I should say also of that Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell's--notwithstanding the abuse it has encountered, and the denial of everybody that it was able to get on in the world, and so on--it appears to me to have been the most salutary thing in the modern history of England on the whole. If Oliver Cromwell had continued it out, I don't know what it would have come to. It would have got corrupted perhaps in other hands, and could not have gone on, but it was pure and true to the last fibre in his mind--there was truth in it when he ruled over it.