chaos whatsoever, that sorrow was not given us for sorrow’s sake, but always and infallibly as a lesson to us from which we are to learn somewhat:  and which, the somewhat once learned, ceases to be sorrow.  I do believe this; and study in general to ‘consume my own smoke,’ not indeed without very ugly out-puffs at times!  Allan Cunningham is the best, he tells me that always as one grows older, one grows happier:  a thing also which I really can believe.  But as for you, my dear sir, you have other work to do in the East than grieve.  Are there not beautiful things there, glorious things; wanting only an eye to note them, a hand to record them?  If I had the command over you, I would say, read Paul et Virginie, then read the Chaumiere Indienne; gird yourself together for a right effort, and go and do likewise or better!  I mean what I say.  The East has its own phases, there are things there which the West yet knows not of; and one heaven covers both.  He that has an eye let him look!

[Footnote A:  There seems to be some omission or slip of the pen here.]

“I hope you forgive me this style I have got into.  It seems to me on reading your book as if we had been long acquainted in some measure; as if one might speak to you right from the heart.  I hope we shall meet some day or other.  I send you my constant respect and good wishes; and am and remain,

  “Yours very truly always,

  “T.  CARLYLE.”

Carlyle first appeared as a lecturer in 1837.  His first course was on ‘German Literature,’ at Willis’s Rooms; a series of six lectures, of which the first was thus noticed in the Spectator of Saturday, May 6, 1837.[A]

[Footnote A:  Facsimiled in “The Autographic Mirror,” July, 1865.]

“Mr. Thomas Carlyle’s Lectures.

“Mr. Carlyle delivered the first of a course of lectures on German Literature, at Willis’s Rooms, on Tuesday, to a very crowded and yet a select audience of both sexes.  Mr. Carlyle may be deficient in the mere mechanism of oratory; but this minor defect is far more than counterbalanced by his perfect mastery of his subject, the originality of his manner, the perspicuity of his language, his simple but genuine eloquence, and his vigorous grasp of a large and difficult question.  No person of taste or judgment could hear him without feeling that the lecturer is a man of genius, deeply imbued with his great argument.”

“This course of lectures,” says a writer already quoted, “was well attended by the fashionables of the West End; and though they saw in his manner something exceedingly awkward, they could not fail to discern in his matter the impress of a mind of great originality and superior gifts."[A]

[Footnote A:  JAMES GRANT:  “Portraits of Public Characters.” (Lond. 1841.) Vol. ii., p. 152.]