“To all Austrian Kaisers and such like, in their time of trouble, let us answer, as our fathers from of old have answered:—­Not by such means is help here for you.  Such means, allied to picking of pockets and viler forms of scoundrelism, are not permitted in this country for your behoof.  The right hon.  Secretary does himself detest such, and even is afraid to employ them.  He dare not:  it would be dangerous for him!  All British men that might chance to come in view of such a transaction, would incline to spurn it, and trample on it, and indignantly ask him what he meant by it?

“I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

  “THOMAS CARLYLE.[A]

  “Chelsea, June 18.”

[Footnote A:  From The Times, Wednesday, June 19, 1844.]

The autumn of this year was saddened for Carlyle by the loss of the dear friend whose biography he afterwards wrote.  On the 18th of September, 1844—­after a short career of melancholy promise, only half fulfilled—­John Sterling died, in his thirty-ninth year.

The next work that appeared from Carlyle’s pen—­a special service to history, and to the memory of one of England’s greatest men—­was “Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches, with Elucidations and a Connecting Narrative,” two volumes, published in 1845.  If there were any doubt remaining after the publication of the “French Revolution” what position our author might occupy amongst the historians of the age, it was fully removed on the appearance of “Cromwell’s Letters.”  The work obtained a great and an immediate popularity; and though bulky and expensive, a very large impression was quickly sold.  These speeches and letters of Cromwell, the spelling and punctuation corrected, and a few words added here and there for clearness’ sake, and to accommodate them to the language and style in use now, were first made intelligible and effective by Mr. Carlyle.  “The authentic utterances of the man Oliver himself,” he says, “I have gathered them from far and near; fished them up from the foul Lethean quagmires where they lay buried.  I have washed, or endeavoured to wash them clean from foreign stupidities—­such a job of buckwashing as I do not long to repeat—­and the world shall now see them in their own shape.”  The work was at once republished in America, and two editions were called for here within the year.

While engaged on this work, Carlyle went down to Rugby by express invitation, on Friday, 13th May, 1842, and on the following day explored the field of Naseby, in company with Dr. Arnold.  The meeting of two such remarkable men—­only six weeks before the death of the latter—­has in it something solemn and touching, and unusually interesting.  Carlyle left the school-house, expressing the hope that it might “long continue to be what was to him one of the rarest sights in the world—­a temple of industrious peace.”