Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 October 1880 — Thomas Carlyle. [ARTICLE]

Thomas Carlyle.

The following little story of Carlyle, found in a pamphlet by John Bwinton descriptive of a recent visit to Europe, will disclose to many readers of that rugged and vehement essayists, the sage of Chelsea, an almost unsuspected trait of gentleness in his character. It is a very touching picture of Carlyle in his lonely eld age which it present*. Mr. Bwinton found the grave of Mrs Carlyle in the Cathedral at Hadeington, and on the stone is cut Carlyle’s tribute to her, in which after referring to her long years of • hopeful companionship, he says that by her death “the light of his life is clean gone out™ Mr. Bwinton continues: “ ‘And Mr. Carlyle.’ said the sexton, ‘comes here from London now and then to see this grave. He is a gaunt, shaggy weird kind of old man. looking very old the last time he was here.’ ‘He is eight-' six now,’ said I. ‘Ay,’ He repeated, eight-six, and comes bore to tir's grave all the way from London.” And I told the sexton that Carlyle was a great man the greatest UTan of the age in books and that his name was known all over the world, bat tbe sexton thought there were other great men lying near at hand, I told him their fame did not reach beyond the grave-yard, and brought him back to talk of Carlyle. ‘Mr. Carlyle hitnaelf,’ said the grave-digger sofUy, ‘is to be brought hi re to be burned with his wife, ay/ ‘He comes here lonesome and alone,’ continued tne grave-digger, ‘when he Visits his wile’s grave. His niece keeps him company to the gate, but he leaves her there, and she stays there for him. The last time he was here I get a eight of him. and he was bowed down under his -white hairs, and he took his way up by that ruined wall of tbe old cathedral, round there and in here by (he gateway and he tottered up-here to this spot/ Softly spate the grave-digger and paused. Softer still, in the broad dialect of the Lothiaes, be proceeded: ‘And he stood here awhile in the grass, and then he kneeled down and stayed on his knees at the grave; then he bent over, and I saw him kiss the ground—ay, he kissed it again and again, sad be kept kneeling, and it was a long time before he rose and tottered out of the Cathedral, and wan. doed through the grave-yard to the gate where his niece stood waiting for him ’ “I almost shrink from putting on paper these words of the rustic gravedigger that day; but is not the scene one for art and poetry f And does K ,h ? w ragged sham destroyer of other dare, be of the sanguinary Mw and the loud artillery, in a finer Hrht than that of any page of his htmd&d books f” • r „ . „ We are about tired of seeing that everJ«to*»»n i ng to youth item entitled “Do Not Exaggerate” floating round in the papers once more. Especially when we run across it four or five times a montl' in journal* that relate how Garfield once pulled a six horse army team and wagon out of the mud with one hand, or solemnly set forth how, when only eighteen yean of age, Hancock prevented an ocean steamer from driving toil speed on the rocks in s fog by jumping overboard and landing off the vessel with his strong right arm. ■ -»M ’ Frank Lsmmwmhaebeen, for the see. ond time, convicted of the murder of at