America in a certain sense performed the office of posterity to England and Scotland. Their authors were first recognized across the Atlantic. (Cheers.) He would not say it was owing to quicker perception, but rather to their clearness of atmosphere (laughter) that they had this luck sometimes. He remembered particularly a book which was published while he was still at college, and which produced in his young mind as great a ferment as it did among all his contemporaries. That book was “Sartor Resartus.” (Cheers.) It was first collected and published in the year 1836 in the city of Boston, in the United States of America (cheers); and it there received its first approbation. Their chairman, Dr. Smith, had told him during the course of the evening that when “Sartor Resartus” first began to appear in Fraser’s Magazine the editor received two letters, one from an Irishman, if he was not mistaken, saying that if that particular kind of stuff—describing it with what usually began with a “d” (laughter)—was to be continued he wished his subscription to be stopped. The other letter was from an American, saying that if the writer of “Sartor Resartus” in Fraser’s Magazine had written anything else he wished it all to be sent to him. (Laughter.) The second writer was a man he knew well—Ralph Waldo Emerson. (Cheers.) He remembered being very much struck many years ago with something which Thackeray said to him. It was that Carlyle was his master. That was said nearly thirty years ago. The other day he took up a number of the Nineteenth Century, and in an article by Mr. Ruskin he observed that he said Carlyle was his master. This coincidence, the difference between Thackeray and Ruskin being remembered, only showed, he thought, the universality of Carlyle’s influence. (Cheers.) He meant to say that Carlyle approached different men on different sides, which was one of the strongest marks that could be mentioned of genius. Carlyle had found an approach to their intellects and to their hearts, to the intellects and hearts of a great variety of men of different nations. He had introduced a new style—a peculiarly English style—of looking at things, quite as much as Sir Walter Scott introduced a new style of novel-writing. Sir Walter Scott, he considered, was the greatest story-teller of the age. (Cheers.) Carlyle had the surprising gift of expressing poetic thought in prose. (Cheers.) It was particularly their gratitude to him on the moral and human side that they would feel in drinking, not only with enthusiasm, but with a sort of reverence, the health of Mr. Carlyle.
The toast was received with much enthusiasm. Other toasts followed.
✠
II.
BEFORE THE LONDON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE.
The second annual dinner of the London Chamber of Commerce, which was incorporated in 1881, was held on the evening of January 29, 1883, in the Cannon-street Hotel, the Right Hon. H. C. E. Childers, M. P., Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the chair. The company, which numbered about 180, included representatives not only of the great commercial communities of London and all the most important of our colonies, but of the English-speaking race in every part of the world.
On the chairman’s left sat the Hon. J. Russell Lowell, D. C. L., United States Minister.
In proposing “The Chambers of Commerce of the United Kingdom and of the Whole World,” he said:
Mr. Chairman, my Lords and Gentlemen,—I was a few moments ago discussing with my excellent friend upon the left what a diplomatist might be permitted to say, and I think the result of the discussion was that he was left to his choice between saying nothing that had any meaning or saying something that had several—(laughter); and as one of those diplomatists to whom the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs alluded a short time ago I should rather choose the latter course, because it gives one afterwards a selection when the time for explanation comes round. (Laughter.) I shall not detain you long, for I know that there are speakers both on the right and on the left of me who are impatient to burst the bud; and I know that I have not been selected for the pleasant duty that has been assigned to me for any merits of my own. (Cries of dissent.) You will allow me to choose my own reason, gentlemen. I repeat, I have not been chosen so much for my own merits as for the opportunity afforded you of giving expression to your kindness and good feeling towards the country I represent—(cheers)—a country which exemplifies what the colonies of England may come to if they are not wisely treated. (Laughter and cheers.) Speaking for myself and for one or two of my compatriots whom I see here present, I should certainly say that that was no unpleasant destiny in itself. But I do not, nor do my countrymen, desire that those great commonwealths which are now joined to England by so many filial ties should ever be separated from her.
I am asked to-night to propose the “Chambers of Commerce of the United Kingdom and of the World,” and I might, if the clock did not warn me against it—(“Go on”)—if my own temperament did not stand a little in the way—I might say to you something very solemn on the subject of commerce. I might say how commerce, if not a great civilizer in itself, had always been a great intermediary and vehicle of civilization. I might say that all the great commercial States have been centres of civilization, and centres of those forces which keep civilization from becoming stupid. I do not say which is the post and which the propter in this inference; but I do say that the two things have been almost invariably associated.