On the Choice of Books

by Thomas Carlyle

March 4. "Louis Philippe."
April 29. "Repeal of the Union."
May 13. "Legislation for Ireland."

In The Spectator, 1848.

May 13. "Ireland and the British Chief Governor."
" "Irish Regiments (of the New Era)."

In The Examiner, 1848.

Dec. 2. "Death of Charles Buller."

The last-named paper, a tribute to the memory of his old pupil, we shall give entire. Another man of genius,[A] now also gone to his rest, sang sorrowfully on the same occasion:

[Footnote A: W.M. Thackeray.]

"Who knows the inscrutable design?
Blest be He who took and gave!
Why should your mother, Charles, not mine,
Be weeping at her darling's grave?

We bow to Heaven that will'd it so,
That darkly rules the fate of all,
That sends the respite or the blow,
That's free to give, or to recall."

Carlyle's paper reads like a solemn and touching funeral oration to the uncovered mourners as they stand round the grave before it is closed:—