"The discourse of the new Lord Rector squared very well with the occasion. There was no novelty in it. New truths are not the gifts which the old offer the young; the lesson we learn last is but the fulness of the meaning of what was only partially apprehended at first. Mr. Carlyle brought out things familiar enough to everyone who has read his works; there were the old platitudes and the old truths, and, it must be owned, mingled here and there with them the old errors. Time has, however, its recompenses, and if the freshness of youth seemed to be wanting in the address of the Rector, so also was its crudity. There was a singular mellowness in Mr. Carlyle's speech, which was reflected in the homely language in which it was couched. The chief lessons he had to enforce were to avoid cram, and to be painstaking, diligent, and patient in the acquisition of knowledge. Students are not to try to make themselves acquainted with the outsides of as many things as possible, and 'to go flourishing about' upon the strength of their acquisitions, but to count a thing as known only when it is stamped on their mind. The doctrine is only a new reading of the old maxim, non multa sed multum, but it is as much needed now as ever it was. Still more appropriate to the present day was Mr. Carlyle's protest against the notion that a University is the place where a man is to be fitted for the special work of a profession. A University, as he puts it, teaches a man how to read, or, as we may say more generally, how to learn. It is not the function of such a place to offer particular and technical knowledge, but to prepare a man for mastering any science by teaching him the method of all. A child learns the use of his body, not the art of a carpenter or smith, and the University student learns the use of his mind, not the professional lore of a lawyer or a physician. It is pleasant to meet with a strong reassertion of doctrines which the utilitarianism of a commercial and manufacturing age is too apt to make us all forget. Mr. Carlyle is essentially conservative in his notions on academic functions. Accuracy, discrimination, judgment, are with him the be-all and end-all of educational training. If a man has learnt to know a thing in itself, and in its relation to surrounding phenomena, he has got from a University what it is its proper duty to teach. Accordingly, we find him bestowing a good word on poor old Arthur Collins, who showed that he possessed these valuable qualities in the humble work of compiling a Peerage.
"The new Lord Rector is, however, as conservative in his choice of the implements of study as he is in the determination of its objects. The languages and the history of the great nations of antiquity he puts foremost, like any other pedagogue. The Greeks and the Romans are, he tells the Edinburgh students, 'a pair of nations shining in the records left by themselves as a kind of pillar to light up life in the darkness of the past ages;' and he adds that it would be well worth their while to get an understanding of what these people were, and what they did. It is here, however, that an old error of Mr. Carlyle's crops up among his well-remembered truths. He quotes from Machiavelli—evidently agreeing himself with the sentiment, though he refrained from asking the assent of his audience to it—the statement that the history of Rome showed that a democracy could not permanently exist without the occasional intervention of a Dictator. It is possible that if Machiavelli had had the experience of the centuries which have elapsed since his day, he would have seen fit to alter his conclusion, and it is to be regretted that the admiration which Mr. Carlyle feels for the great men of history will not allow him to believe in the possibility of a political society where each might find his proper sphere and duty without disturbing the order and natural succession of the commonwealth. His judgment on this point is like that of a man who had only known the steam-engine before the invention of governor balls, and was ready to declare that its mechanism would be shattered if a boy were not always at hand to regulate the pressure of the steam.
* * * * *
"We may turn, however, from this difference to another of Mr. Carlyle's doctrines, which mark at once his independence of thought and his respect for experience, where he declares the necessity for recognising the hereditary principle in government, if there is to be 'any fixity in things.' In the same way we find him almost lamenting the fact that Oxford, once apparently so fast-anchored as to be immovable, has begun to twist and toss on the eddy of new ideas.
"It is impossible to glance at Mr. Carlyle's Easter Monday discourse without recalling the oration which his predecessor pronounced on resigning office last autumn. * * * Mr. Carlyle is as simple and practical as his predecessor was dazzling and rhetorical. An ounce of mother wit, quotes the new Lord Rector, is worth a pound of clergy, and while he admires Demosthenes, he prefers the eloquence of Phocion. A little later he repeats his old doctrine on the virtue of silence, laments the fact that 'the finest nations in the world—the English and the American—are going all away into wind and tongue,' and protests that a man is not to be esteemed wise because he has poured out speech copiously. Mr. Carlyle has so often inculcated these sentiments in his books that there can be no suspicion of an arrière pensée in their utterance now, but the contrast between him and his predecessor is at the least instructive. Each does, however, in some measure, supply what is deficient in the other. No one would claim for the Chancellor of the Exchequer the intensity of power of his successor, but in his abundant energy, his wide sympathy with popular movement, and his real, if vague and indiscriminating, faith in the activity and progress of modern life, he conveys lessons of trust in the present, and hopefulness in the future, which would be ill-exchanged for the patient and somewhat sad stoicism of Mr. Carlyle."
Carlyle was still in Scotland on April 21, and there the terrible and solemn news had to be conveyed to him of the sudden death of her who had been his true and faithful life-companion for forty years.
Mrs. Carlyle died on Saturday, April 21, under very peculiar circumstances. She was taking her usual drive in Hyde Park about four o'clock, when her little favourite dog—which was running by the side of the brougham—was run over by a carriage. She was greatly alarmed, though the dog was not seriously hurt. She lifted the dog into the carriage, and the man drove on. Not receiving any call or direction from his mistress, as was usual, he stopped the carriage and discovered her, as he thought, in a fit, or ill, and drove to St. George's Hospital, which was near at hand. When there it was discovered that she must have been dead some little time. Mrs. Carlyle's health had been for several months feeble, but not in a state to excite anxiety or alarm.
On the following Wednesday her remains were conveyed from London to Haddington for interment there, and the funeral took place on Thursday afternoon. Mr. Carlyle was accompanied from London (whither he had returned immediately on the receipt of that solemn message) by his brother, Dr. Carlyle, Mr. John Forster, and the Hon. Mr. Twistleton. The funeral cortège was followed on foot by a large number of gentlemen who had known Mrs. Carlyle and her father, Dr. Welsh, who was held in high estimation in the town, where he had practised medicine till his death, in 1819. The grave, which is the same as that occupied by Dr. Welsh's remains, lies in the centre of the ruined choir of the old cathedral at Haddington. In accordance with the Scottish practice, there was no service read, and Mr. Carlyle threw a handful of earth on the coffin after it had been lowered into the grave.
* * * * *
Carlyle wrote the following inscription to be placed on his wife's tombstone:—