Carlyle wrote no important work after his wife's death, although after a visit to Mentone in 1867, where he partially composed his "Personal Reminiscences," he settled down to his old life in London. In August, 1867, there appeared in Macmillan's Magazine his view of British democracy, under the title of "Shooting Niagara." He prepared a special edition of his collected works, and added to them, in 1875, a fresh volume containing "The Early Kings of Norway" and an essay on the "Portraits of John Knox." On November 18, 1870, he wrote a letter to the Times on the "Franco German Question," defending the attitude of Germany. He expressed privately strong opposition to the Irish policy of Mr. Gladstone. In February, 1874, he was offered and accepted the Prussian Order of Merit in recognition of his having written the "Life of Frederick the Great," who founded the Order. Toward the end of the same year Mr. Disraeli offered him the Grand Cross of the Bath (with the alternative of a baronetcy) and a pension of "an amount equal to a good fellowship," but he declined both.
His eightieth birthday, December 4, 1875, brought Carlyle many tributes of respect, including a gold medal from a number of Scottish admirers, and "a noble and most unexpected" note from Prince Bismarck. On May 5, 1877, he published a short letter in the Times, referring to a rumor that Mr. Disraeli, as Premier, meditated forcing on a "Philo-Turk war against Russia," and protesting against any such design. This was his last public act. On February 5, 1881, he died at his house in Chelsea. A burial in Westminster Abbey was offered, but in accordance with his own wish, he was laid in the churchyard of Ecclesfechan, beside his kindred.
The time has not yet come for the passing of a final judgment on Carlyle's position in British literature. He was, above all things, a prophet in the guise of a man of letters, who predicted the reverse of smooth things for his country and for the world; and it has yet to be seen if his predictions will be fulfilled. But it may be said even now, and without risk of contradiction, that, for good or evil, he exerted a greater influence on British literature during the middle of the nineteenth century, and, through that literature, on the ethical, religious, and political beliefs of his time, than any of his contemporaries; that, as a humorist, using humor seriously and as a weapon for the enforcement of his opinions, he has no superior, combining in himself what is best in Dunbar, Burns, Rabelais, and Swift; that, as a master of the graphic in style, he has no rival and no second—showing an equal facility in photographing nature, and in grasping and presenting in appropriate phraseology the salient points of personal character as exhibited in expression, habits, features, build, and dress.
Of Carlyle as a man, it is also permissible to say that, irritable, impatient, intolerant, fiercely proud, occasionally hasty in his judgments though he was, preserving to the last, nor caring to get rid of, certain Scottish and Annandale rusticities of manner and mental attitude, no one was ever more essentially self-controlled, patient, and humble than he, or ever faced the real misfortunes of life with a calmer courage; that he was as incapable of conscious injustice, unkindliness, or vindictiveness, as he was of insincerity or impurity; that in pecuniary straits, even in despair, he never wrote a line that he did not believe, never swerved by a hair's breadth from the noble purposes which dominated his life and extinguished all selfish ambition.
The following letter was written by Carlyle, in 1876, to a young man who had asked his advice on the choice of a profession:
"Dear Sir,—I respect your conscientious scruples in regard to choosing a profession, and wish much I had the power of giving you advice that would be of the least service. But that, I fear, in my total ignorance of yourself and the posture of your affairs, is pretty nearly impossible. The profession of the law is in many respects a most honorable one, and has this to recommend it, that a man succeeds there, if he succeeds at all, in an independent and manful manner, by force of his own talent and behavior, without needing to seek patronage from anybody. As to ambition, that is, no doubt, a thing to be carefully discouraged in oneself; but it does not necessarily inhere in the barrister's profession more than in many others, and I have known one or two who, by quiet fidelity in promoting justice, and by keeping down litigation, had acquired the epithet of the 'honest lawyer,' which appeared to me altogether human and beautiful.
"Literature, as a profession, is what I would counsel no faithful man to be concerned with, except when absolutely forced into it, under penalty, as it were, of death. The pursuit of culture, too, is in the highest degree recommendable to every human soul, and may be successfully achieved in almost any honest employment that has wages paid for it. No doubt, too, the church seems to offer facilities in this respect; but I will by no means advise you to overcome your reluctance against seeking refuge there. On the whole, there is nothing strikes me likelier for one of your disposition than the profession of teacher, which is rising into higher request every day, and has scope in it for the grandest endowments of human faculties (could such hitherto be got to enter it), and of all useful and fruitful employments may be defined as the usefullest, fruitfullest, and also indispensablest in these days of ours.
"Regretting much that I can help you so infinitely little, bidding you take pious and patient counsel with your own soul, and wishing you with great truth a happy result, I remain, dear sir,
"Faithfully yours,