ors
Huxley, Tyndall, and Ramsay, and on Dr. Rae, the Arctic explorer. That
done, amid a tempest of cheering and hats enthusiastically waved, Mr.
Carlyle, slipping off his Rectorial robe--which must have been a very
shirt of Nessus to him--advanced to the table and began to speak in
low, wavering, melancholy tones, which were in accordance with
the melancholy eyes, and in the Annandale accent, with which his
playfellows must have been familiar long ago. So self-contained
was he, so impregnable to outward influences, that all his years
of Edinburgh and London life could not impair even in the slightest
degree, _that_.

"The opening sentences were lost in the applause. What need of quoting
a speech which by this time has been read by everybody? Appraise it as
you please, it was a thing _per se_. Just as, if you wish a purple dye
you must fish up the Murex; if you wish ivory you must go to the east;
so if you desire an address such as Edinburgh listened to the other
day, you must go to Chelsea for it. It may not be quite to your taste,
but, in any case, there is no other intellectual warehouse in which
that kind of article is kept in stock.

"The gratitude I owe to him is--or should be--equal to that of most.
He has been to me only a voice, sometimes sad, sometimes wrathful,
sometimes scornful; and when I saw him for the first time with the
eye of flesh stand up amongst us the other day, and heard him speak
kindly, brotherly, affectionate words--his first appearance of that
kind, I suppose, since he discoursed of Heroes and Hero Worship to the
London people--I am not ashamed to confess that I felt moved towards
him, as I do not think in any possible combination of circumstances I
could have felt moved towards any other living man."[A]

[Footnote A: _The Argosy_, May, 1866.]

The Edinburgh correspondent to a London paper thus describes what took
place:--

"A vast interest among the intelligent public has been excited by the
prospect of Mr. Thomas Carlyle's appearance to be installed as Lord
Rector of the University of Edinburgh. With the exception of the
delivery of his lectures on Heroes and Hero-worship, he has avoided
oratory; and to many of his admirers the present occasion seemed
likely to afford their only chance of ever seeing him in the flesh,
and hearing his living voice. The result has been, that the University
authorities have been beset by applications in number altogether
unprecedented--to nearly all of w