psalm in it in some measure. It is sweet and clear. The clearest
of sceptical men had not anything like so clear a mind as that man
had--freer from cant and misdirected notion of any kind than any man
in these ages has been This is what the poet says:--

The Future hides in it
Gladness and sorrow:
We press still thorow;
Nought that abides in it
Daunting us--Onward!

And solemn before us,
Veiled, the dark Portal,
Goal of all mortal.
Stars silent rest o'er us--
Graves under us, silent.

While earnest thou gazest
Comes boding of terror,
Come phantasm and error;
Perplexes the bravest
With doubt and misgiving.

But heard are the voices,
Heard are the Sages,
The Worlds and the Ages:
"Choose well: your choice is
Brief, and yet endless."

Here eyes do regard you
In Eternity's stillness;
Here is all fulness,
Ye brave, to reward you.
Work, and despair not.[A]

[Footnote A: Originally published in Carlyle's "Past and Present,"
(Lond. 1843,) p. 318, and introduced there by the following words:--

"My candid readers, we will march out of this Third Book with a
rhythmic word of Goethe's on our tongue; a word which perhaps has
already sung itself, in dark hours and in bright, through many a
heart. To me, finding it devout yet wholly credible and veritable,
full of piety yet free of cant; to me joyfully finding much in it, and
joyfully missing so much in it, this little snatch of music, by the
greatest German man, sounds like a stanza in the grand _Road Song_
and _Marching Song_ of our great Teutonic kindred,--wending, wending,
valiant and victorious, through the undiscovered Deeps of Time!"]

One last word. _Wir heissen euch hoffen_--we bid you be of hope. Adieu
for this time.

THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY CHAIR IN EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY.

The following is a letter addressed by Mr. Carlyle to Dr. Hutchison
Stirling, late one of the candidates for the Chair of Moral Philosophy
in the University of Edinburgh:--

"Chelsea, 16th June, 1868.

"DEAR STIRLING,--

"You well know how reluctant I have been to interfere at all in the
election now close on us, and that in stating, as bound, what my own
clear knowledge of your qualities was, I have strictly held by that,
and abstained from more. But the news I now have from Edinburgh is of
such a complexion, so dubious, and so surprising to me; and I now find
I shall privately have so much regret in a certain event-