rlyle got his
schooling. The Gray Dragon, travelling slowly (for it, or "her," as Sir
S. and Vedder always say), came to the end of the journey in a few
minutes; but when Carlyle walked along that pleasant shadowy road,
carrying his school books, he must have had plenty of time for
day-dreams. Now and then he could have seen the Solway gleaming, and I
can imagine how the beautiful, winding river must have given that grave,
wise boy thoughts of the great river of life, running to and from
eternity. We passed close to Hoddam Hill, where--Sir S. and Mrs. James
told me--the Carlyle family lived for a while when Thomas was grown up,
he translating German romances, and his brother working on the farm.

At Annan, looking at the statue of Carlyle's friend, Edward Irving, in
the broad High Street, we came back to the subject of Doctor James, and
I heard for the first time the real truth at the bottom of the bad
gossip.

We had got down from the car to look at the statue, and read what it
said on the pedestal. We were not thinking at first about the doctor,
but only of Edward Irving, and Sir S. was saying to Mrs. James how Annan
was only one of many towns where statues are put up to the memory of men
once misunderstood and cruelly persecuted in the very place where they
are afterward honoured. It seems that Edward Irving (who loved Mrs.
Carlyle when she was Jenny Welsh) had to come back to his native town to
be tried for heresy by the presbytery, after a brilliant career in
London as a fashionable preacher and founder of a new faith. All the
theologians of Scotland and crowds of other people (Sir S. says all true
Scots are theologians at heart) came pouring into Annan by coach and
chaise on the great day of the trial; and in spite of Irving's
passionate appeal, he was found guilty by a unanimous vote.

Talking of the trial, and of the preacher's death the next year, took
Mrs. James's mind to the subject which is never farther away than at the
back of her head. She found a likeness between Edward Irving's fate and
her husband's. "Richard was born in Carlisle and loved the place, but
they believed evil of him and persecuted him," she said. "Some day he
will come back and make Carlisle proud of her son. That's what I expect.
That's what I live for." And she gazed up at the statue of Irving the
preacher with quite the look of a prophetess in her eyes.

I was afraid that Sir S. would think her mad; but he seemed interested,
as bef