ords, "O, the dreary, dreary moorland." Here
Carlyle read books, gave himself over to silent meditation, and wrote
for his bread, although a man who possessed an adequate income could not
have been more independent in thought than he was, or more averse to
writing to the order of editors of reviews and magazines. With no
outside distractions, books were his companions as well as his friends.
As you read Froude's intimate biography, it comes upon you, as you
consider Carlyle's life in London, what a tremendous intellectual stride
he had made while living in this dreary solitude of Craigenputtock. It
was there that he continued his development under the intellectual
influence of Goethe, wrote "Sartor Resartus" and conceived the idea of
writing the story of the French Revolution. Those seven years, as you
trace their influence during the rest of his life, will ever be a
tribute to the concentrated, bookish labors of bookish men.

It is often said that some practical experience in life is necessary for
the training of a historian; that only thus can he arrive at a knowledge
of human nature and become a judge of character; that, while the theory
is occasionally advanced that history is a series of movements which may
be described without taking individuals into account, as a matter of
fact, one cannot go far on this hypothesis without running up against
the truth that movements have motors and the motors are men. Hence we
are to believe the dictum that the historian needs that knowledge of men
which is to be obtained only by practical dealings with them. It is true
that Gibbon's service in the Hampshire militia and his membership in the
House of Commons were of benefit to the historian of the Roman Empire.
Grote's business life, Macaulay's administrative work in India, and the
parliamentary experience of both were undoubtedly of value to their work
as historians, but there are excellent historians who have never had any
such training. Carlyle is an example, and Samuel R. Gardiner is another.
Curiously enough, Gardiner, who was a pure product of the university and
the library, has expressed sounder judgments on many of the prominent
men of the seventeenth century than Macaulay. I am not aware that there
is in historical literature any other such striking contrast as this,
for it is difficult to draw the line closely between the historian and
the man of affairs, but Gardiner's example is strengthened in other
historians' lives