Coleridge and Robert Hall,
he preached rather than conversed, thinking what he himself should say
rather than paying attention to what others said, except to combat and
rebuke them,--a discourser, as Macaulay was; not one to suggest
interchange of ideas, as Addison did. But neither power of conversation
nor learning would have made Johnson a literary dictator. His power was
in the force of his character, his earnestness, and sincerity, even more
than in his genius.

I will not dwell on the other Review articles which Carlyle wrote in his
isolated retreat, since published as "Miscellanies," on which his fame
in no small degree rests,--even as the essays of Macaulay may be read
when his more elaborate History will lie neglected on the shelves of
libraries. Carlyle put his soul into these miscellanies, and the labor
and enjoyment of writing made him partially forget his ailments. I look
upon those years at Craigenputtock as the brightest and healthiest of
his life, removed as he was from the sight of levities and follies which
tormented his soul and irritated his temper.

Carlyle contrived to save about L200 from his literary earnings, so
frugal was his life and so free from temptations. His recreation was in
wandering on foot or horseback over the silent moors and unending hills,
watered by nameless rills and shadowed by mists and vapors. His life was
solitary, but not more so than that of Moses amid the deserts of
Midian,--isolation, indeed, but in which the highest wisdom is matured.
Into this retreat Emerson penetrated, a young man, with boundless
enthusiasm for his teacher,--for Carlyle was a teacher to him as to
hundreds of others in this country. Carlyle never had a truer and better
friend than Emerson, who opened to him the great reward of recognition
in distant America while yet his own land refused to take knowledge of
him; and this friendship continued to the end, an honor to both,--for
Carlyle never saw in Emerson's writings the genius and wisdom which his
American friend admired in the Scottish sage. Nor were their opinions so
harmonious as some suppose. Emerson despised Calvinism, and had no
definite opinions on any theological subject; Carlyle was a Calvinist
without the theology of Calvinism, if that be possible. He did not,
indeed, believe in historical Christianity, but he had the profoundest
convictions of an overruling God, reigning in justice, and making the
wrath of man to praise Him. Carlyle, too, d