of his extraordinary harangue was like an eruption of Vesuvius, but
the laugh he occasionally gave showed that he was talking about as much
for his own amusement as for ours. He was terribly severe on Parliament,
which he described as "endless babblement and windy talk--the same
hurdy-gurdies grinding out lies and inanities." The only man he had ever
heard in Parliament that at all satisfied him was the Old Iron Duke. "He
gat up and stammered away for fifteen minutes; but I tell ye, he was the
only mon in Parliament who gie us any credible portraiture of the
facts." He looked up at the portrait of Oliver Cromwell behind him, and
exclaimed with great vehemence: "I ha' gone doon to the verra bottom of
Oliver's speeches, and naething in Demosthenes or in any other mon will
compare wi' Cromwell in penetrating into the veritable core of the fact.
Noo, Parliament, as they ca' it, is joost everlasting babblement and
lies." We led him to discuss the labor question and the condition of the
working classes. He said that the turmoil about labor is only "a lazy
trick of master and man to do just as little honest work and to get just
as much for it as they possibly can--that is the labor question." It did
my soul good, as a teetotaler, to hear his scathing denunciation of the
liquor traffic. He was fierce in his wrath against "the horrible and
detestable damnation of whuskie and every kind of strong drink." In this
strain the thin and weird looking old Iconoclast went on for an hour
until he wound up with declaring, "England has joost gane clear doon
into an abominable cesspool of lies, shoddies and shams--down to a
bottomless _damnation_. Ye may gie whatever meaning to that word that ye
like." He could not refrain from laughing heartily himself at the
conclusion of this eulogy on his countrymen. If we had not known that
Mr. Carlyle had a habit of exercising himself in this kind of talk, we
should have felt a sort of consternation. As it was we enjoyed it as a
postscript to "Sartor Resartus" or the "Latter Day" pamphlets, and
listened and laughed accordingly. As we were about parting from him with
a cordial and tender farewell, my friend, Newman Hall, handed him a copy
of his celebrated little book, "Come to Jesus," Mr. Carlyle, leaning
over his table, fixed his eye upon the inscription on the outside of the
booklet, and as we left the room, we heard him repeating to himself the
title "Coom to Jesus--Coom to Jesus."

About Carlyle's