about a hundred a year," and all actual scholastic duties to perform.
This change brought him into intimate relations with Edward Irving,
who, having acquired a reputation as a teacher in Haddington, had been
induced by the patrons of an adventure school, in Kirkcaldy, to
undertake the management of it. The two, though professionally rivals,
became fast friends, and read and made excursions into different parts
of Scotland together. Carlyle was also introduced by Irving to various
Kirkcaldy families, including that of Mr. Martin, the parish minister,
one of whose daughters his friend subsequently married. He himself
became attached to an ex-pupil of Irving's, a Miss Margaret Gordon,
with some of whose graces he afterward endowed the dark and fickle
Blumine, of "Sartor Resartus." She reciprocated Carlyle's affection,
but the aunt with whom she lived put a stop to some talk of an
engagement.

Carlyle found the people of Kirkcaldy more to his mind than those of
Annan; but in two years the work of teaching became altogether
intolerable to him, although he did it conscientiously. Successful
opposition sprung up to Irving and himself, moreover, in the shape of
a third school. Irving resolved to leave Kirkcaldy, and, in September,
1818, Carlyle wrote to his father, who had now given up business in
Ecclesfechan and taken the farm of Mainhill, about two miles distant,
that, having saved about L70, he purposed removing to Edinburgh, where
he thought he "could," perhaps, find private teaching to support him,
till he could fall into some other way of doing. He had now totally
abandoned all thoughts of entering the ministry.

Carlyle removed to Edinburgh in November, 1818. His prospects were for
some time dubious; he even entertained the idea of emigrating to
America. Ultimately, however, he obtained fairly regular and well-paid
private teaching. An introduction to Dr. (afterward Sir David)
Brewster, the editor of the "Edinburgh Encyclopaedia," led to his
writing articles, chiefly biographical and geographical, for that
work, at "bread-and-butter wages," and subsequently to his translating
Legendre's "Elements of Geometry" from the French for L50. At the
beginning of the session of 1819, he enrolled in the class of Scots
Law, with the intention of becoming an advocate. But he found law as
uncongenial a study as divinity. Till 1822 he lived in various
lodgings in Edinburgh, finding his chief relief from tutorial drudgery
in visits