r of Merit in recognition of his having
written the "Life of Frederick the Great," who founded the Order.
Toward the end of the same year Mr. Disraeli offered him the Grand
Cross of the Bath (with the alternative of a baronetcy) and a pension
of "an amount equal to a good fellowship," but he declined both.

His eightieth birthday, December 4, 1875, brought Carlyle many
tributes of respect, including a gold medal from a number of Scottish
admirers, and "a noble and most unexpected" note from Prince Bismarck.
On May 5, 1877, he published a short letter in the _Times_, referring
to a rumor that Mr. Disraeli, as Premier, meditated forcing on a
"Philo-Turk war against Russia," and protesting against any such
design. This was his last public act. On February 5, 1881, he died at
his house in Chelsea. A burial in Westminster Abbey was offered, but
in accordance with his own wish, he was laid in the churchyard of
Ecclesfechan, beside his kindred.

The time has not yet come for the passing of a final judgment on
Carlyle's position in British literature. He was, above all things, a
prophet in the guise of a man of letters, who predicted the reverse of
smooth things for his country and for the world; and it has yet to be
seen if his predictions will be fulfilled. But it may be said even
now, and without risk of contradiction, that, for good or evil, he
exerted a greater influence on British literature during the middle of
the nineteenth century, and, through that literature, on the ethical,
religious, and political beliefs of his time, than any of his
contemporaries; that, as a humorist, using humor seriously and as a
weapon for the enforcement of his opinions, he has no superior,
combining in himself what is best in Dunbar, Burns, Rabelais, and
Swift; that, as a master of the graphic in style, he has no rival and
no second--showing an equal facility in photographing nature, and in
grasping and presenting in appropriate phraseology the salient points
of personal character as exhibited in expression, habits, features,
build, and dress.

Of Carlyle as a man, it is also permissible to say that, irritable,
impatient, intolerant, fiercely proud, occasionally hasty in his
judgments though he was, preserving to the last, nor caring to get rid
of, certain Scottish and Annandale rusticities of manner and mental
attitude, no one was ever more essentially self-controlled, patient,
and humble than he, or ever faced the real misfortunes of l