Thomas Carlyle Author:Moncure Daniel Conway Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THOMAS CARLYLE. The real record of Carlyle's life will be a long task, employing not only many human hands, but even the hand of Time itself. While writing... more » his "History of Friedrich II.," Carlyle had prepared—as, indeed, the growth of the work had demanded—a special study at the top of his house in Chelsea, in which only that paper, book, or picture was admitted which was in some way connected with the subject in hand. One side of the room was covered from floor to ceiling with books; two others were adorned with pictures of persons or battles; and through these books and pictures was distributed the man he was trying to put together in comprehensible shape. But even more widely was Carlyle himself distributed. In what part of the earth have not his lines gone out and his labors extended ? On how many hearts and minds, on how many lives, has he engraved passages which aretranscripts of his own life, without which it can never be fully told ? To report this one life, precious contributions must be brought from the lives of Goethe, Emerson, Jeffrey, Brewster, Sterling, Leigh Hunt, Mill, Mazzini, Margaret Fuller, Harriet Martinean, Faraday. But how go on with the long catalogue ? At its end, could that be reached, there would remain the equally important memories of lives less known, from which in the future may come incidents casting fresh light upon this central figure of two generations; and, were all told, time alone can bring the perspective through which his genius and character can be estimated. In one sense, Carlyle was as a city set upon a hill, that cannot be hid; in another, he was an " open secret," hid by the very simplicity of his unconscious disguises, the frank perversities whose meaning could be known only by those close enough to hear the heart-beat beneath th...« less