DEATH OF THOMAS CARLYLE.

Evening Post, Volume XXI, Issue 31, 8 February 1881, Page 3

DEATH OF THOMAS CARLYLE.

The cable not unexpectedly apprises us of the death of Thomas Carlyle. For some time past he had been ailing, and his great age left no hope that he would resume work in the field of literature, even if his life were spared a little longer. Mr. Carlyle was I born in Ecclefechan, a small village in Dumfrieghire (his father being a small farmer), ; and therefore at the time of his death had overstepped the limit of four score by six years. He was educated at Edinburgh for the ministry, bat the paths of literature proved too seductive for him, as for many other of our great men, in the early part of the contnry, and the great success of his career has proved the wisdom of his ohoice. In 1823 he commenced by contributing to Brewster's Edinburgh Encyclopedia, some able articles on " Monteßqui," "Montaigne," " Nelion," and " The Two Pitts," and then his writings appeared in the new Edinburgh Review. His translations of Goethe and Schiller were made about the same time. Sartor Besartus came in 1830-3, his ever famous description of the French revolution in 1837, and for the next eight or nine years his pen was constantly ousy. In 1845, Mr. Carlyle produced his great work entitled " Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, with Elucidations," which earned him a high place among English historians of the first rank. In 1857 he beoame a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery, in 1865 rector of , IWinburgh University, and in 1870 President of the London Library. In 1873 he received a Prussian distinction, but in 1875 declined an offer which wag made to him of the, Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath. Mr. Carlyle's style of writing was peculiarly his own, and many of his works will hold their place in English classics for all time, though they will not reach that popularity with the masses which the writings of Maoaulay have done. "Mr. Carlyle's characteristic," says one of his admirers, " is a rugged earnestness of expression and a range of thought widened and deepened by his acquaintance with the writings of the great German thinkers."