of the line of Braganza-Coburg, son of King Louis I. and Maria Pia,
daughter of King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, was born on the 28th of
September 1863. When about twenty years of age he spent a considerable
time in travelling, visiting England in 1883. On the 22nd of May 1886 he
married Marie Amelie, daughter of Philippe, duc d'Orleans, comte de
Paris, and on the death of his father (19th of October 1889) he
succeeded to the throne of Portugal. In that year the British government
found it necessary to make formal remonstrances against Portuguese
encroachments in South Africa, and relations between the two countries
were greatly strained for some time. The king's attitude during this
critical period was one of conciliation, and his temperate, though firm,
speech on opening the Cortes in January 1890 did much to strengthen the
party of peace. In 1900-1901 also his friendly attitude towards Great
Britain was shown by cordial toasts at a banquet to the officers of the
British fleet at Lisbon. King Carlos distinguished himself as a patron
of science and literature, and was himself an artist of some repute. In
March 1894 he took a very active part in the celebration of the 500th
anniversary of the birth of Prince Henry the Navigator, and a year later
he decorated the Portuguese poet, Joao de Deus, with much honour at
Lisbon. He took a great personal interest in deep-sea soundings and
marine exploration, and published an account of some of his own
investigations, the results themselves being shown at an oceanographic
exhibition opened by him on the 12th of April 1897. In May 1907 the king
suspended the constitution of Portugal and temporarily appointed Senhor
Franco as dictator with a view to carrying out certain necessary
reforms. Some discontent was aroused by this proceeding; this was
increased by Franco's drastic measures, and on the 1st of February 1908
King Carlos and his elder son, Louis, duke of Braganza (1887-1908), were
assassinated whilst driving through the streets of Lisbon. The king was
succeeded by his only surviving son, Manuel, duke of Beja (b. 1889), who
took the title of Manuel II.
See _S.M. El Rei D. Carlos I. e sua obra artistica, e scientifica_
(Lisbon, 1908).
CARLOS, DON (1545-1568), prince of Asturias, was the son of Philip II.
king of Spain, by his first wife Maria, daughter of John III., king of
Portugal, and was born at Valladolid on the 8th of July 1545. His mother
died a few days after his birth, and the prince, who was very delicate,
grew up proud, wilful and indolent, and soon began to show signs of
insanity. In 1559 he was betrothed to Elizabeth, daughter of Henry II.,
king of France, a lady who a few months later became the third wife of
his father; in 1560 he was recognized as the heir to the throne of
Castile, and three years later to that of Aragon. Other brides were then
suggested for the prince; Mary, queen of Scots, Margaret, another
daughter of Henry II., and Anne, a daughter of the emperor Maximilian
II.; but meanwhile his mental derangement had become much more acute,
and his condition could no longer be kept secret. In 1562 he met with an
accident which was followed by a serious illness, and after his recovery
he showed more obvious signs of insanity, while his conduct both in
public and in private was extremely vicious and disorderly. He took a
marked dislike to the duke of Alva, possibly because he wished to
proceed to the Netherlands instead of the duke, and he exhibited a
morbid antipathy towards his father, whose murder he even contemplated.
At length in January 1568, when he had made preparations for flight from
Spain, he was placed in confinement by order of Philip, and on the 24th
of July of the same year he died. This event is still enveloped in some
mystery. Philip has been accused of murdering his son, and from what is
known of the king's character this supposition is by no means
improbable. It is known that the king appointed commissioners to try the
prince, and he may have been put to death for treason in accordance with
their verdict. It has also been suggested that his crime was heresy, and
that his death was due to poison, and other solutions of the mystery
have been put forward. On the other hand, it should be remembered that
the health of Carlos was very poor, and that his outrageous behaviour in
captivity would have undermined a much stronger constitution than his
own. Consequently there is nothing strange or surprising in his death
from natural causes, and while no decisive verdict upon this question
can be given, Philip may perhaps be granted the benefit of the doubt. By
some writers the sad fate and early death of Carlos have been connected
with the story of his unlawful attachment to his promised bride,
Elizabeth, who soon became his stepmother, and whose death followed so
quickly upon his own. There is circumstantial evidence for this tale.
The loss of an affianced bride, followed by hatred between supplanted
and supplanter, who were father and son, then the increasing infirmity
of the slighted prince, and finally the almost simultaneous deaths of
the pair. But mature historical research dismisses this story as a
fable. It has, however, served as the subject for romance. Schiller and
Alfieri, J.G. de Campristron in _Andronic_, and Lord John Russell have
made it the subject of dramas, and other dramas based upon the life of
Don Carlos have been written by Thomas Otway, M.A. Chenier, J.P. de
Montalvan, and D.N. de Enciso.
See C.V. de Saint Real, _Don Carlos, nouvelle historique_ (Paris,
1672). This gives the story of the attachment of Carlos and Elizabeth,
which has been refuted by L. von Ranke, _Zur Geschichte des don
Carlos_ (Vienna, 1829); and J.A. Llorente, _Histoire critique de
l'Inquisition_ (French translation, Paris, 1817). See also L.P.
Gachard, _Don Carlos et Philippe II_ (Brussels, 1863); C. de Mouy,
_Don Carlos et Philippe II_ (Paris, 1863); M. Budinger, _Don Carlos,
Haft und Tod_ (Vienna, 1891); L.A. Warnkonig, _Don Carlos, Leben,
Verhaftung und Tod_ (Stuttgart, 1864); W. Maurenbrecher, _Don Carlos_
(Berlin, 1876); and W.H. Prescott, _History of the Reign of Philip
II._ vol. ii. (London, 1855, 1859).
CARLOS, DON (1788-1855), the first of the Carlist claimants of the
throne of Spain, was the second surviving son of King Charles IV. and
his wife, Louisa Maria of Parma. He was born on the 29th of March 1788,
and was christened Carlos Maria Isidro. From 1808 till 1814 he was a
prisoner in France at Valencay with his brothers, who had been
imprisoned by Napoleon when he seized the whole royal family of Spain at
Bayonne. After his return he lived quietly as a prince at Madrid. In
September 1816 he married Maria Francesca de Asis, daughter of King John
VI. of Portugal, and sister of the second wife of his elder brother King
Ferdinand VII. Though he took no part in the government of Spain, except
to hold a few formal offices, Don Carlos was known for the rigid
orthodoxy of his religious opinions, the piety of his life, and his firm
belief in the divine right of kings to govern despotically. During the
revolutionary troubles of 1820-1823 he was threatened by the extreme
radicals, but no attack was made on him. When the revolutionary
agitation was put down by French intervention in 1823, Don Carlos
continued to behave as the affectionate brother and loyal subject of
Ferdinand VII. The family affection between them was undoubtedly
sincere, and was one of the very few amiable traits in the character of
the elder brother. Towards the close of Ferdinand's reign Don Carlos was
forced against his own will into the position of a party leader, or
rather into the position of a prince whom a great party was forced to
take as its leader. The extreme clericals among the Spaniards, who were
the partisans of despotism because they rightly considered it as most
favourable to the church, began to be discontented with King Ferdinand,
who seemed wanting in energy. When the king showed his intention to
alter the law of succession in order to secure the crown for his
daughter Isabella, the clericals (in the Spanish phrase, "apostolicos")
banded to protect the rights of Don Carlos. There can be no question
that if he had been disposed to place himself at the head of an
insurrection he would have been followed, and might have put Ferdinand
under restraint. But Don Carlos held his principles honestly. He
considered rebellion as a sin in a prince as much as in other men, and
as wicked when made by "apostolicos" as by liberals. He would do no more
than assert his rights, and those of his children, in words. His wife
and her sister, the princess of Beira, widow of his first cousin the
infante Pedro, were less scrupulous. They were actively engaged in
intrigues with the "apostolicos." In March 1833 the princess of Beira
was informed by the king that her brother Don Miguel, then regent in
Portugal, desired her presence, and that she must pay him a visit. On
the 16th of March Don Carlos left for Portugal with his wife, in company
with the princess, after an interview with his brother the king which is
said to have been friendly. In the following month he was called upon by
the king to swear allegiance to the infanta Isabella, afterwards queen.
Don Carlos refused, in respectful terms but with great firmness, to
renounce his rights and those of his sons, in a public letter dated the
29th of April. The death of his brother on the 29th of September 1833
gave him an opportunity to vindicate his claims without offence to his
principles, for in his own opinion and that of his partisans he was now
king. But he was entangled in the civil war of Portugal and was shut off
from Spain. He did, and perhaps could do, nothing to direct the
Spaniards who rose on his behalf, and had proclaimed him king as Charles
V. When the Miguelite party was beaten in Portugal, Don Carlos escaped
to England on the 1st of June 1834 in H.M.S. "Donegal." His stay in
England was short. On the 2nd of July he passed over to France, where he
was actively aided by the legitimist party, and on the 11th he joined
his partisans at Elizondo in the valley of Bastan, in the western
Pyrenees. On the 27th of October of this year he was deprived of his
rights as infante by a royal decree, confirmed by the Cortes on the 15th
of January 1837. Don Carlos remained in Spain till the defeat of his
party, and then escaped to France on the 14th of September 1839. During
these years he accompanied his armies, without displaying any of the
qualities of a general or even much personal courage. But he endured a
good deal of hardship, and was often compelled to take to hiding in the
hills. On these occasions he was often carried over difficult places on
the back of a stout guide commonly known as the royal jackass (_burro
real_). The semblance of a court which he maintained was torn by
incessant personal intrigues, and by conflicts between his generals and
the ecclesiastics who exercised unbounded influence over his mind. The
defeat of his cause, which had many chances of success, was
unquestionably due to a very large extent to his want of capacity, his
apathy, and his increasing absorption in practices of puerile piety. His
first wife having died in England, Don Carlos married her elder sister,
the princess of Beira, in Biscay in October 1837. After his flight from
Spain, Don Carlos led a life of increasing insignificance. He abdicated
in May 1845, took a title of count of Molina, and died at Trieste on the
10th of March 1855.
By his first marriage, Don Carlos had three sons, Charles (1818-1861),
John (1822-1887), and Ferdinand (1824-1861). Charles succeeded to the
claims of his father, and was known to his partisans as Don Carlos VI.,
but was more commonly known as the count of Montemolin. In 1846, when
the marriage of queen Isabella was being negotiated, the Austrian
government endeavoured to arrange an alliance between her and the count
of Montemolin. But as he insisted on the complete recognition of his
rights, the Spanish government refused to hear of him as a candidate.
The Carlists took up arms on his behalf between 1846 and 1848, but the
count, who had been expelled from France by the police, did not join
them in the field. In April 1860 he and his brother Ferdinand landed at
San Carlos de la Rapita, at the mouth of the Ebro, in company with a
feather-headed officer named Ortega, who held a command in the Balearic
islands. They hoped to profit by the fact that the bulk of the Spanish
army was absent in a war with Morocco. But no Carlist rising took place.
The men who had been brought from the islands by Ortega deserted him.
Montemolin and his brother, together with their devoted partisan General
Elio, who had accompanied them from exile, lurked in hiding for a
fortnight and were then captured. Ortega was shot, but the princes saved
their lives, and that of Elio, by making an abject surrender of their
claims. When he had been allowed to escape and had reached Cologne, the
count of Montemolin publicly retracted his renunciation on the 15th of
June, on the ignominious ground that it had been extorted by fear.
Montemolin and his brother Ferdinand died within a fortnight of one
another in January 1861 without issue.
The third brother, John, who had advanced his own claims before his
brother's retraction, now came forward as the representative of the
legitimist and Carlist cause. As he had shown a disposition to accept
liberalism, and to make concessions to the spirit of the age, he was
unpopular with the party. On the 3rd of October 1868 he made a formal
renunciation in favour of his son Charles (Don Carlos VII.), who is
separately noticed below.
See Hermann Baumgarten, _Geschichte Spaniens_ (Leipzig, 1861); H.
Butler Clarke, _Modern Spain_ (Cambridge, 1906), which contains a
useful bibliography.
CARLOS, DON (CHARLES MARIA DE LOS DOLORES JUAN ISIDORE JOSEPH FRANCIS
QUIRIN ANTONY MICHAEL GABRIEL RAPHAEL) (1848-1909), prince of Bourbon,
claimant, as Don Carlos VII., to the throne of Spain, was born at
Laibach on the 30th of March 1848, being the eldest surviving son of Don
Juan (John) of Bourbon and of the archduchess Maria Beatrix, daughter of
Francis IV., duke of Modena. Don Carlos was the grandson of the first
pretender, noticed above. He married in February 1867, at Frohsdorf,
Princess Marguerite, daughter of the duke of Parma and niece of the
comte de Chambord, who was born on the 1st of January 1847, and who
bore him a son, Don Jaime, in 1870, and three daughters. Don Carlos
boldly asserted his pretensions to the throne of Spain two years after
the revolution of 1868 had driven Queen Isabella II. and the other
branch of the Bourbons into exile. His manifesto, addressed to his
brother Alphonso, namesake of his rival, Alphonso XII., found an echo in
the fanatical priesthood and peasantry of many provinces of the
Peninsula, but little support among the more enlightened middle classes,
especially in the towns. The first rising was started in Catalonia by
the brother of the pretender, who himself entered Spain by way of Vera,
in the Basque provinces, on the 21st of May 1872. The troops of King
Amadeus under General Moriones, a progressist officer, who was one of
Spain's ablest and most popular commanders, surprised and very nearly
captured the pretender at Oroquista, sending him a fugitive to France in
headlong flight with a few followers. For more than a year he loitered
about in the French Pyrenees, the guest of old noble houses who showed
him much sympathy, while the French authorities winked at the fact that
he was fomenting civil war in Spain, where his guerilla bands, many of
them led by priests, committed atrocities, burning, pillaging, shooting
prisoners of war, and not unfrequently ill-using even foreign residents
and destroying their property. When the Federal Republic was proclaimed
on the abdication of King Amadeus, the Carlists had overrun Spain to
such an extent that they held all the interior of Navarre, the three
Basque provinces, and a great part of Catalonia, Lower Aragon, and
Valencia, and had made raids into the provinces of Old Castile and
Estremadura. Don Carlos re-entered Spain on the 15th of July 1873, just
before the Carlists took Estella, in Navarre, which became, with Tolosa
and Durango in the Basque provinces, his favourite residence. He
displayed very lax morals and an apathy which displeased his staff and
partisans. Don Carlos was present at some fights around Estella, and was
in the neighbourhood of Bilbao during its famous siege of three months
in 1874 until its relief by Marshals Serrano and Concha on the 2nd of
May. He was also present at the battle near Estella on the 27th of June
1874, in which Marshal Concha was killed and the liberals were repulsed
with loss. Twice he lost golden opportunities of making a rush for the
capital--in 1873, during the Federal Republic, and after Concha's death.
From the moment that his cousin Alphonso XII. was proclaimed king at
Sagunto, at Valencia, in Madrid, and at Logrono, by General Campos,
Daban, Jovellar, Primo de Rivera, and Laserna, the star of the pretender
was on the wane. Only once, a few weeks after the Alphonsist
restoration, the army of Don Carlos checked the Liberal forces in
Navarre, and surprised and made prisoners half a brigade, with guns and
colours, at Lacar, almost under the eyes of the new king and his
headquarters. This was the last Carlist success. The tide of war set in
favour of Alphonso XII., whose armies swept the Carlist bands out of
central Spain and Catalonia in 1875, while Marshal Quesada, in the upper
Ebro valley, Navarre, and Ulava, prepared by a series of successful
operations the final advance of 180,000 men, headed by Quesada and the
king, which defeated the Carlists at Estella, Pena Plata, and Elgueta,
thus forcing Don Carlos with a few thousand faithful Carlists to retreat
and surrender to the French frontier authorities in March 1876.
The pretender went to Pau, and there, singularly enough, issued his
proclamations bidding temporary adieu to the nation and to his
volunteers from the same chateau where Queen Isabella, also a refugee,
had issued hers in 1868. From that date Don Carlos became an exile and a
wanderer, travelling much in the Old and New World, and raising some
scandal by his mode of life. He fixed his residence for a time in
England, then in Paris, from which he was expelled at the request of the
Madrid government, and next in Austria, before he took up his abode at
Viarreggio in Italy. Like all pretenders, he never gave in, and his
pretensions, haughtily reasserted, often troubled the courts and
countries whose hospitality he enjoyed. His great disappointment was the
coldness towards him of Pope Leo XIII., and the favour shown by that
pontiff for Alphonso XII. and his godson, Alphonso XIII. Don Carlos had
two splendid chances of testing the power of his party in Spain, but
failed to profit by them. The first was when he was invited to unfurl
his flag on the death of Alphonso XII., when the perplexities and
uncertainties of Castilian politics reached a climax during the first
year of a long minority under a foreign queen-regent. The second was at
the close of the war with the United States and after the loss of the
colonies, when the discontent was so widespread that the Carlists were
able to assure their prince that many Spaniards looked upon his cause as
the one untried solution of the national difficulties. Don Carlos showed
his usual lack of decision; he wavered between the advice of those who
told him to unfurl his standard with a view to rally all the
discontented and disappointed, and of those who recommended him to wait
until a great _pronunciamiento_, chiefly military, should be made in his
favour--a day-dream founded upon the coquetting of General Weyler and
other officers with the Carlist senators and deputies in Madrid.
Afterwards the pretender continued to ask his partisans to go on
organizing their forces for action some day, and to push their
propaganda and preparations, which was easy enough in view of the
indulgence shown them by all the governments of the regency and the open
favour exhibited by many of the priesthood, especially in the rural
districts, the religious orders, and the Jesuits, swarming all over the
kingdom. After the death of his first wife in 1893, Don Carlos married
in the following year Princess Marie Bertha of Rohan. He died on the
18th of July 1909. His son by his first wife, Don Jaime, was educated in
Austrian and British military schools before he entered the Russian
army, in which he became a colonel of dragoons.
CARLOW, a county of Ireland in the province of Leinster, bounded N. by
the counties Kildare and Wicklow, E. by Wicklow and Wexford, S. by
Wexford, and W. by Queen's county and Kilkenny. Excepting Louth, it is
the smallest county in Ireland, having an area of 221,424 acres, or
about 346 sq. m. The surface of the county is in general level or gently
undulating, and of pleasing appearance, except the elevated tract of
land known as the ridge of Old Leighlin (Gallows Hill Bog, 974 ft.),
forming the beginning of the coal-measures of Leinster, and the
south-eastern portion of the county bordering on Wexford, where the wild
and barren granitic elevations of Knockroe (1746 ft.) and Mount Leinster
(2610 ft.) present a bolder aspect. Glacial deposits, which overspread
the lower grounds, sometimes afford good examples of the ridge-forms
known as eskers, as in the neighbourhood of Bagenalstown. There are no
lakes nor canals in the county, nor does it contain the source of any
important river; but on its western side it is intersected from north to
south by the Barrow, which is navigable throughout the county and
affords means of communication with the port of Waterford; while on the
eastern border the Slaney, which is not navigable in any part of its
course through the county, passes out of Carlow into Wexford at
Newtownbarry.
Carlow is largely a granite county; but here the Leinster Chain does not
form a uniform moorland. The mica-schists and Silurian slates of its
eastern flank are seen in the diversified and hilly country on the pass
over the shoulder of Mt. Leinster, between Newtownbarry and Borris. The
highland drops westward to the valley of the Barrow, Carlow and
Bagenalstown lying on Carboniferous Limestone, which here abuts upon the
granite. On the west of the hollow, the high edge of the Castle-comer
coalfields rises, scarps of limestone, grit, and coal-measures
succeeding one another on the ascent. Formerly clay-ironstone was raised
from the Upper Carboniferous strata.
The soil is of great natural richness, and the country is among the most
generally fertile in the island. Agriculture is the chief occupation of
the inhabitants, but is not so fully developed as the capabilities of
the land would suggest; in effect, the extent of land under tillage
shows a distinctly retrograde movement, being rather more than half that
under pasture. The pasture land is of excellent quality, and generally
occupied as dairy farms, the butter made in this county maintaining a
high reputation in the Dublin market. The farms are frequently large,
and care is given to the breeding of cattle. Sheep and poultry, however,
receive the greatest attention. The staple trade of the county is in
corn, flour, meal, butter and provisions, which are exported in large
quantities. There are no manufactures. The sandstone of the county is
frequently of such a nature as to split easily into layers, known in
commerce as Carlow flags.
Porcelain clay exists in the neighbourhood of Tullow; but no attempt is
made to turn this product to use.
The Great Southern & Western railway from Kildare to Wexford follows the
river Barrow through the county, with a branch from Bagenalstown to
Kilkenny, while another branch from the north terminates at Tullow.
As regards population (41,964 in 1891; 37,748 in 1901), the county shows
a decrease among the more serious of Irish counties, and correspondingly
heavy emigration returns. Of the total, about 89% are Roman Catholics,
and nearly the whole are rural. Carlow (pop. 6513), Bagenalstown (1882),
and Tullow (1725) are the only towns. The county is divided into seven
baronies, and contains forty-four civil parishes and parts of parishes.
It belongs to the Protestant diocese of Dublin and the Roman Catholic
diocese of Kildare and Leighlin. The assizes are held at Carlow, and
quarter sessions at that town and also at Bagenalstown and Tullow. One
member is returned to parliament.
Carlow, under the name of Catherlogh, is among the counties generally
considered to have been created in the reign of John. Leinster was
confirmed as a liberty to William Marshal, earl of Pembroke, by John,
and Carlow, among other counties in this area, had the privileges of a
palatinate on descending to one of the earl's heiresses. The relics of
antiquity in the county comprise large cromlechs at Browne's Hill near
Carlow and at Hacketstown, and a rath near Leighlin Bridge, in which
were found several urns of baked earth, containing only small quantities
of dust. Some relics of ecclesiastical and monastic buildings exist, and
also the remains of several castles built after the English settlement.
Old Leighlin, where the 12th century cathedral of St Lazerian is
situated, is merely a village, although until the Union it returned two
members to the Irish parliament.
CARLOW, the county town of Co. Carlow, Ireland, on the navigable river
Barrow. Pop. of urban district (1901) 6513. It is 56 m. S.W. of Dublin
by the Great Southern & Western railway. The castle (supposed to have
been founded by Hugh de Lacy, appointed governor of Ireland in 1179, but
sometimes attributed to King John), situated on an eminence overlooking
the river, is still a chief feature of attraction in the general view of
the town, although there is not much of the original building left. It
consisted of a hollow quadrangle, with a massive round tower at each
angle. The principal buildings are the Roman Catholic College of St
Patrick (1793), a plain but spacious building in a picturesque park
adjoining the Roman Catholic cathedral of the diocese of Kildare and
Leighlin; the Protestant parish church, with a handsome steeple of
modern erection; the court-house, where the assizes are held, an
octagonal stone building with a handsome Ionic portico; and other county
buildings. The cathedral, in the Perpendicular style, has a highly
ornamented west front, and a monument to Bishop James Doyle (d. 1834).
The Wellington Bridge over the river Barrow connects Carlow with the
suburb of Graigue. Two m. N.E. of the town is one of the finest
cromlechs in Ireland, and 3 m. to the west is the notable church, of
Norman and pre-Norman date, of Killeshin in Queen's county. The
industries of Carlow consist of brewing and flour-milling, and a
considerable trade is carried on in the sale of butter and eggs.
Carlow was of early importance. In the reign of Edward III. the king's
exchequer was removed thither, and L500, a large sum at that period,
applied towards surrounding the town with a strong wall. In the early
part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth the castle was taken, and the town
burned by the Irish chieftain, Rory Oge O'More. When summoned to
surrender by Ireton, the Commonwealth general, during the war of 1641,
Carlow submitted without resistance. In the insurrection of 1798 the
castle was attacked by an undisciplined body of insurgents. They were
speedily repulsed, and suffered severe loss, no quarter being given;
and, in the confusion of their flight, many of the insurgents took
refuge in houses, which the king's troops immediately set on fire.
Carlow obtained a charter of incorporation as early as the 13th century,
and was reincorporated, with enlarged privileges, by James I. The
corporation, which was styled "The Sovereign, Free Burgesses and
Commonalty of the Borough of Catherlogh," was authorized to return two
members to the Irish parliament. The town returned one member to the
Imperial parliament until 1885.
CARLSBAD, or KAISER-KARLSBAD (Czech, _Karlovy Vary_), a town and
celebrated watering-place of Bohemia, Austria, 116 m. W.N.W. of Prague
by rail. Pop. (1900) 14,640. It is situated at an altitude of 1227 ft.
and lies in the beautiful narrow and winding valley of the Tepl at its
junction with the Eger, being hemmed in by precipitous granite hills,
covered with magnificent forests of pine. The town is spread on both
banks of the river and in the valley of the Eger, its houses being built
up the mountain sides in tier above tier of terraces approached by long
flights of steps or steep and tortuous roads. This irregularity of site
and plan, together with the varied form and high-pitched roofs of the
houses, makes the place very picturesque. Among the principal buildings
of Carlsbad are the Catholic parish church, built in 1732-1736 in rococo
style; the gorgeous Russian church, finished in 1897; the English
church; and a handsome synagogue. In the first rank of the other
buildings stands the famous Muhlbrunnen Colonnade, erected between 1871
and 1878, which, with its 103 monolithic granite Corinthian columns, is
a fine example of modern classical architecture; the _Kurhaus_ (1865);
the magnificent _Kaiserbad_, built in 1895 in the French Renaissance
style, and several other bathing establishments; the Sprudel Colonnade,
an imposing iron and glass structure, built in 1879, within which rises
the Sprudel, the principal spring of Carlsbad; and several hospitals and
hospices for poor patients. Both banks of the Tepl are provided with
_quais_, planted with trees, which constitute the chief promenades of
the centre of the town; and there are, besides, a municipal park and
several public gardens.
The mineral springs, to which Carlsbad owes its fame, rise from beneath
a very hard kind of rock, known as Sprudelschale or Sprudeldecke,
beneath which it is believed that there exists a large common reservoir
of the hot mineral water, known as the Sprudelkessel. Several artificial
apertures in the rock have been made for the escape of the steam of this
subterranean cauldron, which, owing to the incrustations deposited by
the water, require to be cleared at regular intervals. Altogether there
are seventeen warm springs, with a temperature varying from 164 deg. F.
to 107.7 deg. F., and two cold ones. The oldest, best-known, and at the
same time the most copious spring is the Sprudel, a hot geyser with a
temperature of 164 deg. F., which gushes up in jets of 1-1/2 ft. thick
to a height of about 3-1/2 ft., and delivers about 405 gallons of water
per minute. Other springs are the Muhlbrunnen, with a temperature of 121
deg. F., which is after the Sprudel the most used spring; the Neubrunnen
(138 deg. F.); the Kaiser-Karl-Quelle (112 deg. F.); the
Theresienbrunnen (134 deg. F.), &c. The warm springs belong to the class
of alkaline-saline waters and have all the same chemical composition,
varying only in their degree of temperature. The chemical composition of
the Sprudel, taken to a thousand parts of water, is: 2.405 sulphate of
soda, 1.298 bicarbonate of soda, 1.042 chloride of soda, 0.186 sulphate
of potash, 0.166 bicarbonate of magnesia, 0.012 bicarbonate of lithium,
and 0.966 carbonic acid gas. They contain also traces of arsenic,
antimony, selenium, rubidium, tin and organic substances. The water is
colourless and odourless, with a slightly acidulated and salt taste, and
has a specific gravity of 1.0053 at 64.4 deg. F. The waters are used
both for drinking and bathing, and are very beneficent in cases of liver
affections, biliary and renal calculi, diabetes, gout, rheumatism, and
uric acid troubles. They are very powerful in their effect and must not
be used except under medical direction, and during the cure, a
carefully-regulated diet must be observed, coupled with a moderate
amount of exercise in the open air. The number of visitors in 1901 was
51,454; in 1756 it was only 257; in 1828 it was 3713; and it attained
14,182 in 1869, and 34,396 in 1890.
Carlsbad is encircled by mountains, covered with beautiful forests of
pine, which are made accessible by well-kept paths. Just above the town
towers the Hirschensprung (1620 ft.), a little farther the
Freundschaftshohe (1722 ft.); the Franz-Josefs-Hohe (1663 ft.); and the
Aberg (1980 ft.). On the opposite bank of the Tepl lies the Rudolfshohe
(1379 ft.); the Dreikreuzberg (1805 ft.); the Konig Otto's Hohe (1960
ft); and the Ewiges Leben (2086 ft.), with the Stephaniewarte, a tower,
98 ft. high, built in 1889, which commands a superb view. The town is
the centre of the porcelain and stoneware industry of Bohemia, and
manufactures a special liqueur (_Karlsbader Bitter_), besides various
objects from the Sprudel rock and confectionery. It exported, in 1901,
2-1/4 millions of bottles of mineral water, and 160,000 lb. of Sprudel
salt, i.e. salt obtained by evaporation from the water of the Sprudel.
Many interesting places are to be found near Carlsbad. To the north is
the village of Dallwitz, with a porcelain factory, a handsome castle and
beautiful oaks extolled by Theodor Korner, under which he composed in
1812 his touching elegy on the downfall of Germany. To the east is the
watering-place of Giesshubl-Puchstein with celebrated springs, which
contain alkaline waters impregnated with carbonic acid gas. To the west
in the valley of the Eger, the village of Aich, with a porcelain
factory, and a little farther the much-visited Hans Heiling's Rock, a
wild and romantic spot, with which a very touching legend is connected.
To the south-east the ruined castle of Engelhaus, situated on a rock of
phonolite, 2340 ft. high, built probably in the first part of the 13th
century and destroyed by the Swedes in 1635. At the foot of the mountain
lies the actual village of Engelhaus.
According to legend the springs of Carlsbad were discovered during a
hunting expedition by the emperor Charles IV., who built the town, which
derives its name from him, on both banks of the Tepl. But the hot
springs were already known two centuries before, as is indicated by the
name of the river _Tepl_ (warm), under which name the river was known in
the 12th century. Besides, on the same spot stood already in the 13th
century a place called _Vary_, which means the Sprudel. The truth is,
that the emperor Charles IV., after being cured here, built about 1358 a
castle in the neighbourhood and accorded many privileges to the town. It
obtained its charter as a town in 1370; the fame of the waters spread
and it was created a royal free town in 1707 by the emperor Joseph I.
The waters were used only for bathing purposes until 1520, when they
began to be prescribed also for drinking. The first _Kurhaus_ was
erected in 1711 near the Muhlbrunnen, and was replaced by a larger one,
built in 1761 by the empress Maria Theresa. Carlsbad was nearly
completely destroyed by fire in 1604, and another great fire raged here
in 1759. It also suffered much from inundations, especially in 1582 and
1890. In August 1819 a meeting of the ministers of the German courts
took place here under the presidency of Prince Metternich, when many
reactionary measures, embodied in the so-called "Carlsbad Decrees" (see
below), were agreed upon and introduced in the various states of the
German Confederation.
Among the extensive literature of the place see Mannl, _Carlsbad and
its Mineral Springs_ (Leipzig, 1850); Cartellieri, _Karlsbad als
Kurort_ (Karlsbad, 1888); Friedenthal, _Der Kurort Karlsbad
Topographisch und Medizinisch_ (Karlsbad, 1895).
CARLSBAD DECREES (_Karlsbader Beschlusse_), the name usually given to a
series of resolutions (_Beschlusse_) passed by a conference of the
ministers and envoys of the more important German states, held at
Carlsbad from the 6th to the 31st of August 1819. The occasion of the
meeting was the desire of Prince Metternich to take advantage of the
consternation caused by recent revolutionary outrages (especially the
murder of the dramatist Kotzebue by Karl Sand) to persuade the German
governments to combine in a system for the suppression of the Liberal
agitation in Germany. The pretended urgency of the case served as the
excuse for only inviting to the conference those states whose ministers
happened to be visiting Carlsbad at the time. The conferences were,
therefore, actually attended by the representatives of Austria,
Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, Wurttemberg, Hanover, Baden, Nassau and
Mecklenburg; at the fourth conference (August 9th) Baron von Fritsch,
minister of state for Saxe-Weimar, who "happened to be present" at
Carlsbad on that day, attended by special invitation. Prince Metternich
presided over the conferences, and Friedrich von Gentz acted as
secretary.
The business to be discussed, as announced in Metternich's opening
address, was twofold: (1) Matters of urgent importance necessitating
immediate action; (2) Questions affecting the fundamental constitution
of the German Confederation, demanding more careful and prolonged
discussion. To the first class belonged (a) the urgent necessity for a
uniform system of press regulation in Germany; (b) the most urgent
measures in regard to the supervision of universities and schools; (c)
measures in view of the already discovered machinations of the political
parties. To the second class belonged (a) the more clear definition of
article XIII. of the Act of Confederation (_i.e._ state constitutions);
(b) the creation of a permanent federal supreme court; (c) the creation
of a federal executive organization (_Bundes-Executions Ordnung_) armed
with power to make the decrees of the diet and the judgments of the high
court effective; (d) the facilitation of commercial intercourse within
the confederation in accordance with article XIX. of the Act of
Confederation (_Beilage A. zum ersten Protokoll_, Martens, iv. p. 74).
These questions were debated in twenty-three formal conferences. On the
issues raised by the first class there was practical unanimity. All were
agreed that the state of Germany demanded disciplinary measures, and as
the result of the deliberations it was determined to lay before the
federal diet definite proposals for (1) a uniform press censorship over
all periodical publications; (2) a system of "curators" to supervise the
education given in universities and schools, with disciplinary
enactments against professors and teachers who should use their position
for purposes of political propaganda; (3) the erection of a central
commission at Mainz, armed with inquisitorial powers, for the purpose of
unmasking the widespread revolutionary conspiracy, the existence of
which was assumed.
On the questions raised under the second class there was more
fundamental difference of opinion, and by far the greater part of the
time of the conference was occupied in discussing the burning question
of the due interpretation of article XIII. The controversy raged round
the distinction between "assemblies of estates," as laid down in the
article, and "representative assemblies," such as had been already
established in several German states. Gentz, in an elaborate memorandum
(_Nebenbeilage zum siebenten Protokoll_, iv. p. 102), laid down that
representation by estates was the only system compatible with the
conservative principle, as the "outcome of a well-ordered civil society,
in which the relations and rights of the several estates are due to the
peculiar position of the classes and corporations on which they are
based, which have been from time to time modified by law without
detracting from the essentials of the sovereign power"; whereas
representative assemblies are based on "the sovereignty of the people."
In answer to this, Count Wintzingerode, on behalf of the king of
Wurttemberg, placed on record (_Nebenbeilage 2 zum neunten Protokoll_,
p. 147) a protest, in which he urged that to insist on the system of
estates would be to stereotype caste distinctions foreign to the whole
spirit of the age, would alienate public opinion from the governments,
and--if enforced by the central power--would violate the sovereign
independence of those states which, like Wurttemberg, had already
established representative constitutions.
Though the majority of the ministers present favoured the Austrian
interpretation of article XIII. as elaborated by Gentz, they were as
little prepared as the representative of Wurttemberg to agree to any
hasty measures for strengthening the federal government at the expense
of the jealously guarded prerogatives of the minor sovereignties. The
result was that the constitutional questions falling under the second
class were reserved for further discussion at a general conference of
German ministers to be summoned at Vienna later in the year. The
effective Carlsbad resolutions, subsequently issued as laws by the
federal diet, were therefore only those dealing with the curbing of the
"revolutionary" agitation. For the results of their operation see
GERMANY: _History._
The acts, protocols and resolutions of the conference of Carlsbad are
given in M. de Martens's _Nouveau Recueil general de traites_, &c., t.
4, pp. 8-166 (Gottingen, 1846). An interesting criticism of the
Carlsbad Decrees is appended (p. 166), addressed by Baron Hans von
Gagern, Luxemburg representative in the federal diet, to Baron von
Plessen, Mecklenburg plenipotentiary at the conference of Carlsbad.
(W. A. P.)
CARLSTADT, KARLSTADT or KAROLOSTADT (1480-1541), German reformer, whose
real name was Andreas Rudolf Bodenstein, was born at Carlstadt in
Bohemia. He entered the university of Erfurt in the winter term of
1499-1500, and remained there till 1503, when he went to Cologne. In the
winter term of 1504-1505 he transferred himself to the newly founded
university of Wittenberg, where he soon established his reputation as a
teacher of philosophy, and a zealous champion of the scholastic system
of Thomas Aquinas, against the revised nominalism associated with the
name of Occam. In 1508 he was made canon of the _Allerheiligenstift_, a
collegiate church incorporated in the university; and in 1510 he became
doctor of theology and archdeacon, his duties being to preach, to say
mass once a week and to lecture before the university; in 1513 he was
appointed ordinary professor of theology. In 1515 he went to Rome, where
with a view to becoming provost of the _Allerheiligenstift_ he studied
law, taking his degree as _doctor juris utriusque._ His experiences in
the papal city produced upon him the same effect as upon Luther, and
when in 1516 he returned to Germany it was as an ardent opponent of the
Thomist philosophy and as a champion of the Augustinian doctrine of the
impotence of the human will and salvation through Divine grace alone.
The 151 theses of Carlstadt, dated the 16th of September 1516,
discovered by Theodor Kolde ("_Wittenberger Disputationsthesen"_ in
_Zeitschrift fur Kirchengeschichte_, xi. p. 448, &c.), prove that, so
far from owing his change of view to Luther's influence, he was at this
time actually in advance of Luther. The two reformers were, in fact,
never friends; though from the end of 1516 onwards the development of
each was considerably influenced by the other.
In the spring of 1518, in reply to Eck's _Obelisci_, an attack on
Luther's 95 theses, Carlstadt published a series of theses, maintaining
the supremacy of the Holy Scriptures (which he regarded as verbally
inspired) over ecclesiastical tradition and the authority of the
fathers, and asserting the liability of general councils to error. Eck
challenged him to a public disputation, in which Luther also took part,
and which lasted from the 27th of June to the 15th of July 1519. In this
dialectical warfare Carlstadt was no match for Eck; but the dispute only
served to confirm him in his revolt from the dominant theology, and in
three violent polemical treatises against Eck he proclaimed the doctrine
of the exclusive operation of grace in the justification of believers.
This attitude led him in 1520, by a logical development, to an open
attack on all those ecclesiastical practices in which the doctrine of
justification by works had become crystallized; e.g. indulgences and the
abuse of holy water and consecrated salt. At the same time he appeared
as the first of modern biblical critics, denying the Mosaic authorship
of the Pentateuch and classing the Scriptures into three categories of
different value in accordance with the degrees of certainty as to their
traditional origin. He still, however, maintained the doctrine of verbal
inspiration, and attacked Luther for rejecting the epistle of James. In
1520 Carlstadt's name was included in the papal bull excommunicating
Luther; after a momentary hesitation he decided to remain firm in his
protestant attitude, published an appeal from the pope to a general
council, and attacked the corruptions of the papacy itself in a treatise
on "the holiness of the pope" (_Von papstlicher Heiligkeit_, October
17th, 1520).
In May 1521 Carlstadt went to Denmark, on the invitation of King
Christian II., to assist in the reform of the church; but his
disposition was anything but conciliatory, and, though his influence is
traceable in the royal law of the 26th of May 1521 abolishing the
celibacy of the clergy, he was forced, by the hostility of nobles and
clerics alike, to leave after a few weeks' stay. In June he was back in
Wittenberg, busy with tracts on the Holy Sacrament (he still believed in
the corporeal presence) and against the celibacy of the clergy (_de
coelibatu_). Carlstadt has been unjustly accused of being responsible
for the riots against the Mass fomented by the Augustinian friars and
the students; as a matter of fact, he did his best to keep the peace,
pending a decision by the elector of Saxony and the authorities of the
university, and it was not till Christmas day that he himself publicly
communicated the laity under both species. The next day he announced his
engagement to a young lady of noble family, Anna von Mochau.
From this moment Carlstadt was accepted as the leader of Protestantism
in Wittenberg; and, at his instance, auricular confession, the elevation
of the Host and the rules for fasting were abolished. On the 19th of
January he was married, in the presence of many of the university
professors and city magistrates. A few days later the property of the
religious corporations was confiscated by the city and, after pensions
had been assigned to their former members, was handed over to charitable
foundations. A pronouncement of Carlstadt's against pictures and images,
supported by the town, also led to iconoclastic excesses.
The return of Luther early in March, however, ended Carlstadt's
supremacy. The elector Frederick the Wise was strenuously opposed to any
alteration in the traditional services, and at his command Luther
restored communion in one kind and the elevation of the Host. Carlstadt
himself, though still professor, was deprived of all influence in
practical affairs, and devoted himself entirely to theological
speculation, which led him ever nearer to the position of the mystics.
He now denied the necessity for a clerical order at all, called himself
"a new layman," doffed his ecclesiastical dress, and lived for a while
as a peasant with his wife's relations at Segrena. In the middle of
1523, however, he went to Orlamunde, a living held by him with his
canonry, and there in the parish church reformed the services according
to his ideas, abolishing the Mass and even preaching against the
necessity for sacraments at all. He still continued occasionally to
lecture at Wittenberg and to fulminate against Luther's policy of
compromise.
All this brought him into violent conflict with the elector, the
university and Luther himself. His professorship and living were
confiscated and, in September 1524, he went into exile with his wife and
child. He was now exposed to great privations and hardships, but found
opportunity for polemical writing, proclaiming for the first time his
disbelief in the "Real Presence." He preached wherever he could gain a
hearing, and visited Strassburg, Heidelberg, Zurich, Basel,
Schweinfurth, Kitzingen and Nordlingen, before he found a more permanent
resting-place at Rothenburg on the Tauber. He was here when the
Peasants' War broke out, and was sent as a delegate to reason with the
insurgents. His admonitions were unsuccessful, and he only succeeded in
bringing himself under suspicion of being in part responsible for their
excesses. When Rothenburg was taken by the margrave of Anspach (28th
June 1525) Carlstadt had to fly for his life. His spirit was now broken,
and from Frankfort he wrote to Luther humbly praying him to intercede
for him with the elector. Luther agreed to do so, on receiving from
Carlstadt a recantation of his heterodox views on the Lord's Supper, and
as the result the latter was permitted to return to Wittenberg (1525).
He was not, however, allowed to lecture, and he lived as a peasant,
first at Segrena and afterwards at Bergwitz, cultivating small
properties, in which he had invested the remnant of his fortune, with
such poor success that at the end of 1526 he had to eke out a living as
a pedlar in the little town of Kemberg. This was endurable; but not so
the demand presently made upon him to take up the cudgels against
Zwingli and Oecolampadius. Once more he revolted; to agree with "Dr
Martin's opinions on the sacrament" was as difficult as flying like a
bird; he appealed to the elector to allow him to leave Saxony; but the
elector's conscience was in Luther's keeping, and Carlstadt had to fly
ignominiously in order to avoid imprisonment. He escaped to Holstein,
where in March 1529 he stayed with the Anabaptist Melchior Hofmann.
Expelled by the authorities, he took refuge in East Friesland, where he
remained till the beginning of 1530 under the protection of a nobleman
in sympathy with the Helvetic reformers. His preaching gave him great
influence, but towards the close of the year persecution again sent him
on his travels. He ultimately reached Zurich, where the recommendations
of Bucer and Oecolampadius secured him a friendly reception by Zwingli,
who procured him employment. After Zwingli's death he remained in close
intercourse with the Zurich preachers, who defended him against renewed
attacks on Luther's part; and finally, in 1534, on Bullinger's
recommendation, he was called to Basel as preacher at the church of St
Peter and professor at the university. Here he remained till his death
on the 24th of December 1541.
During these latter years Carlstadt's attitude became more moderate. His
championship of the town council against the theocratic claims of
Antistes Myconius and the ecclesiastical council, in the matter of the
control of the university, was perhaps in consonance with his earlier
views on the relations of clergy and laity. He was, however, also
instrumental in restoring the abolished doctorate of theology and other
degrees; and, despatched on a mission to Strassburg in 1536, to take
part in a discussion on a proposed compromise in the matter of the
Lord's Supper between the theologians of Strassburg and Wittenberg, he
displayed a conciliatory attitude which earned him the praise of Bucer.
Carlstadt's historical significance lies in the fact that he was one of
the pioneers of the Reformation. But he was a thinker and dreamer rather
than a man of affairs, and though he had the moral and physical courage
to carry his principles to their logical conclusions (he was the first
priest to write against celibacy, and the first to take a wife), he
lacked the balance of mind and sturdy common sense that inspired
Luther's policy of consideration for "the weaker brethren" and built up
the Evangelical Church on a conservative basis. But though Carlstadt was
on friendly terms, and corresponded with Munzer and other Anabaptists,
he did not share their antinomian views, nor was he responsible for
their excesses. His opinion as to the relation of faith and "good works"
was practically that expressed in articles XI. and XII. of the Church of
England. In reply to Luther's violent onslaught on him in his _Wider die
himmlischen Propheten_ he issued from Rothenburg his _Anzeig etlicher
Hauptartikel christlicher Lehre_, a compendious exposition of his views,
in which he says: "Those who urge to good works do so, not that the
conscience may be justified by works, but that their freedom may redound
to God's glory and that their neighbours may be fired to praise God."
See C.F. Jaeger, _Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt_ (Stuttgart, 1856);
Hermann Barge, _Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt_, vol. i. (Leipzig,
1905).
CARLYLE, ALEXANDER (1722-1805), Scottish divine, was born on the 26th of
January 1722, in Dumfriesshire, and passed his youth and early manhood
at Prestonpans, where he witnessed the battle of 1745. He was educated
at Edinburgh (M.A. 1743), Glasgow and Leiden. From 1748 until his death
on the 28th of August 1805 he was minister at Inveresk in Midlothian,
and during this long career rose to high eminence in his church not only
as leader of the moderate or "broad" Church section, but as moderator of
the General Assembly 1770 and dean of the Chapel Royal in 1789. His
influence was enhanced by his personal appearance, which was so striking
as to earn him the name of "Jupiter Carlyle"; and his autobiography
(published 1860), though written in his closing years and not extending
beyond the year 1770, is abundantly interesting as a picture of Scottish
life, social and ecclesiastical, in the 18th century. Carlyle's memory
recalled the Porteous Riots of 1736, and less remotely his friendship
with Adam Smith, David Hume, and John Home, the dramatist, for
witnessing the performance of whose tragedy _Douglas_ he was censured in
1757. He was distinctly a _bon vivant_, but withal an upright,
conscientious and capable minister.
CARLYLE, JOSEPH DACRE (1759-1804), British orientalist, was born in 1759
at Carlisle, where his father was a physician. He went in 1775 to
Cambridge, was elected a fellow of Queens' College in 1779, taking the
degree of B.D. in 1793. With the assistance of a native of Bagdad known
in England as David Zamio, then resident at Cambridge, he attained great
proficiency in Arabic literature; and after succeeding Dr Paley in the
chancellorship of Carlisle, he was appointed, in 1795, professor of
Arabic in Cambridge University. His translation from the Arabic of Yusuf
ibn Taghri Birdi, the _Rerum Egypticarum Annales_, appeared in 1792, and
in 1796 a volume of _Specimens of Arabic Poetry_, from the earliest
times to the fall of the Caliphate, with some account of the authors.
Carlyle was appointed chaplain by Lord Elgin to the embassy at
Constantinople in 1799, and prosecuted his researches in Eastern
literature in a tour through Asia Minor, Palestine, Greece and Italy,
collecting in his travels several valuable Greek and Syriac MSS. for a
projected critical edition of the New Testament, collated with the
Syriac and other versions--a work, however, which he did not live to
complete. On his return to England in 1801 he was presented by the
bishop of Carlisle to the living of Newcastle-on-Tyne, where he died on
the 12th of April 1804. After his death there appeared a volume of poems
descriptive of the scenes of his travels, with prefaces extracted from
his journal. Among other works which he left unfinished was an edition
of the Bible in Arabic, completed by H. Ford and published in 1811.
CARLYLE, THOMAS (1795-1881), British essayist, historian and
philosopher, born on the 4th of December 1795 at Ecclefechan, in
Annandale, was the eldest of the nine children of James Carlyle by his
second wife, Janet Aitken. The father was by trade a mason, and
afterwards a small farmer. He had joined a sect of seceders from the
kirk, and had all the characteristics of the typical Scottish Calvinist.
He was respected for his integrity and independence, and a stern outside
covered warm affections. The family tie between all the Carlyles was
unusually strong, and Thomas regarded his father with a reverence which
found forcible expression in his _Reminiscences_. He always showed the
tenderest love for his mother, and was the best of brothers. The narrow
means of his parents were made sufficient by strict frugality. He was
sent to the parish school when seven, and to Annan grammar-school when
ten years old. His pugnacity brought him into troubles with his fellows
at Annan; but he soon showed an appetite for learning which induced his
father to educate him for the ministry. He walked to Edinburgh in
November 1809, and entered the university. He cared little for any of
the professors, except Sir John Leslie, from whom he learned some
mathematics. He acquired a little classical knowledge, but the most
valuable influence was that of his contemporaries. A few lads in
positions similar to his own began to look up to him as an intellectual
leader, and their correspondence with him shows remarkable interest in
literary matters. In 1814 Carlyle, still looking forward to the career
of a minister, obtained the mathematical mastership at Annan. The salary
of L60 or L70 a year enabled him to save a little money. He went to
Edinburgh once or twice, to deliver the discourses required from
students of divinity. He does not seem, however, to have taken to his
profession very earnestly. He was too shy and proud to see many of the
Annan people, and found his chief solace in reading such books as he
could get. In 1816 he was appointed, through the recommendation of
Leslie, to a school at Kirkcaldy, where Edward Irving, Carlyle's senior
by three years, was also master of a school. Irving's severity as a
teacher had offended some of the parents, who set up Carlyle to be his
rival. A previous meeting with Irving, also a native of Annan, had led
to a little passage of arms, but Irving now welcomed Carlyle with a
generosity which entirely won his heart, and the rivals soon became the
closest of friends. The intimacy, affectionately commemorated in the
_Reminiscences_, was of great importance to Carlyle's whole career. "But
for Irving," he says, "I had never known what the communion of man with
man means." Irving had a library, in which Carlyle devoured Gibbon and
much French literature, and they made various excursions together.
Carlyle did his duties as a schoolmaster punctiliously, but found the
life thoroughly uncongenial. No man was less fitted by temperament for
the necessary drudgery and worry. A passing admiration for a Miss Gordon
is supposed to have suggested the "Blumine" of _Sartor Resartus_; but he
made no new friendships, and when Irving left at the end of 1818 Carlyle
also resigned his post.
He had by this time resolved to give up the ministry. He has given no
details of the intellectual change which alienated him from the church.
He had, however, been led, by whatever process, to abandon the dogmatic
system of his forefathers, though he was and always remained in profound
sympathy with the spirit of their teaching. A period of severe struggle
followed. He studied law for a time, but liked it no better than
schoolmastering. He took a pupil or two, and wrote articles for the
_Edinburgh Encyclopaedia_ under the editorship of Brewster. He
occasionally visited his family, and their unfailing confidence helped
to keep up his courage. Meanwhile he was going through a spiritual
crisis. Atheism seemed for a time to be the only alternative to his old
creed. It was, however, profoundly repugnant to him. At last, one day in
June 1821, after three weeks' total sleeplessness, he went through the
crisis afterwards described quite "literally" in _Sartor Resartus_. He
cast out the spirit of negation, and henceforth the temper of his misery
was changed to one, not of "whining," but of "indignation and grim
fire-eyed defiance." That, he says, was his spiritual new-birth, though
certainly not into a life of serenity. The conversion was coincident
with Carlyle's submission to a new and very potent influence. In 1819 he
had begun to study German, with which he soon acquired a very remarkable
familiarity. Many of his contemporaries were awakening to the importance
of German thought, and Carlyle's knowledge enabled him before long to
take a conspicuous part in diffusing the new intellectual light. The
chief object of his reverence was Goethe. In many most important
respects no two men could be more unlike; but, for the present, Carlyle
seems to have seen in Goethe a proof that it was possible to reject
outworn dogmas without sinking into materialism. Goethe, by singularly
different methods, had emerged from a merely negative position into a
lofty and coherent conception of the universe. Meanwhile, Carlyle's
various anxieties were beginning to be complicated by physical
derangement. A rat, he declared, was gnawing at the pit of his stomach.
He was already suffering from the ailments, whatever their precise
nature, from which he never escaped. He gave vent to his irritability by
lamentations so grotesquely exaggerated as to make it difficult to
estimate the real extent of the evil.
Irving's friendship now became serviceable. Carlyle's confession of the
radical difference of religious opinion had not alienated his friend,
who was settling in London, and used his opportunities for promoting
Carlyle's interest. In January 1822 Carlyle, through Irving's
recommendation, became tutor to Charles and Arthur Buller, who were to
be students at Edinburgh. Carlyle's salary was L200 a year, and this,
with the proceeds of some literary work, enabled him at once to help his
brother John to study medicine and his brother Alexander to take up a
farm. Carlyle spent some time with the elder Bullers, but found a life
of dependence upon fashionable people humiliating and unsatisfactory. He
employed himself at intervals upon a life of Schiller and a translation
of _Wilhelm Meister_. He received L50 for a translation of Legendre's
_Geometry_; and an introduction, explaining the theory of proportion, is
said by De Morgan to show that he could have gained distinction as an
expounder of mathematical principles. He finally gave up his tutorship
in July 1824, and for a time tried to find employment in London. The
impressions made upon him by London men of letters were most
unfavourable. Carlyle felt by this time conscious of having a message to
deliver to mankind, and his comrades, he thought, were making literature
a trade instead of a vocation, and prostituting their talents to
frivolous journalism. He went once to see Coleridge, who was then
delivering his oracular utterances at Highgate, and the only result was
the singularly vivid portrait given in a famous chapter in his life of
Sterling. Coleridge seemed to him to be ineffectual as a philosopher,
and personally to be a melancholy instance of genius running to waste.
Carlyle, conscious of great abilities, and impressed by such instances
of the deleterious effects of the social atmosphere of London, resolved
to settle in his native district. There he could live frugally and
achieve some real work. He could, for one thing, be the interpreter of
Germany to England. A friendly letter from Goethe, acknowledging the
translation of _Wilhelm Meister_, reached him at the end of 1824 and
greatly encouraged him. Goethe afterwards spoke warmly of the life of
Schiller, and desired it to be translated into German. Letters
occasionally passed between them in later years, which were edited by
Professor Charles Eliot Norton in 1887. Goethe received Carlyle's homage
with kind complacency. The gift of a seal to Goethe on his birthday in
1831 "from fifteen English friends," including Scott and Wordsworth, was
suggested and carried out by Carlyle. The interest in German, which
Carlyle did so much to promote, suggested to him other translations and
reviews during the next few years, and he made some preparations for a
history of German literature. British curiosity, however, about such
matters seems to have been soon satisfied, and the demand for such work
slackened.
Carlyle was meanwhile passing through the most important crisis of his
personal history. Jane Baillie Welsh, born 1801, was the only child of
Dr Welsh of Haddington. She had shown precocious talent, and was sent to
the school at Haddington where Edward Irving (q.v.) was a master. After
her father's death in 1819 she lived with her mother, and her wit and
beauty attracted many admirers. Her old tutor, Irving, was now at
Kirkcaldy, where he became engaged to a Miss Martin. He visited
Haddington occasionally in the following years, and a strong mutual
regard arose between him and Miss Welsh. They contemplated a marriage,
and Irving endeavoured to obtain a release from his previous engagement.
The Martin family held him to his word, and he took a final leave of
Miss Welsh in 1822. Meanwhile he had brought Carlyle from Edinburgh and
introduced him to the Welshes. Carlyle was attracted by the brilliant
abilities of the young lady, procured books for her and wrote letters to
her as an intellectual guide. The two were to perform a new variation
upon the theme of Abelard and Heloise. [A good deal of uncertainty long
covered the precise character of their relations. Until 1909, when Mr.
Alexander Carlyle published his edition of the "love-letters," the full
material was not accessible; they had been read by Carlyle's biographer,
Froude, and also by Professor Charles Norton, and Norton (in his edition
of Carlyle's _Early Letters_, 1886) declared that Froude had distorted
the significance of this correspondence in a sense injurious to the
writers. The publication of the letters certainly seems to justify
Norton's view.] Miss Welsh's previous affair with Irving had far less
importance than Froude ascribes to it; and she soon came to regard her
past love as a childish fancy. She recognized Carlyle's vast
intellectual superiority, and the respect gradually deepened into
genuine love. The process, however, took some time. Her father had
bequeathed to her his whole property (L200 to L300 a year). In 1823 she
made it over to her mother, but left the whole to Carlyle in the event
of her own and her mother's death. She still declared that she did not
love him well enough to become his wife. In 1824 she gradually relented
so far as to say that she would marry if he could achieve independence.
She had been brought up in a station superior to that of the Carlyles,
and could not accept the life of hardship which would be necessary in
his present circumstances. Carlyle, accustomed to his father's
household, was less frightened by the prospect of poverty. He was
determined not to abandon his vocation as a man of genius by following
the lower though more profitable paths to literary success, and expected
that his wife should partake the necessary sacrifice of comfort. The
natural result of such discussions followed. The attraction became
stronger on both sides, in spite of occasional spasms of doubt. An odd
incident precipitated the result. A friend of Irving's, Mrs Basil
Montague, wrote to Miss Welsh, to exhort her to suppress her love for
Irving, who had married Miss Martin in 1823. Miss Welsh replied by
announcing her intention to marry Carlyle; and then told him the whole
story, of which he had previously been ignorant. He properly begged her
not to yield to the impulse without due consideration. She answered by
coming at once to his father's house, where he was staying; and the
marriage was finally settled. It took place on the 17th of October 1826.
Carlyle had now to arrange the mode of life which should enable him to
fulfil his aspiration. His wife had made over her income to her mother,
but he had saved a small sum upon which to begin housekeeping. A passing
suggestion from Mrs Carlyle that they might live with her mother was
judiciously abandoned. Carlyle had thought of occupying Craigenputtock,
a remote and dreary farm belonging to Mrs Welsh. His wife objected his
utter incapacity as a farmer; and they finally took a small house at
Comely Bank, Edinburgh, where they could live on a humble scale. The
brilliant conversation of both attracted some notice in the literary
society of Edinburgh. The most important connexion was with Francis,
Lord Jeffrey, still editor of the _Edinburgh Review_. Though Jeffrey had
no intellectual sympathy with Carlyle, he accepted some articles for the
_Review_ and became warmly attached to Mrs Carlyle. Carlyle began to be
known as leader of a new "mystic" school, and his earnings enabled him
to send his brother John to study in Germany. The public appetite,
however, for "mysticism" was not keen. In spite of support from Jeffrey
and other friends, Carlyle failed in a candidature for a professorship
at St Andrews. His brother, Alexander, had now taken the farm at
Craigenputtock, and the Carlyles decided to settle at the separate
dwelling-house there, which would bring them nearer to Mrs Welsh. They
went there in 1828, and began a hard struggle. Carlyle, indomitably
determined to make no concessions for immediate profit, wrote slowly and
carefully, and turned out some of his most finished work. He laboured
"passionately" at _Sartor Resartus_, and made articles out of fragments
originally intended for the history of German literature. The money
difficulty soon became more pressing. John, whom he was still helping,
was trying unsuccessfully to set up as a doctor in London; and
Alexander's farming failed. In spite of such drawbacks, Carlyle in later
years looked back upon the life at Craigenputtock as on the whole a
comparatively healthy and even happy period, as it was certainly one of
most strenuous and courageous endeavour. Though often absorbed in his
work and made both gloomy and irritable by his anxieties, he found
relief in rides with his wife, and occasionally visiting their
relations. Their letters during temporary separations are most
affectionate. The bleak climate, however, the solitude, and the
necessity of managing a household with a single servant, were
excessively trying to a delicate woman, though Mrs Carlyle concealed
from her husband the extent of her sacrifices. The position was
gradually becoming untenable. In the autumn of 1831 Carlyle was forced
to accept a loan of L50 from Jeffrey, and went in search of work to
London, whither his wife followed him. He made some engagements with
publishers, though no one would take _Sartor Resartus_, and returned to
Craigenputtock in the spring of 1832. Jeffrey, stimulated perhaps by his
sympathy for Mrs Carlyle, was characteristically generous. Besides
pressing loans upon both Thomas and John Carlyle, he offered to settle
an annuity of L100 upon Thomas, and finally enabled John to support
himself by recommending him to a medical position.[1] Carlyle's proud
spirit of independence made him reject Jeffrey's help as long as
possible; and even his acknowledgment of the generosity (in the
_Reminiscences_) is tinged with something disagreeably like resentment.
In 1834 he applied to Jeffrey for a post at the Edinburgh Observatory.
Jeffrey naturally declined to appoint a man who, in spite of some
mathematical knowledge, had no special qualification, and administered a
general lecture upon Carlyle's arrogance and eccentricity which left a
permanent sense of injury.
In the beginning of 1833 the Carlyles made another trial of Edinburgh.
There Carlyle found materials in the Advocates' Library for the article
on the _Diamond Necklace_, one of his most perfect writings, which led
him to study the history of the French Revolution. _Sartor Resartus_ was
at last appearing in _Fraser's Magazine_, though the rate of payment was
cut down, and the publisher reported that it was received with
"unqualified dissatisfaction." Edinburgh society did not attract him,
and he retreated once more to Craigenputtock. After another winter the
necessity of some change became obvious. The Carlyles resolved to "burn
their ships." They went to London in the summer of 1834, and took a
house at 5 (now 24) Cheyne Row, Chelsea, which Carlyle inhabited till
his death; the house has since been bought for the public. Irving, who
had welcomed him on former occasions, was just dying,--a victim, as
Carlyle thought, to fashionable cajoleries. A few young men were
beginning to show appreciation. J.S. Mill had made Carlyle's
acquaintance in the previous visit to London, and had corresponded with
him. Mill had introduced Ralph Waldo Emerson, who visited Craigenputtock
in 1833. Carlyle was charmed with Emerson, and their letters published
by Professor Norton show that his regard never cooled. Emerson's
interest showed that Carlyle's fame was already spreading in America.
Carlyle's connexion with Charles Buller, a zealous utilitarian,
introduced him to the circle of "philosophical radicals."
Carlyle called himself in some sense a radical; and J.S. Mill, though
not an intellectual disciple, was a very warm admirer of his friend's
genius. Carlyle had some expectation of the editorship of the _London
Review_, started by Sir W. Molesworth at this time as an organ of
philosophical radicalism. The combination would clearly have been
explosive. Meanwhile Mill, who had collected many books upon the French
Revolution, was eager to help Carlyle in the history which he was now
beginning. He set to work at once and finished the first volume in five
months. The manuscript, while entrusted to Mill for annotation, was
burnt by an accident. Mill induced Carlyle to accept in compensation
L100, which was urgently needed. Carlyle took up the task again and
finished the whole on the 12th of January 1837. "I can tell the world,"
he said to his wife, "you have not had for a hundred years any book that
comes more direct and flamingly from the heart of a living man. Do what
you like with it, you--"
The publication, six months later, of the _French Revolution_ marks the
turning-point of Carlyle's career. Many readers hold it to be the best,
as it is certainly the most characteristic, of Carlyle's books. The
failure of _Sartor Resartus_ to attract average readers is quite
intelligible. It contains, indeed, some of the most impressive
expositions of his philosophical position, and some of his most
beautiful and perfectly written passages. But there is something forced
and clumsy, in spite of the flashes of grim humour, in the machinery of
the _Clothes Philosophy_. The mannerism, which has been attributed to an
imitation of Jean Paul, appeared to Carlyle himself to be derived rather
from the phrases current in his father's house, and in any case gave an
appropriate dialect for the expression of his peculiar idiosyncrasy. But
it could not be appreciated by readers who would not take the trouble to
learn a new language. In the _French Revolution_ Carlyle had discovered
his real strength. He was always at his best when his imagination was
set to work upon a solid framework of fact. The book shows a unique
combination: on the one hand is the singularly shrewd insight into
character and the vivid realization of the picturesque; on the other is
the "mysticism" or poetical philosophy which relieves the events against
a background of mystery. The contrast is marked by the humour which
seems to combine a cynical view of human folly with a deeply pathetic
sense of the sadness and suffering of life. The convictions, whatever
their value, came, as he said, "flamingly from the heart." It was, of
course, impossible for Carlyle to satisfy modern requirements of
matter-of-fact accuracy. He could not in the time have assimilated all
the materials even then extant, and later accumulations would
necessitate a complete revision. Considered as a "prose epic," or a
vivid utterance of the thought of the period, it has a permanent and
unique value.
The book was speedily successful. It was reviewed by Mill in the
_Westminster_ and by Thackeray in _The Times_, and Carlyle, after a
heroic struggle, was at last touching land. In each of the years 1837 to
1840 he gave a course of lectures, of which the last only (upon "Hero
Worship") was published; they materially helped his finances. By
Emerson's management he also received something during the same period
from American publishers. At the age of forty-five he had thus become
independent. He had also established a position among the chief writers
of the day. Young disciples, among whom John Sterling was the most
accepted, were gathering round him, and he became an object of social
curiosity. Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), who won universal popularity
by the most genuine kindliness of nature, became a cordial friend.
Another important intimacy was with the Barings, afterwards Lord and
Lady Ashburton. Carlyle's conversational powers were extraordinary;
though, as he won greater recognition as a prophet, he indulged too
freely in didactic monologue. In his prophetic capacity he published two
remarkable books: _Chartism_ (1829), enlarged from an article which
Lockhart, though personally approving, was afraid to take for the
_Quarterly_; and _Past and Present_ (1843), in which the recently
published _Mediaeval Chronicle_ was taken as a text for the exposure of
modern evils. They may be regarded as expositions of the doctrine
implicitly set forth in the _French Revolution_. Carlyle was a "radical"
as sharing the sentiments of the class in which he was born. He had been
profoundly moved by the widely-spread distresses in his earlier years.
When the yeomanry were called out to suppress riots after the Peace, his
sympathies were with the people rather than with the authorities. So far
he was in harmony with Mill and the "philosophical radicals." A
fundamental divergence of principle, however, existed and was soon
indicated by his speedy separation from the party and alienation from
Mill himself. The Revolution, according to him, meant the sweeping away
of effete beliefs and institutions, but implied also the necessity of a
reconstructive process. _Chartism_ begins with a fierce attack upon the
_laissez faire_ theory, which showed blindness to this necessity. The
prevalent political economy, in which that theory was embodied, made a
principle of neglecting the very evils which it should be the great
function of government to remedy. Carlyle's doctrines, entirely opposed
to the ordinary opinions of Whigs and Radicals, found afterwards an
expositor in his ardent disciple Ruskin, and have obvious affinities
with more recent socialism. At the time he was as one crying in the
wilderness to little practical purpose. Liberals were scandalized by his
apparent identification of "right" with "might," implied in the demand
for a strong government; and though he often declared the true
interpretation to be that the right would ultimately become might, his
desire for strong government seemed too often to sanction the inverse
view. He came into collision with philanthropists, and was supposed to
approve of despotism for its own sake.
His religious position was equally unintelligible to the average mind.
While unequivocally rejecting the accepted creeds, and so scandalizing
even liberal theologians, he was still more hostile to simply sceptical
and materialist tendencies. He was, as he called himself, a "mystic";
and his creed was too vague to be put into any formula beyond a
condemnation of atheism. One corollary was the famous doctrine of "hero
worship" first expounded in his lectures. Any philosophy of history
which emphasized the importance of general causes seemed to him to imply
a simply mechanical doctrine and to deny the efficacy of the great
spiritual forces. He met it by making biography the essence of history,
or attributing all great events to the "heroes," who are the successive
embodiments of divine revelations. This belief was implied in his next
great work, the _Life and Letters of Oliver Cromwell_, published in
1845. The great Puritan hero was a man after his own heart, and the
portrait drawn by so sympathetic a writer is not only intensely vivid,
but a very effective rehabilitation of misrepresented character. The
"biographical" view of history, however, implies the weakness, not only
of unqualified approval of all Cromwell's actions, but of omitting any
attempt to estimate the Protector's real relation to the social and
political development of the time. The question, what was Cromwell's
real and permanent achievement, is not answered nor distinctly
considered. The effect may be partly due to the peculiar form of the
book as a detached series of documents and comments. The composition
introduced Carlyle to the "Dryasdust" rubbish heaps of which he here and
ever afterwards bitterly complained. A conscientious desire to unearth
the facts, and the effort of extracting from the dullest records the
materials for graphic pictures, made the process of production
excessively painful. For some years after _Cromwell_ Carlyle wrote
little. His growing acceptance by publishers, and the inheritance of her
property by Mrs Carlyle on her mother's death in 1842, finally removed
the stimulus of money pressure. He visited Ireland in 1846 and again in
1849, when he made a long tour in company with Sir C. Gavan Duffy, then
a young member of the Nationalist party (see Sir C.G. Duffy's
_Conversations with Carlyle_, 1892, for an interesting narrative).
Carlyle's strong convictions as to the misery and misgovernment of
Ireland recommended him to men who had taken part in the rising of 1848.
Although the remedies acceptable to a eulogist of Cromwell could not be
to their taste, they admired his moral teaching; and he received their
attentions, as Sir C.G. Duffy testifies, with conspicuous courtesy. His
aversion from the ordinary radicalism led to an article upon slavery in
1849, to which Mill replied, and which caused their final alienation. It
was followed in 1850 by the _Latterday Pamphlets_, containing
"sulphurous" denunciations of the do-nothing principle. They gave
general offence, and the disapproval, according to Froude, stopped the
sale for years. The _Life_ of Sterling (d. 1844), which appeared in
1851, was intended to correct the life by Julius Hare, which had given
too much prominence to theological questions. The subject roused
Carlyle's tenderest mood, and the _Life_ is one of the most perfect in
the language.
Carlyle meanwhile was suffering domestic troubles, unfortunately not
exceptional in their nature, though the exceptional intellect and
characters of the persons concerned have given them unusual prominence.
Carlyle's constitutional irritability made him intensely sensitive to
petty annoyances. He suffered the torments of dyspepsia; he was often
sleepless, and the crowing of "demon-fowls" in neighbours' yards drove
him wild. Composition meant for him intense absorption in his work;
solitude and quiet were essential; and he resented interruptions by
grotesque explosions of humorously exaggerated wrath. Mrs Carlyle had to
pass many hours alone, and the management of the household and of
devices intended to shield him from annoyances was left entirely to her.
House-cleanings and struggles with builders during the construction of a
"sound-proof room" taxed her energy, while Carlyle was hiding himself
with his family in Scotland or staying at English country houses.
Nothing could be more affectionate than his behaviour to his wife on
serious occasions, such as the death of her mother, and he could be
considerate when his attention was called to the facts. But he was often
oblivious to the strain upon her energies, and had little command of his
temper. An unfortunate aggravation of the difficulty arose from his
intimacy with the Ashburtons. Lady Ashburton, a woman of singular social
charm and great ability, appreciated the author, but apparently accepted
the company of the author's wife rather as a necessity than as an
additional charm. Mrs Carlyle was hurt by the fine lady's condescension
and her husband's accessibility to aristocratic blandishments. Carlyle,
as a wise man, should have yielded to his wife's wishes; unluckily, he
was content to point out that her jealousy was unreasonable, and, upon
that very insufficient ground, to disregard it and to continue his
intimacy with the Ashburtons on the old terms. Mrs Carlyle bitterly
resented his conduct. She had been willing to renounce any aspirations
of her own and to sink herself in his glory, but she naturally expected
him to recognize her devotion and to value her society beyond all
others. She had just cause of complaint, and a remarkable power, as her
letters prove, of seeing things plainly and despising sentimental
consolations. She was childless, and had time to brood over her wrongs.
She formed a little circle of friends, attached to her rather than to
her husband; and to one of them, Giuseppe Mazzini, she confided her
troubles in 1846. He gave her admirable advice; and the alienation from
her husband, though it continued still to smoulder, led to no further
results. A journal written at the same time gives a painful record of
her sufferings, and after her death made Carlyle conscious for the first
time of their full extent. The death of Lady Ashburton in 1857 removed
this cause of jealousy; and Lord Ashburton married a second wife in
1858, who became a warm friend of both Carlyles. The cloud which had
separated them was thus at last dispersed. Meanwhile Carlyle had become
absorbed in his best and most laborious work. Soon after the completion
of the _Cromwell_ he had thought of Frederick for his next hero, and had
in 1845 contemplated a visit to Germany to collect materials. He did
not, however, settle down finally to the work till 1851. He shut himself
up in his study to wrestle with the Prussian Dryasdusts, whom he
discovered to be as wearisome as their Puritan predecessors and more
voluminous. He went to Scotland to see his mother, to whom he had always
shown the tenderest affection, on her deathbed at the end of 1853. He
returned to shut himself up in the "sound-proof room." He twice visited
Germany (1852 and 1858) to see Frederick's battlefields and obtain
materials; and he occasionally went to the Ashburtons and his relations
in Scotland. The first two volumes of _Frederick the Great_ appeared in
1858, and succeeding volumes in 1862, 1864 and 1865. The success was
great from the first, though it did little to clear up Carlyle's gloom.
The book is in some respects his masterpiece, and its merits are beyond
question. Carlyle had spared no pains in research. The descriptions of
the campaigns are admirably vivid, and show his singular eye for
scenery. These narratives are said to be used by military students in
Germany, and at least convince the non-military student that he can
understand the story. The book was declared by Emerson to be the
wittiest ever written. Many episodes, describing the society at the
Prussian court and the relations of Frederick to Voltaire, are
unsurpassable as humorous portraiture. The effort to fuse the masses of
raw material into a well-proportioned whole is perhaps not quite
successful; and Carlyle had not the full sympathy with Frederick which
had given interest to the _Cromwell._ A hero-worshipper with
half-concealed doubts as to his hero is in an awkward position.
Carlyle's general conception of history made him comparatively blind to
aspects of the subject which would, to writers of other schools, have a
great importance. The extraordinary power of the book is undeniable,
though it does not show the fire which animated the _French Revolution._
A certain depression and weariness of spirit darken the general tone.
During the later labours Mrs Carlyle's health had been breaking.
Carlyle, now that happier relations had been restored, did his best to
give her the needed comforts; and in spite of his immersion in
_Frederick_, showed her all possible attention in later years. She had
apparently recovered from an almost hopeless illness, when at the end of
1865 he was elected to the rectorship of the university of Edinburgh. He
delivered an address there on the 2nd of April 1866, unusually mild in
tone, and received with general applause. He was still detained in
Scotland when Mrs Carlyle died suddenly while driving in her carriage.
The immediate cause was the shock of an accident to her dog. She had
once hurt her mother's feelings by refusing to use some wax candles. She
had preserved them ever since, and by her direction they were now
lighted in the chamber of death. Carlyle was overpowered by her loss.
His life thenceforward became more and more secluded, and he gradually
became incapable of work. He went to Mentone in the winter of 1866 and
began the _Reminiscences._ He afterwards annotated the letters from his
wife, published (1883) as _Letters and Memorials._ He was, as Froude
says, impressed by the story of Johnson's "penance" at Uttoxeter, and
desired to make a posthumous confession of his shortcomings in his
relations to his wife. A few later utterances made known his opinions of
current affairs. He joined the committee for the defence of Governor
Eyre in 1867; he also wrote in 1867 an article upon "shooting Niagara,"
that is, upon the tendency of the Reform Bill of that year; and in 1870
he wrote a letter defending the German case against France. The worth of
his _Frederick_ was acknowledged by the Prussian Order of Merit in 1874.
In the same year Disraeli offered him the Grand Cross of the Bath and a
pension. He declined very courteously, and felt some regret for previous
remarks upon the minister. The length of his literary career was now
softening old antipathies, and he was the object of general respect. His
infirmities enforced a very retired life, but he was constantly visited
by Froude, and occasionally by his disciple Ruskin. A small number of
other friends paid him constant attention. His conversation was still
interesting, especially when it turned upon his recollections, and
though his judgments were sometimes severe enough, he never condescended
to the scandalous. His views of the future were gloomy. The world seemed
to be going from bad to worse, with little heed to his warnings. He
would sometimes regret that it was no longer permissible to leave it in
the old Roman fashion. He sank gradually, and died on the 4th of
February 1881. A place in Westminster Abbey was offered, but he was
buried, according to his own desire, by the side of his parents at
Ecclefechan. He left Craigenputtock, which had become his own property,
to found bursaries at the university of Edinburgh. He gave his books to
Harvard College.
Carlyle's appearance has been made familiar by many portraits, none of
them, according to Froude, satisfactory. The statue by Boehm on the
Chelsea Embankment, however, is characteristic; and there is a fine
painting by Watts in the National Portrait Gallery. J. McNeill
Whistler's portrait of him is in the possession of the Glasgow
corporation.
During Carlyle's later years the antagonism roused by his attacks upon
popular opinions had subsided; and upon his death general expression was
given to the emotions natural upon the loss of a remarkable man of
genius. The rapid publication of the _Reminiscences_ by Froude produced
a sudden revulsion of feeling. Carlyle became the object of general
condemnation. Froude's biography, and the _Memorials_ of Mrs Carlyle,
published soon afterwards, strengthened the hostile feeling. Carlyle had
appended to the _Reminiscences_ an injunction to his friends not to
publish them as they stood, and added that no part could ever be
published without the strictest editing. Afterwards, when he had almost
forgotten what he had written, he verbally empowered Froude to use his
own judgment: Froude accordingly published the book at once, without any
editing, and with many inaccuracies. Omissions of a few passages written
from memory at a time of profound nervous depression would have altered
the whole character of the book. Froude in this and the later
publications held that he was giving effect to Carlyle's wish to imitate
Johnson's "penance." No one, said Boswell, should persuade him to make
his lion into a cat. Froude intended, in the same spirit, to give the
shades as well as the lights in the portrait of his hero. His admiration
for Carlyle probably led him to assume too early that his readers would
approach the story from the same point of view, that is, with an
admiration too warm to be repelled by the admissions. Moreover, Froude's
characteristic desire for picturesque effect, unchecked by any
painstaking accuracy, led to his reading preconceived impressions into
his documents. The result was that Carlyle was too often judged by his
defects, and regarded as a selfish and eccentric misanthrope with
flashes of genius, rather than as a man with many of the highest
qualities of mind and character clouded by constitutional infirmities.
Yet it would be difficult to speak too strongly of the great qualities
which underlay the superficial defects. Through long years of poverty
and obscurity Carlyle showed unsurpassed fidelity to his vocation and
superiority to the lower temptations which have ruined so many literary
careers, His ambition might be interpreted as selfishness, but certainly
showed no coldness of heart. His unstinted generosity to his brothers
during his worst times is only one proof of the singular strength of his
family affections. No one was more devoted to such congenial friends as
Irving and Sterling. He is not the only man whom absorption in work and
infirmity of temper have made into a provoking husband, though few wives
have had Mrs Carlyle's capacity for expressing the sense of injustice.
The knowledge that the deepest devotion underlies misunderstandings is
often a very imperfect consolation; but such devotion clearly existed
all through, and proves the defect to have been relatively superficial.
The harsh judgments of individuals in the _Reminiscences_ had no
parallel in his own writings. He scarcely ever mentions a contemporary,
and was never involved in a personal controversy. But the harshness
certainly reflects a characteristic attitude of mind. Carlyle was
throughout a pessimist or a prophet denouncing a backsliding world. His
most popular contemporaries seemed to him to be false guides, and
charlatans had ousted the heroes. The general condemnation of "shams"
and cant had, of course, particular applications, though he left them to
be inferred by his readers. Carlyle was the exponent of many of the
deepest convictions of his time. Nobody could be more in sympathy with
aspirations for a spiritual religion and for a lofty idealism in
political and social life. To most minds, however, which cherish such
aspirations the gentler optimism of men like Emerson was more congenial.
They believed in the progress of the race and the triumph of the nobler
elements. Though Carlyle, especially in his earlier years, could deliver
an invigorating and encouraging, if not a sanguine doctrine, his
utterances were more generally couched in the key of denunciation, and
betrayed a growing despondency. Materialism and low moral principles
seemed to him to be gaining the upper hand; and the hope that religion
might survive the "old clothes" in which it had been draped seemed to
grow fainter. The ordinary mind complained that he had no specific
remedy to propose for the growing evils of the time; and the more
cultivated idealist was alienated by the gloom and the tendency to
despair. To a later generation it will probably appear that, whatever
the exaggerations and the misconceptions to which he was led, his
vehement attacks at least called attention to rather grave limitations
and defects in the current beliefs and social tendencies of the time.
The mannerisms and grotesque exaggerations of his writings annoyed
persons of refinement, and suggest Matthew Arnold's advice to flee
"Carlylese" as you would flee the devil. Yet the shrewd common-sense,
the biting humour, the power of graphic description and the imaginative
"mysticism" give them a unique attraction for many even who do not fully
sympathize with the implied philosophy or with the Puritanical code of
ethics. The letters and autobiographical writings, whether they attract
or repel sympathy, are at least a series of documents of profound
interest for any one who cares to study character, and display an almost
unique idiosyncrasy. (L. S.)
The chief authorities for Carlyle's life are his own _Reminiscences_,
the _Letters of Jane Welsh Carlyle_, the _Love Letters of Thomas
Carlyle and Jane Welsh_ (ed. A. Carlyle), and the four volumes of J.A.
Froude's biography; Froude was Carlyle's literary executor. Prof. C.E.
Norton's edition of the _Reminiscences_ and his collection of
Carlyle's _Early Letters_ correct some of Froude's inaccuracies. A
list of many articles upon Carlyle is given by Mr Ireland in _Notes
and Queries_, sixth series, vol. iv. Among other authors may be
noticed Henry James, sen., in _Literary Remains_; Prof. Masson,
_Carlyle, Personally and in his Writings_; Conway, _Thomas Carlyle_;
Larkin, _The Open Secret of Carlyle's Life_; Mrs Oliphant in
_Macmillan's Magazine_ for April 1881; G.S. Venables in _Fortnightly
Review_ for May 1883 and November 1884. A good deal of controversy has
arisen relating to Froude's treatment of the relations between Carlyle
and his wife, and during 1903-1904 this was pushed to a somewhat
unsavoury extent. Those who are curious to pry into the question of
Carlyle's marital capacity, and the issues between Froude's assailants
and his defenders, may consult _New Letters and Memorials of Jane
Welsh Carlyle_, with introduction by Sir James Crichton-Browne; _My
Relations with Carlyle_, by J.A. Froude; _The Nemesis of Froude_, by
Sir J. Crichton-Browne and Alexander Carlyle; and articles in the
_Contemporary Review_ (June, July, August, 1903), and _Nineteenth
Century and After_ (May, July, 1903). See also Herbert Paul's _Life of
Froude_ (1905). The precise truth in these matters is hardly
recoverable, even if it concerns posterity: and though Froude was
often inaccurate, he was given full authority by Carlyle, he had all
the unpublished material before him, and he was dead and unable to
reply to criticism when the later attacks were made.