Hence, the last days of this great man were not his best days, although he was not without honor.  He was made Lord Rector of the University of Edinburgh, and delivered a fine address on the occasion; and later, Disraeli, when prime minister, offered him knighthood, with the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath and a pension, which he declined.  The author of the “Sartor Resartus” did not care for titles.  He preferred to remain simply Thomas Carlyle.

While Carlyle was in the midst of honors in Edinburgh, his wife, who had long been in poor health, suddenly died, April 21, 1866.  This affliction was a terrible blow to Carlyle, from which he never recovered.  It filled out his measure of sorrow, deep and sad, and hard to be borne.  His letters after this are full of pathos and plaintive sadness.  He could not get resigned to his loss, for his wife had been more and more his staff and companion as years had advanced.  The Queen sent her sympathy, but nothing could console him.  He was then seventy-one years old, and his work was done.  His remaining years were those of loneliness and sorrow and suffering.  He visited friends, but they amused him not.  He wrote reminiscences, but his isolation remained.  He sought out charities when he himself was the object of compassion,—­a sad old man who could not sleep.  He tried to interest himself in politics, but time hung heavy on his hands.  He read much and thought more, but assumed no fresh literary work.  He had enough to do to correct proof-sheets of new editions of his works.  His fiercest protests were now against atheism in its varied forms.  In 1870, Mr. Erskine, his last Scotch friend, died.  In 1873 he writes:  “More and more dreary, barren, base, and ugly seem to me all the aspects of this poor, diminishing quack-world,—­fallen openly anarchic, doomed to a death which one can wish to be speedy.”

Poor old man!  He has survived his friends, his pleasures, his labors, almost his fame; he is sick, and weary of life, which to him has become a blank.  Pity it is, he could not have died when “Cromwell” was completed.  He drags on his forlorn life, without wife or children, and with only a few friends, in disease and ennui and discontent, almost alone, until he is eighty-five.

     “To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
      Creeps on this petty pace from day to day
      To the last syllable of recorded time;
      And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
      The way to dusty death.  Out, out, brief candle! 
      Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
      That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
      And then is heard no more.  It is a tale
      Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
      Signifying nothing.”

The relief came at last.  It was on a cold day in February, 1881, that Lecky, Froude, and Tyndall, alone of his London friends, accompanied his mortal remains to Ecclefechan, where he was buried by the graves of his father and mother.  He might have rested in the vaults of Westminster; but he chose to lie in a humble churchyard, near where he was born.