On a bright May morning Thomas set out trotting gayly by his father’s side.  This was his first venture into the world, and his heart was full of hopes just dashed with sadness at leaving his mother.  But the wonderful new world of school proved a bitter disappointment to the little fellow.  He had a violent temper, and his mother, fearing into what he might be led when far from her, made him promise never to return a blow.  Thomas kept his promise, with the result that his fellows, finding they might torment him with safety, tormented him without mercy.

In a book called Sartor Resartus which Carlyle wrote later, and which here and there was called forth by a memory of his own life, he says: 

“My schoolfellows were boys, most rude boys, and obeyed the impulse of rude nature which bids the deer herd fall upon any stricken hart, the duck flock put to death any broken-winged brother or sister, and on all hands the strong tyrannise over the weak.”

So Thomas at school was unhappy and lonely and tormented.  But one day, unable to bear the torment longer, he flew at one of the biggest bullies in the school.

The result was a fight in which Thomas got the worst, but, he had shown his fellows what he could do, he was tormented no longer.  Yet ever afterwards he bore an unhappy remembrance of those days at school.

After three years his school-days came to an end.  He was not yet fourteen, but he had proved himself so eager a scholar that his father decided to send him to college and let him become a minister.

So early one November morning he set out in the cold and dark upon his long tramp of more than eighty miles to Edinburgh.  It was dark when he left the house, and his father and mother went with him a little way, and then they turned back and left Tom to trudge along in the growing light, with another boy a year or two older who was returning to college.

Little is known of Carlyle’s college days.  After five years’ study, at nineteen he became a schoolmaster, still with the intention of later becoming a minister as his father wished.  But for teaching Carlyle had no love, and after some years of it, first in schools and then as a private tutor, he gave it up.  He gave up, too, the idea of becoming a minister, for he found he had lost the simple faith of his fathers and could not with good conscience teach to others what he did not thoroughly believe himself.  He gave up, too, the thought of becoming a barrister, for after a little study he found he had no bent for law.

Already he had begun to write.  Besides other things he had translated and published Wilhelm Meister, a story by the great German poet, Goethe.  It was well received.  The great Goethe himself wrote a kind letter to his translator.  It came to him, said Carlyle, “like a message from fairyland.”  And thus encouraged, after drifting here and there, trying first one thing and then another, Carlyle gave himself up to literature.