“Johnson was a Prophet to his people:  preached a Gospel to them,—­as all like him always do.  The highest Gospel he preached we may describe as a kind of moral Prudence:  ’in a world where much is to be done, and little is to be known,’ see how you will do it!  A thing well worth preaching.  ’A world where much is to be done, and little is to be known,’ do not sink yourselves in boundless, bottomless abysses of Doubt. . . .

“Such Gospel Johnson preached and taught;—­coupled with this other great Gospel.  ‘Clear your mind of Cant!’ Have no trade with Cant:  stand on the cold mud in the frosty weather, but let it be in your own real torn shoes:  ’that will be better for you,’ as Mahomet says!  I call this, I call these two things joined together, a great Gospel, the greatest perhaps that was possible at that time.”

I give this quotation from Heroes because there is, in some ways a great likeness between Johnson and Carlyle.  Both were sincere, and both after a time of poverty and struggle ruled the thought of their day.  For Carlyle became known by degrees, and became, like Johnson before him, a great literary man.  He was sought after by the other writers of his day, who came to listen to the growlings of the “Sage of Chelsea.”

Carlyle, like Johnson, was a Prophet with a message.  “Carlyle,” says a French writer, “has taken up a mission; he is a prophet, the prophet of sincerity.  This sincerity or earnestness he would have applied everywhere:  he makes it the law, the healthy and holy law, of art, of morals, of politics."* And through all Carlyle’s exaggeration and waywardness of diction we find that note ring clear again and again.  Be sincere, find the highest, and worship it with all thy mind and heart and will.

Scherer.

And although for us of to-day the light of Carlyle as a prophet may be somewhat dimmed, we may still find, as a great man of his own day found, that the good his writings do us, is “not as philosophy to instruct, but as poetry to animate."*

J.  S. Mill.

Carlyle went steadily on with his writing.  In the summer he would have his table and tray of books brought out into the garden so that he could write in the open air, but much of his work, too, was done in a “sound proof” room which he built at the top of the house in order to escape from the horror of noise.  The sound-proof room was not, however, a great success, for though it kept out some noises it let in others even worse.

When visitors came they were received either indoors or in the little garden which Carlyle found “of admirable comfort in the smoking way.”  In the garden they smoked and talked sitting on kitchen chairs, or on the quaint china barrels which Mrs. Carlyle named “noblemen’s seats.”

Among the many friends Carlyle made was the young poet Alfred Tennyson.  Returning from a walk one day he found a splendidly handsome young man sitting in the garden talking to his wife.  It was the poet.