contribution (1820-1823) of sixteen articles to the _Edinburgh
Encyclopedia_ under the editorship of Sir David Brewster. The scant
remuneration obtained from these was well timed, but they contain no
original matter, and did nothing for his fame. Meanwhile it appears from
one of Irving's letters that Carlyle's thoughts had been, as later in his
early London life, turning towards emigration. He says, writes his friend,
"I have the ends of my thoughts to bring together ... my views of life to
reform, my health to recover, and then once more I shall venture my bark
on the waters of this wide realm, and if she cannot weather it I shall
steer west and try the waters of another world."

[Footnote: The subjects of these were--Lady Mary Wortley Montagu,
Montaigne, Montesquieu, Montfaucon, Dr. Moore, Sir John Moore, Necker,
Nelson, Netherlands, Newfoundland, Norfolk, Northamptonshire,
Northumberland, Mungo Park, Lord Chatham, William Pitt. These articles, on
the whole judiciously omitted from the author's collected works, are
characterised by marks of great industry, commonplace, and general
fairness, with a style singularly formal, like that of the less im
pressive pages of Johnson. The following, among numerous passages, are
curious as illustrating the comparative orthodoxy of the writer's early
judgments: "The brilliant hints which Montesquieu scatters round him with
a liberal hand have excited or assisted the speculations of others in
almost every department of political economy, and he is deservedly
mentioned as a principal founder of that important science." "Mirabeau
confronted him (Necker) like his evil genius; and being totally without
scruple in the employment of any expedient, was but too successful in
overthrowing all reasonable proposals, and conducting the people to that
state of anarchy out of which his own ambition was to be rewarded," etc.
Similarly the verdicts on Pitt, Chatham, Nelson, Park, Lady Montagu, etc.,
are those of an ordinary intelligent Englishman of conscientious research,