margent," revived for us in sun and shade by a pen almost as magical as
Turner's brush. We must refer to the pages of Mr. Froude for the
picture of Drumclog moss,--"a good place for Cameronian preaching, and
dangerously difficult for Claverse _(sic)_ and horse soldiery if the
suffering remnant had a few old muskets among them,"--for the graphic
glimpse of Ailsa Craig, and the talk by the dry stone fence, in the
twilight. "It was just here, as the sun was sinking, Irving drew from
me by degrees, in the softest manner, that I did not think as he of the
Christian religion, and that it was vain for me to expect I ever could or
should. This, if this was so, he had pre-engaged to take well of me, like
an elder brother, if I would be frank with him. And right loyally he did
so." They parted here: Carlyle trudged on to the then "utterly quiet
little inn" at Muirkirk, left next morning at 4 A.M., and reached
Dumfries, a distance of fifty-four miles, at 8 P.M., "the longest walk I
ever made." He spent the summer at Mainhill, studying modern
languages, "living riotously with Schiller and Goethe." at work on the
_Encyclopedia_ articles, and visiting his friend at Annan, when he was
offered the post of tutor to the son of a Yorkshire farmer, an offer
which Irving urged him to accept, saying, "You live too much in an ideal
world," and wisely adding, "try your hand with the respectable illiterate
men of middle life. You may be taught to forget ... the splendours and
envies ... of men of literature."

This exhortation led to a result recorded with much humour, egotism, and
arrogance in a letter to his intimate friend Dr. John Fergusson, of Kelso
Grammar School, which, despite the mark "private and confidential," was
yet published, several years after the death of the recipient and shortly
after that of the writer, in a gossiping memoir. We are therefore at
liberty to select from the letter the following paragraphs:--