in its vortex, he had invited Carlyle to follow him, saying, "Scotland
breeds men, but England rears them." Shortly after, introduced by Mrs.
Strachey, one of his worshipping audience, to her sister Mrs. Buller, he
found the latter in trouble about the education of her sons. Charles, the
elder, was a youth of bright but restive intelligence, and it was desired
to find some transitional training for him on his way from Harrow to
Cambridge. Irving urged his being placed, in the interim, under Carlyle's
charge. The proposal, with an offer of L200 a year, was accepted, and the
brothers were soon duly installed in George Square, while their tutor
remained in Moray Place, Edinburgh. The early stages of this relationship
were eminently satisfactory; Carlyle wrote that the teaching of the
Bullers was a pleasure rather than a task; they seemed to him "quite
another set of boys than I have been used to, and treat me in another
sort of manner than tutors are used. The eldest is one of the cleverest
boys I have ever seen." There was never any jar between the teacher and
the taught. Carlyle speaks with unfailing regard of the favourite pupil,
whose brilliant University and Parliamentary career bore testimony to the
good practical guidance he had received. His premature death at the
entrance on a sphere of wider influence made a serious blank in his old
master's life.

[Footnote: Charles Buller became Carlyle's pupil at the age of fifteen.
He died as Commissioner of the Poor in 1848 (_aet_. forty-two).]

But as regards the relation of the employer and employed, we are wearied
by the constantly recurring record of kindness lavishly bestowed,
ungraciously received, and soon ungratefully forgotten. The elder
Bullers--the mother a former beauty and woman of some brilliancy, the
father a solid and courteous gentleman retired from the Anglo-Indian
service--came to Edinburgh in the spring of the tutorship, and