as the astronomer Airy, they saw the black country and the toiling
squads, in whom Carlyle, through all his shifts from radical democracy to
Platonic autocracy, continued to take a deep interest; on other days
they had pleasant excursions to the green fields and old towers of
Warwickshire. On occasion of this visit he came in contact with De
Quincey's review of _Meister_, and in recounting the event credits
himself with the philosophic thought, "This man is perhaps right on some
points; if so let him be admonitory."

But the description that follows of "the child that has been in hell,"
however just, is less magnanimous. Then came a trip, in company with Mr.
Strachey and Kitty and maid, by Dover and Calais along Sterne's route to
Paris, "The Vanity Fair of the Universe," where Louis XVIII. was then
lying dead in state. Carlyle's comments are mainly acid remarks on the
Palais Royal, with the refrain, "God bless the narrow seas." But he met
Legendre and Laplace, heard Cuvier lecture and saw Talma act, and, what
was of more moment, had his first glimpse of the Continent and the city
of one phase of whose history he was to be the most brilliant recorder.
Back in London for the winter, where his time was divided between
Irving's house and his own neighbouring room in Southampton Street,
he was cheered by Goethe's own acknowledgment of the translation of
_Meister_, characteristically and generously cordial.

In March 1825 Carlyle again set his face northward, and travelling by
coach through Birmingham, Manchester, Bolton, and Carlisle, established
himself, in May, at Hoddam Hill; a farm near the Solway, three miles from
Mainhill, which his father had leased for him. His brother Alexander
farmed, while Thomas toiled on at German translations and rode about on
horseback. For a space, one of the few contented periods of his life,
there is a truce to complaining. Here free from the noises which are the