Carlyle's grim fate was cast to live and dwell in, and
largely embody, the parturition agony and qualms of the old order,
amid crowded accumulations of ghastly morbidity, giving birth to the
new.
But conceive of him (or his parents before him) coming to America,
recuperated by the cheering realities and activity of our people and
country--growing up and delving face-to-face resolutely among us here,
especially at the West--inhaling and exhaling our limitless air and
eligibilities--devoting his mind to the theories and developments
of this Republic amid its practical facts as exemplified in Kansas,
Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee, or Louisiana. I say _facts_, and
face-to-face confrontings--so different from books, and all those
quiddities and mere reports in the libraries, upon which the man (it
was wittily said of him at the age of thirty, that there was no one in
Scotland who had glean'd so much and seen so little,) almost wholly
fed, and which even his sturdy and vital mind but reflected at best.
Something of the sort narrowly escaped happening. In 1835, after more
than a dozen years of trial and non-success, the author of "Sartor
Resartus" removing to London, very poor, a confirmed hypochondriac,
"Sartor" universally scoffed at, no literary prospects ahead,
deliberately settled on one last casting throw of the literary
dice--resolv'd to compose and launch forth a book on the subject of
_the French Revolution_--and if that won no higher guerdon or prize
than hitherto, to sternly abandon the trade of author forever, and
emigrate for good to America.
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