160 ARTISTS AND AUTHORS him the Grand Cross of the Bath (with the alternative of a baronetcy) and a pen- sion of " an amount equal to a good fellowship," but he declined both. His eightieth birthday, December 4, 1875, brought Carlyle many tributes of respect, including a gold medal from a number of Scottish admirers, and " a noble and most unexpected " note from Prince Bismarck. On May 5, 1877, ne published a short letter in the Times, referring to a rumor that Mr. Disraeli, as Premier, meditated forcing on a " Philo-Turk war against Russia," and protesting against any such design. This was his last public act. On February 5, 1 881, he died at his house in Chelsea. A burial in Westminster Abbey was offered, but in ac- cordance with his own wish, he was laid in the churchyard of Ecclesfechan, beside his kindred. The time has not yet come for the passing of a final judgment on Carlyle's position in British literature. He was, above all things, a prophet in the guise of a man of letters, who predicted the reverse of smooth things for his country and for the world ; and it has yet to be seen if his predictions will be fulfilled. But it may be said even now, and without risk of contradiction, that, for good or evil, he exerted a greater influence on British literature during the middle of the nineteenth century, and, through that literature, on the ethical, religious, and political beliefs of his time, than any of his contemporaries ; that, as a humorist, using humor seriously and as a weapon for the enforcement of his opinions, he has no superior, combining in himself what is best in Dunbar, Burns, Rabelais, and Swift ; that, as a master of the graphic in style, he has no rival and no second showing an equal facility in photographing nature, and in grasping and pre- senting in appropriate phraseology the salient points of personal character as ex- hibited in expression, habits, features, build, and dress. Of Carlyle as a man, it is also permissible to say that, irritable, impatient, intolerant, fiercely proud, occasionally hasty in his judgments though he was, pre- serving to the last, nor caring to get rid of, certain Scottish and Annandale rus- ticities of manner and mental attitude, no one was ever more essentially self-con- trolled, patient, and humble than he, or ever faced the real misfortunes of life with a calmer courage ; that he was as incapable of conscious injustice, unkindli- ness, or vindictiveness, as he was of insincerity or impurity ; that in pecuniary straits, even in despair, he never wrote a line that he did not believe, never swerved by a hair's breadth from the noble purposes which dominated his life and extinguished all selfish ambition. The following letter was written by Carlyle, in 1876, to a young man who had asked his advice on the choice of a profession : " Dear Sir, I respect your conscientious scruples in regard to choosing a pro- fession, and wish much I had the power of giving you advice that would be of the least service. But that, I fear, in my total ignorance of yourself and the posture of your affairs, is pretty nearly impossible. The profession of the law is in many respects a most honorable one, and has this to recommend it, that a man
