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manner as to work for the few days required by the contract; or in the hands of engineers, who at the time when they undertook the work, had not attained the highest rank in their profession. The promoters appear to have studiously avoided the employment of the leading engineering talent of the country, and the Government when it had control, appears to have countenanced this line of conduct. Stephenson and Brunel would not have allowed the Atlantic Telegraph to be laid upon their responsibility, without proper preliminary experiments being made; and it is to the absence of a proper scientific appreciation of the difficulties of these enterprises, that we entirely attribute the disasters and disappointments to which they have been subjected.

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The question of Ocean Telegraphy is, however, at present in abeyance. Sir Leopold McClintock, in H.M.S. Bulldog,' and Captain Allen Young, in the Fox,' have just completed a survey of the proposed route for a telegraphic line by way of Greenland to America. It is understood that the officers who accompanied the expedition are sanguine of the success of the proposed line. The ships experienced difficulties in passing through the ice which encumbered the coast of Greenland; but it is alleged that these difficulties were exceptional, and a consequence of the unusual inclemency of the season; at any rate, they are sufficient to prevent the laying or repairing of a telegraphic cable in similar seasons, and the promoters of the enterprise should therefore carefully consider the means of overcoming these difficulties before they finally embark in the undertaking. It cannot be too strongly urged that before laying a telegraphic cable, the selection of the route which it is to traverse should be guided by a detailed survey of the bottom of the ocean, so as to ascertain the inequalities of the surface as well as the materials of which it is composed. We do not know what course the line from England to America will eventually take whether the North Atlantic Company, under the guidance of Colonel Shaffner, will succeed in laying and maintaining the line by way of the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland, through the inhospitable territory of Labrador to Canada; or whether the company which has just obtained a concession from the Portuguese Government for a line to Lisbon, will carry a line to America by a southern route; or whether the Atlantic Company will lay another direct line - but of this we are convinced, that at no very distant period submarine telegraphs, established on sound principles and in a durable manner, will encircle the globe.

ART. VI. - Autobiography of the Rev. Dr. Alexander Carlyle, Minister of Inveresk; containing Memorials of the Men, and Events of his Times. 8vo. Edinburgh and London: 1860.

THIS

HIS book contains by far the most vivid picture of Scottish life and manners that has been given to the public since the days of Sir Walter Scott. In bestowing upon it this high praise, we make no exception, not even in favour of Lord Cockburn's 'Memorials,' the book which resembles it most, and which ranks next to it in interest. Indeed, even going beyond the range of our Scottish experience, we doubt whether there is anywhere to be found as trustworthy a record of the domestic, social, and intellectual life of a whole bygone generation, or an appreciation of the individual peculiarities of the persons by whom that generation was led, as shrewd and unprejudiced, as has been bequeathed to us by this active, high-spirited, claret-drinking, play-going, and yet withal worthy and pious Minister of the

Kirk.

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The term autobiography scarcely describes it correctly. A far more accurate notion of its contents would have been conveyed, had the editor adhered to that which Dr. Carlyle himself seems from the opening sentence to have contemplatedviz., Anecdotes and Characters of the Times.' The subjective element, which in modern autobiography plays so great a part, is almost entirely wanting; for though the worthy Minister of Inveresk often indulged in a little harmless vanity, and even defended it as a passion that is easy to be intreated, and that 'unites freely with all the best affections,' he took far too lively an interest in the characters of his friends to be very deeply absorbed in the contemplation of his own, or very solicitous to analyse it for the amusement of others. Those of his readers, therefore, whose peculiar taste lies in the direction of confes sions are doomed to disappointment. But we believe they will be the only disappointed readers; and those, at all events, who regard the study of the past somewhat in the same light as foreign residence or travel, and consider that the chief benefit which both confer consists in delivering us from conventional narrowness, by bringing us in contact with life under new circumstances, will be of opinion that this book, whatever it may be called, is not only an entertaining, but a highly instructive one.

Before proceeding to lay before our readers the extracts in which we purpose, somewhat beyond our wont, to indulge,

there is one subject of a somewhat delicate kind to which it may be proper that we should refer. The fact of a work of such varied interest, the existence of which in manuscript was widely known (for it was no literary trouvaille, like that of the Irish Dr. Campbell) - the fact, we say, of such a work having been so long withheld from the public, necessarily gave rise to reports unfavourable to its character. There was plainly something mysterious, probably something wrong. Ability was not likely to be wanting in a volume from the pen of one whose talents were in high repute with Hume and Smith, and Robertson, and Ferguson, and Home, and Blair, and whose title to rank with the foremost of his countrymen had been recognised by so competent a judge as Smollett; but it was thought that it might be coarse and scandalous, possibly even licentious. Dr. Carlyle had been a moderate of the moderates, at a period when moderatism was in the ascendant in the church, both in Scotland and in England, and a report to his prejudice was not incredible to those who, had he been alive, would have been his natural opponents. But if the surmise was not unnatural, it was in the highest degree unjust. Personality, in a certain sense, it is true, constitutes the essence of the book, but it is personality in the now harmless sense of exhibiting an unvarnished picture of the acknowledged or notorious peculiarities both of friends and adversaries; a fact which alone perhaps was reason enough, and which at any rate was the only reason, for delaying the publication. Of personality in the odious sense of exposing infirmities which ought for ever to be hidden, or in the still more wicked form of propagating calumnies which can no longer be refuted, nothing whatever will be found. Though full of gossip, it is singularly free from what can be fairly denominated scandal. It exhibits on every page the gay and jovial temper of its author, and makes no secret of his having conformed to the 'convivial habits of the time;' but it never loses sight of the broad line which distinguishes the full and unconstrained enjoyment from the intemperate abuse of the gifts of Providence. Having made these few explanatory remarks, we shall follow the judicious course which Mr. Burton has adopted of presenting Dr. Carlyle without further preface to our readers.

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It was not until he had entered on his seventy-ninth year that Dr. Carlyle began to write these Reminiscences. He was born in 1722, and the first page of his manuscript is dated 1800an interval of time which embraces all the events of the 18th century most memorable to Scotland and to Scottish society. His father, the minister of Prestonpans, was born in 1690; so

VOL. CXIII. NO. CCXXIX.

L

that these family traditions may be said to extend from the Revolution to the outset of the present century.

Dr. Carlyle's father had previously been minister of Cumbertrees, in Annandale, from whence he was brought to Prestonpans by the famous, or infamous, Lord Grange, whose character our readers have recently been furnished with the means of appreciating. Our author himself was born in the former parish, and thus sprung from the same region, and we believe from the same stock, with his more celebrated namesake in our own day. His father had two sisters, married and settled in London-the one to a Mr. Lyon of Easter Ogill, a branch 'of the Strathmore family, who had been in the rebellion of 1715; and, having been pardoned, had attempted to carry on 'business in London, but was ruined in the South Sea (scheme).' Of this lady, who visited his father's family in his youth, he says, 'She was young and beautiful and vain, not so much of her person (to which she had a good title) as of her husband's 'great family, to which she annexed her own, and, by a little stretch of imagination and a search into antiquity, made it 'great also.' This lady's son became an officer in the Guards, and married Lady Catherine Bridges, a daughter of the Mar'quis of Carnarvon, and grandchild of the Duke of Chandos:' the connexion was one which Carlyle turned to account in his visits to London in after life. His other English aunt also visited at the Manse about the same period. She staid with us for a year, and during that time taught me to read English, with just pronunciation and a very tolerable accent -an accomplishment which in those days was very rare.' These connexions and many other passages in this volume throw considerable light on the position of the Scottish clergy, who at that period, like their English brethren now, seem frequently, if not generally, to have been cadets of noble or gentle families:

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'At this time (1733) I made a very agreeable tour round the country with my father and Mr. Robert Jardine [minister of Lochmaben], the father of Dr. Jardine, afterwards minister of Edinburgh. Among the places we visited was Bridekirk, the seat of the eldest cadet of Lord Carlyle's family, of which my father was descended. I saw, likewise, a small pendicle of the estate which had been assigned as the portion of his grandfather, and which he himself had tried to recover by a lawsuit, but was defeated for want of a principal paper. We did not see the laird, who was from home; but we saw the lady, who was a much greater curiosity. She was a very large and powerful virago, about forty years of age, and received us with much kindness and hospitality; for the brandy-bottle-a Scotch pint -made its appearance immediately, and we were obliged to take

our morning, as they called it, which was indeed the universal fashion of the country at that time. This lady, who, I confess, had not many charms for me, was said to be able to empty one of those large bottles of brandy, smuggled from the Isle of Man, at a sitting. They had no whisky at that time, there being then no distilleries in the south of Scotland.'

'The face of the country was particularly desolate, not having yet reaped any benefit from the union of the Parliaments; nor was it recovered from the effects of that century of wretched government which preceded the Revolution, and commenced at the accession of James. The Border wars and depredations had happily ceased; but the borderers, having lost what excited their activity, were in a dormant state during the whole of the seventeenth century, unless it was during the time of the grand Rebellion, and the struggles between Episcopacy and Presbytery.' (P. 25.)

It was during this visit that Carlyle made the acquaintance of his maternal grandfather, Mr. Alexander Robinson, the minister of Tinwald, a pious and accomplished man, who exercised a very salutary influence over his after life, and of whom he always speaks in terms of reverence and affection.

'His wife, Jean Graham, connected with many of the principal families in Galloway, and descended by her mother from the Queensberry family (as my father was, at a greater distance by his mother, of the Jardine Hall family), gave the worthy people and their children an air of greater consequence than their neighbours of the same rank, and tended to make them deserve the respect which was shown them.' (P. 27.)

In November 1735, Carlyle became a student at the University of Edinburgh, where soon afterwards he actually witnessed the execution of Wilson in the Grass-market, when Captain Porteous fired on the people, and saw the signal of the ever memorable Porteous riots. Having been born on the 22nd January 1722, Carlyle had not at that time completed his fourteenth year, and yet he does not seem to have been younger than the generality of his fellow students. Hitherto he had been educated at the parish school of Prestonpans, which was then in a condition to put him pretty much on a footing of equality with lads who had been educated in Edinburgh. Though there is no reason to suppose that his acquirements ever were extensive in any department of learning, Carlyle was one of those who learn with facility, and he thus had no difficulty in holding a good place amongst his fellow students. Amongst these he soon came in contact with the names which give its charm and importance to the reminiscences of his life.

'Having passed the Greek class, I missed many of my most in

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