THOMAS CARLYLE. 351 



moteless chambers, I took Mr. Carlyle. He listened 

 with profound attention to the explanation of the ex- 

 periments. They were quite new to him ; for microbes, 

 bacilli, and bacteria were not then the household words 

 which they are now. I could notice amazement in his 

 eyes as we passed from putrefaction to antiseptic 

 surgery, and from it to the germ theory of communi- 

 cable disease. To Carlyle life was wholly mystical 

 incapable of explanation and the conclusion to which 

 the experiments pointed, that life was derived from 

 antecedent life, and was not generated from dead 

 matter, fell in with his notions of the fitness of things. 

 Instead, therefore, of repelling him, the experiments 

 gave him pleasure. 



After quitting the laboratory I took my guest up- 

 stairs, and placed him in an armchair in front of a 

 cheerful fire. The weather was cold, and I therefore 

 prepared for him a tumbler of mulled claret. And 

 now we arrive at the cause which induces me to speak 

 thus early of a late event. About a fortnight prior to 

 this visit, while rummaging through a mass of ancient 

 papers, I had come upon the long-lost sheets of foolscap 

 which contained my analysis and summary of the various 

 chapters of ' Past and Present.' The packet, tied with 

 twine as aforesaid, and bearing the yellow tints of age, 

 lay in an adjacent drawer. At length I said to him, 

 ' Now you shall see something that will interest and 

 amuse you.' I took the ragged sheets from the drawer, 

 told him what they were and how they had originated, 

 and read aloud some of the passages which had kindled 

 me when young. He listened, sometimes clinching a 

 paragraph by a supplement or ratification, but fre- 

 quently breaking forth into loud and mellow laughter 

 at his own audacity. It would require gifts greater 

 even than those of Boswell to reproduce Carlyle. I 



