LETTER FROM MR CARLYLE. 439 



world, as something in which it might read a lesson ; 

 but the retrospect is still too distressing. I screen it 

 from the mental eye. The one grand fact it has im- 

 pressed is the very small amount of brotherly assist- 

 ance there is for the unfortunate in this world. I 



remember hearing the widow of Mr tell how 



she had never been asked by any relation of either 

 herself or her husband to accept of a five-pound 

 note, though many of them were very well off. The 

 rule is to leave these stricken deer to weep them- 

 selves away unsuccoured. I have the same experience 

 to relate. Till I proved that I could help myself no 

 friend came to me. Uncles, cousins, &c., in good 

 positions in life some of them stoops of kirks, by-the- 

 by not one offered, or seemed inclined to give, the 

 smallest assistance. The consequent defying, self-rely- 

 ing spirit in which, at sixteen, I set out as a bookseller 

 with only my own small collection of books as a stock- 

 not worth more than two pounds, I believe led to my 

 being quickly independent of all aid ; but it has not 

 been all a gain, for I am now sensible that my spirit of 

 self-reliance too often manifested itself in an unsocial, un- 

 amiable light, while my recollections of "honest poverty" 

 may have made me too eager to attain and secure 

 worldly prosperity. Had I possessed uncles such as yours 

 I might have been much the better of it through life. 



' Pray accept with lenity these hurried and imper- 

 fect remarks, into which I have been led by a sort of 

 sympathetic spirit, almost against my own sense of 

 propriety/ 



FROM Mil CARLYLE. 



' 5, Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London, 9th March, 1854. 



' I am surely much your debtor for that fine Book 



