THOMAS CARLYLE. 377 



that horrible spectre which darkened with its death- 

 wings so many brave and pious lives. It is something 

 to have abolished Hell fire ! " " Yes/' he replied, " that 

 is a distinct and an enormous gain. My own father 

 was a brave man, and, though poor, unaccustomed to 

 cower before the face of man; but the Almighty God 

 was a different matter. You and I do not believe that 

 Melchet Court exists, and that we shall return thither, 

 more firmly than he believed that, after his death, he 

 would have to face a judge who would lift him into 

 everlasting bliss or doom him to eternal woe. I could 

 notice that for three years before he died this rugged, 

 honest soul trembled to its depths at even the possible 

 prospect of hell fire. It surely is a great gain to have 

 abolished this Terror." 



Sir Benjamin Brodie, the great surgeon, a man of 

 highly philosophic mind, whose intimate friendship I 

 enjoyed for many years before his death, always held 

 and insisted that a good memory was essential to the 

 making of a great man. That Carlyle's memory was 

 astonishing numerous proofs could be given. One 

 instance, associated with a fact of some interest, occurs 

 to me as I write. When, struck down by the malady 

 which has shorn away before their time so many 

 precious lives, the gifted Clifford was approaching his 

 end, I called one evening to see him in Quebec Street, 

 and found Professor Croom Robertson at his bedside. 

 Clifford had been reading a work on Germany "by 

 Thomas Carlyle, Barrister-at-Law," and conjecture was 

 set afloat to determine at what period of his career 

 Carlyle had donned this designation. It was known 

 that he once had thoughts of becoming a lawyer, but 

 it was not known that he had ever used the title of a 

 lawyer. Clifford said, "The subject is one which 



