380 PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF 



then, ah me ! the law of gravity illustrated by the 

 incessant fall of the guillotine ; the hackings, strang- 

 lings, fusillades, and noyades ; cargoes of men, women, 

 and children sunk by their sworn brothers in the Loire 

 and the Rhone ! One can fancy his presageful coun- 

 tenance were he to witness the revival, in our own day, 

 of this ghastly farce of ' fraternity ' — unsexed, it is true, 

 and converted into * sisterly embraces.' When the 

 manhood of England has departed, this nauseous 

 sentimentalism may go down with the electorate — not 

 before. 



My recollection here reaches back to two powerful 

 and important letters published by Carlyle, one in the 

 Examiner and another in the Spectator, during a 

 former Eepeal agitation. Each of them bore the 

 initial 6 C as signature. His bold outspokenness and 

 fiery eloquence had endeared him to the enthusiastic 

 Young Irelanders, and it was thought that a word from 

 him would, at the time, be a word in season. These 

 letters had been read by me with profound interest 

 when they first appeared, and I notified their existence 

 to more than one able editor, when Carlyle's name was 

 mentioned a year or two ago in the House of Commons. 

 Standing recently beside the bookstall at Grodalming 

 railway-station, I took up a quaint little book, with a 

 quaintly-printed title on its cover — ' A Pearl of English 

 Khetoric. Thomas Carl vie on the Repeal of the 

 Union.' It was a reprint of one of the letters signed 

 4 C.,' to which I have just referred. After long burial 

 it had been unearthed, and thus restored to the public. 

 I give here a sample of its arguments against 

 Eepeal : — 



' Consider/ says the pearl-diver, c whether, on any 

 terms, England can have her house cut in two and a 

 foieign nation lodged in her back parlour itself? Not 



