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 be 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 Repeal agitation. Each of them bore the 

 initial * 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 

 Rhetoric. Thomas Carlyle on the Repeal of tho 

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

 ' 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 

 Repeal : 



1 Consider,' says the pearl-diver, * whether, on any 

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

 foreign nation lodged in her back parlour itself? Not 



