IN CARLYLE'S COUNTRY. 67 



that reverted, half-mournful gaze ; the ground was 

 hallowed behind him ; his dead called to him from 

 their graves. Nothing deepens and intensifies fam- 

 ily traits like poverty and toil and suffering. It is 

 the furnace heat that brings out the characters, the 

 pressure that makes the strata perfect. One recalls 

 Carlyle's grandmother getting her children up late 

 at night, his father one of them, to break their long 

 fast with oaten cakes from the meal that had but 

 just arrived; making the fire from straw taken from 

 their beds. Surely, such things reach the springs of 

 being. 



It seemed eminently fit that Carlyle's dust should 

 rest here in his native soil, with that of his kindred, 

 he was so thoroughly one of them, and that his place 

 should be next his mother's, between whom and him- 

 self there existed such strong affection. I recall a 

 little glimpse he gives of his mother in a letter to 

 his brother John, while the latter was studying in 

 Germany. His mother had visited him in Edin- 

 burgh. "I had her," he writes, "at the pier of 

 Leith, and showed her where your ship vanished; 

 and she looked over the blue waters eastward with 

 wettish eyes, and asked the dumb waves * when he 

 would be back again.' Good mother." 



To see more of Ecclefechan and its people, and to 

 browse more at my leisure about the country, I 

 brought my wife and youngster down from Lock- 

 erby; and we spent several days there, putting up 

 at the quiet and cleanly little Bush Inn. I tramped 



