A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE ROW. 239 



tude was one of warning and rebuking. He was re- 

 fused every public place he ever aspired to every 

 college and editorial chair. Every man's hand was 

 against him. He was hated by the Whigs, and 

 feared by the Tories. He was poor, proud, uncom- 

 promising, sarcastic; he was morose, dyspeptic, de- 

 spondent, compassed about by dragons and all man- 

 ner of evil menacing forms ; in fact, the odds were 

 fearfully against him, and yet he succeeded, and suc- 

 ceeded on his own terms. He fairly conquered the 

 world ; yes, and the flesh and the devil. But it was 

 one incessant, heroic struggle and wrestle from the 

 first. All through his youth and his early manhood, 

 he was nerving himself for the conflict. Whenever 

 he took counsel with himself it was to give his cour- 

 age a new fillip. In his letters to his people, in his 

 private journal, in all his meditations, he never loses 

 the opportunity to take a new hitch upon his resolu- 

 tion, to screw his purpose up tighter. Not a mo- 

 ment's relaxation, but ceaseless vigilance and "des- 

 perate hope." In 1830, he says in his journal : " Oh, 

 I care not for poverty, little even for disgrace, noth- 

 ing at all for want of renown. But the horrible feel- 

 ing is when I cease my own struggle, lose the con- 

 sciousness of my own strength, and become positively 

 quite worldly and wicked." A year later he wrote : 

 "To it, thou Taugenichts! Gird thyself ! stir! strug- 

 gle ! forward ! forward ! Thou art bundled up here 

 and tied as in a sack. On, then, as in a sack race ; 

 running, not raging ! " Carlyle made no terms with 



