27. THOMAS CARLYLE (+1795-1881+), a great thinker, essayist, and historian, was born at Ecclefechan, in Dumfriesshire, in the year 1795. He was educated at the burgh school of Annan, and afterwards at the University of Edinburgh. Classics and the higher mathematics were his favourite studies; and he was more especially fond of astronomy. He was a teacher for some years after leaving the University. For a few years after this he was engaged in minor literary work; and translating from the German occupied a good deal of his time. In 1826 he married Jane Welsh, a woman of abilities only inferior to his own. His first original work was +Sartor Resartus+ (“The Tailor Repatched”), which appeared in 1834, and excited a great deal of attention-- a book which has proved to many the electric spark which first woke into life their powers of thought and reflection. From 1837 to 1840 he gave courses of lectures in London; and these lectures were listened to by the best and most thoughtful of the London people. The most striking series afterwards appeared in the form of a book, under the title of +Heroes and Hero-Worship+. Perhaps his most remarkable book-- a book that is unique in all English literature-- is +The French Revolution+, which appeared in 1837. In the year 1845, his +Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches+ were published, and drew after them a large number of eager readers. In 1865 he completed the hardest piece of work he had ever undertaken, his +History of Frederick II., commonly called the Great+. This work is so highly regarded in Germany as a truthful and painstaking history that officers in the Prussian army are obliged to study it, as containing the best account of the great battles of the Continent, the fields on which they were fought, and the strategy that went to win them. One of the crowning external honours of Carlyle’s life was his appointment as Lord Rector of the University of Edinburgh in 1866; but at the very time that he was delivering his famous and remarkable Installation Address, his wife lay dying in London. This stroke brought terrible sorrow on the old man; he never ceased to mourn for his loss, and to recall the virtues and the beauties of character in his dead wife; “the light of his life,” he said, “was quite gone out;” and he wrote very little after her death. He himself died in London on the 5th of February 1881.