Although he kept that matter for the present to himself, not admitting even Irving yet to his confidence, the fact that he had given up the clerical career was known at once to all his friends.[17] It was a sore disappointment, above all, to his parents; but they left him to his own course, his father with admirable magnanimity, his mother “perhaps still more lovingly, though not so silently.” It was another disappointment to them, about the same time, to know that he had resolved to quit the Kirkcaldy schoolmastership. His relations with the Kirkcaldy people, or with some of them, had not been absolutely satisfactory, any more than Irving’s; both had “got tired of schoolmastering and its mean contradictions and poor results,” and had even come to the conclusion “Better die than be a schoolmaster for one’s living”; and in the end of 1818 they had both thrown up their Kirkcaldy engagements and were back in Edinburgh to look about for something else. Irving, then twenty-six years of age and comparatively at ease in the matter of pecuniary means, had preachings here and there about Edinburgh to occupy him, and the possibility of a call to some parish-charge at home, or heroic mission abroad, for his prospect. Carlyle, just twenty-three years of age, was all at sea as to his future, but had about £90 of savings on which to rest till he could see light. The six months or so from December 1818 to the summer of 1819 form a little period by itself in the Edinburgh lives of Irving and Carlyle. They lodged in the Old Town, not far from each other. Carlyle’s rooms were at No. 15 Carnegie Street, in the suburb called “The Pleasance”; Irving’s, which were the more expensive, were in Bristo Street, close to the University,—where, says Carlyle, he “used to give breakfasts to intellectualities he fell in with, I often a guest with them.” Irving also renewed his connection with the University by attending Hope’s Class of Chemistry, which was always in those days the most crowded of the classes by far, and the Natural History Class under Jameson. I find no proof of any similar attendance on any University Class by Carlyle through the session 1818–19; but we learn from Mrs. Oliphant’s _Life of Irving_ that he was for this session a member of a certain _Philosophical Association_ which Irving had started “for the mutual improvement of those who had already completed the ordinary academic course.” It was one of those small and ephemeral societies of which there have been so many in the history of the University, distinct from the larger and more famous societies,—such as the _Speculative_, the _Theological_, the _Dialectic_, and the _Diagnostic_,—which established themselves permanently, and still exist. We hear a little of Irving’s doings in the semi-academic brotherhood, especially of an essay which he read to them; but of Carlyle’s doings, if there were any, we hear nothing. The mere membership, however, was a kind of continued bond