Next month, November 1819, when Irving was forming acquaintance with Dr. Chalmers’s congregation, and they hardly knew what to make of him,—some thinking him more like a “cavalry officer” or “brigand chief” than a young minister of the Gospel,—Carlyle was back in Edinburgh. His uncertainties and speculations as to his future, with the dream of emigration to America, had turned themselves into a vague notion that, if he gave himself to the study of law, he might possibly be able to muster somehow the two or three hundreds of pounds that would be necessary to make him a member of the Edinburgh Bar, and qualify him for walking up and down the floor of the Parliament House in wig and gown, like the grandees he had seen there in his memorable first visit to the place, with Tom Smail, ten years before. For that object residence in Edinburgh was essential, and so he had returned thither. His lodgings now seem to be no longer in Carnegie Street, but in Bristo Street,—possibly in the rooms which Irving had left. No portion of the records relating to Carlyle’s connection with our University has puzzled me more than that which refers to his law studies after he had abandoned Divinity. From a memorandum of his own, quoted by Mr. Froude, but without date, it distinctly appears that he attended “Hume’s Lectures on Scotch Law”; and Mr. Froude adds that his intention of becoming an advocate, and his consequent perseverance in attendance on the “law lectures” in the Edinburgh University, continued for some time. Our records, however, are not quite clear in the matter. In our Matriculation Book for the session 1819–20, where every law student, as well as every arts student and every medical student, was bound to enter his name, paying a matriculation-fee of 10s., I find two Thomas Carlyles, both from Dumfriesshire. One, whose signature, in a clear and elegant hand, I should take to be that of _our_ Carlyle at that date, enters himself as “Thomas Carlyle, Dumfries,” with the addition “5 Lit.,” signifying that he had attended the Literary or Arts Classes in four preceding sessions. The matriculation number of this Thomas Carlyle is 825. The other, whose matriculation number is 1257, enters himself, in a somewhat boyish-looking hand, as “Thomas Carlyle, Dumfriesshire,” with the addition “2 Lit.,” signifying that he had attended one previous session in an Arts Class. Now, all depends on the construction of the appearances of those two Carlyles in the independent class-lists that have been preserved, in the handwritings of the Professors, for that session of their common matriculation and for subsequent sessions. Without troubling the reader with the puzzling details, I may say that the records present an alternative of two suppositions: viz. either (1) Both the Thomas Carlyles who matriculated for 1819–20 became law students that session; in which case the “Thomas Carlyle, Dumfriesshire,” notwithstanding the too boyish-looking handwriting, and