NINETEEN MONTHS OF DUMFRIESSHIRE FARM-LIFE (_March 1825–October 1826_):—For about two months Carlyle was at his father’s farmhouse of Mainhill, near Ecclefechan, resting from his return-tour through England, and preparing for the adventure which he had planned. This was an attempt at tenant-farming on his own account in that neighbourhood. A letter of his to Mrs. Basil Montagu, of date May 20, 1825, is still from Mainhill; but on the 26th of that month he entered on the possession of the adjacent little farm of Hoddam Hill, which he had taken on lease from his father’s landlord, General Sharpe,—“a neat, compact little farm, rent £100,” with “a prettyishlooking cottage.” Here for a whole year he lived, nominally a tenant-farmer, as his father was, and close to his father, but in reality entrusting the practical farm-work to his brother Alick, while he himself, with his mother or one of his sisters for his housekeeper, delved a little for amusement, rode about for health, and pursued his studies and literary tasks,—chiefly his projected translation of _Specimens of German Romance_ for the bookseller Tait of Edinburgh. There were letters to and from his London friends; there was once a sight in Annan of poor Irving, whose London troubles and aberrations were by this time matters of public notoriety; there were visits to and from neighbours; but, on the whole, the year was one of industrious loneliness. Though he tells us but little of it, what he does tell us enables us to see that it was a most important and memorable year in his recollection. Perhaps in all Carlyle’s life no other year is so important intrinsically. “I call that year idyllic,” he tells us, “in spite of its russet coat.” This is general; but he gives us vital particulars. It was the time, he distinctly says, of his complete spiritual triumph, his attainment once and for ever to that state of clear and high serenity, as to all the essentials of religion and moral belief, which enabled him to understand in his own case “what the old Christian people meant by _conversion_,” and which he described afterwards, in the Teufelsdröckh manner, as the reaching of the harbour of the “Everlasting Yes” at last. The word _happiness_ was no favourite one in Carlyle’s vocabulary, with reference to himself at least; but he does not refuse even this word in describing his new mental condition through the year at Hoddam Hill. What he felt, he says, was the attainment of “a constant inward happiness that was quite royal and supreme, in which all temporal evil was transient and insignificant.” Even his bodily health seemed to be improving; and the effect extended itself most manifestly to his temper and disposition towards others. “My thoughts were very peaceable,” he says, “full of pity and humanity as they had never been before.” In short, he was no longer the moody, defiant, mainly despondent and sarcastic Carlyle he had been, or had