From two persons in particular I have had intimate accounts of his habits and demeanour in the Comely Bank period. One was the late Rev. David Aitken, D.D., once minister of a Scottish country parish, but in the later part of his life resident in Edinburgh. He was a relative of the Carlyles, and had seen a great deal of them in their own house, and at the tables of various friends, in those old Edinburgh days. His report was that perhaps the most observable thing about Carlyle then was the combination of extraordinary frankness, a habit of speaking out most strikingly and picturesquely whatever was in his mind, with the most perfect command of temper in meeting objections, evading attempted slights or provocations to anger, or changing the subject when opposition was becoming noisy, or the opponent was evidently a fool. Again and again Dr. Aitken had observed this, and wondered at Carlyle’s tact and suavity, especially when he had propounded something startling to commonplace people, and the expression on the faces of some of his auditors was “Who are _you_ that dare thus advance notions discomposing to your seniors?” To the same effect is the information I had from another Edinburgh friend of Carlyle in those days, the late Dr. John Gordon. He was most methodic in his arrangement of his time, Dr. Gordon informed me, always reserving the solid hours of the day for his literary work in Comely Bank, but very accessible and sociable in the afternoons and evenings. To Dr. Gordon I definitely put the question, “Was he gloomy and morose, or noted for asperity and sarcastic bitterness in talk?” The answer was: “Not a bit of it, not a bit of it; the pleasantest and heartiest fellow in the world, and most excellent company.” It is evident that, whether from more smiling circumstances, or from that drill in self-control which had been imposed upon him by his experience at Hoddam Hill, he was a considerably different being now, in his social demeanour and aspects, from what he had been some years before, when Irving had thought it necessary to remonstrate with him on his fitful and forbidding manners with strangers. But, indeed, they mistake Carlyle utterly who do not know that to the end, with all his vehemence in indignation and invective, and with a stately dignity of manner which repelled irreverent familiarity, and with which the most impudent did not dare to trifle, there was a vast fund in him of what could be described as the homeliest and most genial good-fellowship and the richest old Scottish heartiness. It was not only his faculty of humour,—though those who have never heard Carlyle’s laugh, or known how frequently it would interrupt the gathered tempests of his verbal rage and dissipate them in sudden sunburst, can have no idea of his prodigious wealth in this faculty, or of the extent to which it contributed to the enjoyment and after-relish of every hour spent in his society. I have heard the echoes of Sloane Street ring with his great