I have been informed, however, that Leslie must have misconceived Carlyle when he took the solution as absolutely Carlyle’s own. It is to be found, I am told, in an old Scottish book of geometry. Footnote 17: A letter of Carlyle’s among those contributed by Mr. Alexander Ireland to Mr. Conway’s _Memoir_ proves that the momentous reading of Gibbon was before Feb. 20, 1818; and in a subsequent letter in the same collection, of date “July 1818,” he informs his correspondent, “I have quitted all thoughts of the Church, for many reasons, which it would be tedious, perhaps [word not legible], to enumerate.” This piece of information is bedded, however, in some curious remarks on the difficulties of those “chosen souls” who take up opinions different from those of the age they live in, or of the persons with whom they associate. See the letter in Mr. Conway’s volume, pp. 168–170. Footnote 18: Quoted in Mr. Froude’s article, “The Early Life of Carlyle,” in the _Nineteenth Century_ for July 1881. Footnote 19: Mrs. Oliphant’s _Life of Irving_ (1862), i. 90, 91. Footnote 20: My impression now is that it was this autumn of 1819 in his father’s house that Carlyle had in his mind when he talked to me once of the remembered pleasures of certain early mornings in the Dumfriesshire hill-country. The chief was when, after a saunter out of doors among the sights and sounds of newly awakened nature, he would return to the fragrant tea that was ready for him at home. No cups of tea he had ever tasted in his life seemed so fragrant and so delicious as those his mother had ready for him after his walks in those old Dumfriesshire mornings. Footnote 21: