Thomas Carlyle was born at Ecclefechan, Annandale. His parents were “good farmer people,” his father an elder in the Secession church there, and a man of strong native sense, whose words were said to “nail a subject to the wall.” His excellent mother still lives, and we had the pleasure of meeting her lately in the company of her illustrious son; and beautiful it was to see his profound and tender regard, and her motherly and yearning reverence—to hear her fine old covenanting accents, concerting with his transcendental tones. He studied in Edinburgh. Previous to this, he had become intimate with Edward Irving, an intimacy which continued unimpaired to the close of the latter’s eccentric career. Like most Scottish students, he had many struggles to encounter in the course of his education; and had, we believe, to support himself by private tuition, translations for the booksellers, &c. The day star of German literature arose early in his soul, and has been his guide and genius ever since. He entered into a correspondence with Goethe, which lasted, at intervals, till the latter’s death. Yet he has never, we understand, visited Germany. He was, originally, destined for the church. At one period he taught an academy in Dysart, at the same time that Irving was teaching in Kirkaldy. After his marriage, he resided partly at Comely Bank, Edinburgh; and, for a year or two in Craigenputtock, a wild and solitary farm-house in the upper part of Dumfriesshire. Here, however, far from society, save that, of the “great dumb monsters of mountains,” he wearied out his very heart. A ludicrous story is told of Lord Jeffrey visiting him in this out-of-the-way region, when they were unapprized of his coming—had nothing in the house fit for the palate of the critic, and had, in dire haste and pother, to send off for the wherewithal to a market town about fifteen miles off. Here, too, as we may see hereafter, Emerson, on his way home from Italy, dropped in like a spirit, spent precisely twenty-four hours, and then “forth uprose that lone, wayfaring man,” to return to his native woods. He has, for several years of late, resided in Chelsea, London, where he lives in a plain, simple fashion; occasionally, but seldom, appearing at the splendid soirées of Lady Blessington, but listened to, when he goes, as an oracle; receiving, at his tea-table, visitors from every part of the world; forming an amicable centre for men of the most opposite opinions and professions, Poets and Preachers, Pantheists and Puritans, Tennysons and Scotts, Cavanaighs and Erskines, Sterlings and Robertsons, smoking his perpetual pipe, and pouring out, in copious stream, his rich and quaint philosophy. His appearance is fine, without being ostentatiously singular—his hair dark—his brow marked, though neither very broad nor very lofty—his cheek tinged with a healthy red—his eye, the truest index of his genius, flashing out, at times, a wild and mystic fire from its dark and quiet surface.