The vein of Puritanism running through his writings, composed upon the model of the German school, impressed many critics with the belief that their author, although full of fire and energy, was perplexed and embarrassed with his own speculations. Concerning this Puritan element in his reflections, Mr. James Hannay remarks, "That earnestness, that grim humour--that queer, half-sarcastic, half-sympathetic fun--is quite Scotch. It appears in Knox and Buchanan, and it appears in Burns. I was not surprised when a school-fellow of Carlyle's told me that his favourite poem was, when a boy, 'Death and Doctor Hornbook.' And if I were asked to explain this originality, I should say that he was a covenanter coming in the wake of the eighteenth century and the transcendental philosophy. He has gone into the hills against 'shams,' as they did against Prelacy, Erastianism, and so forth. But he lives in a quieter age, and in a literary position. So he can give play to the humour which existed in them as well, and he overflows with a range of reading and speculation to which they were necessarily strangers." 'Chartism,' published in 1839, and which, to use the words of a critic of the time, was the publication in which "he first broke ground on the Condition of England question," appeared a short time before the lectures on 'Heroes and Hero-worship' were delivered. If we remember rightly, Mr. Carlyle gave forth "those grand utterances" extemporaneously and without an abstract, notes, or a reminder of any kind--utterances not beautiful to the flunkey-mind, or valet-soul, occupied mainly with the fold of the hero's necktie, and the cut of his coat. Flunkey-dom, by one of its mouthpieces, thus speaks of them:-- "Perhaps his course for the present year, which was on Hero-worship, was better attended than any previous one. Some of those who were present estimated the average attendance at three hundred. They chiefly consisted of persons of rank and wealth, as the number of carriages which each day waited the conclusion of the lecture to receive Mr. Carlyle's auditors, and to carry them to their homes, conclusively testified. The locality of Mr. Carlyle's lectures has, I believe, varied every year. The Hanover Rooms, Willis's Rooms, and a place in the north of London, the name of which I forget, have severally been chosen as the place whence to give utterance to his profound and original trains of thought.