Towards the close of the last century a stone-mason, named James Carlyle, started business on his own account in the village of Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire. He was an excellent tradesman, and frugal withal; and in the year 1791 he married a distant kinswoman of his own, Janet Carlyle, who died after giving birth to a son. In the beginning of 1795 he married one Margaret Aitken, a worthy, intelligent woman; and on the 4th of December following a son was born, whom they called Thomas, after his paternal grandfather. This child was destined to be the most original writer of his time. Little Thomas was early taught to read by his mother, and at the age of five he learnt to 'count' from his father. He was then sent to the village school; and in his seventh year he was reported to be 'complete' in English. As the schoolmaster was weak in the classics, Tom was taught the rudiments of Latin by the burgher minister, of which strict sect James Carlyle was a zealous member. One summer morning, in 1806, his father took him to Annan Academy. 'It was a bright morning,' he wrote long years thereafter, 'and to me full of moment, of fluttering boundless Hopes, saddened by parting with Mother, with Home, and which afterwards were cruelly disappointed.' At that 'doleful and hateful Academy,' to use his own words, Thomas Carlyle spent three years, learning to read French and Latin, and the Greek alphabet, as well as acquiring a smattering of geometry and algebra. It was in the Academy that he got his first glimpse of Edward Irving--probably in April or May 1808--who had called to pay his respects to his old teacher, Mr Hope. Thomas's impression of him was that of a 'flourishing slip of a youth, with coal-black hair, swarthy clear complexion, very straight on his feet, and except for the glaring squint alone, decidedly handsome.' Years passed before young Carlyle saw Irving's face again. James Carlyle, although an austere man, and the reverse of demonstrative, was bound up in his son, sparing no expense upon the youth's education. On one occasion he exclaimed, with an unwonted outburst of glee, 'Tom, I do not grudge thy schooling, now when thy Uncle Frank owns thee to be a better Arithmetician than himself.' Early recognising the natural talent and aptitude of his son, he determined to send him to the nearest university, with a view to Thomas studying for the ministry. One crisp winter's morning, in 1809, found Thomas Carlyle on his way to Edinburgh, trudging the entire distance--one hundred miles or so.