the students were unanimous, or nearly so. His own consent was all that was wanting.'[31] This consent was obtained, and Carlyle was chosen Rector of Edinburgh University. But the Address troubled him. He resolved, however, as his father used to say, to 'gar himself go through with the thing,' or at least to try. Froude says he was very miserable, but that Mrs Carlyle 'kept up his spirits, made fun of his fears, bantered him, encouraged him, herself at heart as much alarmed as he was, but conscious, too, of the ridiculous side of it.' She thought of accompanying him, but her health would not permit of the effort. Both Huxley and Tyndall were going down, and Tyndall promised Mrs Carlyle to take care of her husband. On Monday morning, the 29th of March, 1866, Carlyle and his wife parted. 'The last I saw of her,' he said, 'was as she stood with her back to the parlour door to bid me good-bye. She kissed me twice, she me once, I her a second time.' They parted for ever. Edinburgh was reached in due course, and what happened there had best be told by an eye-witness, Professor Masson. 'On the night following Carlyle's arrival in town,' he says, 'after he had settled himself in Mr Erskine of Linlathen's house, where he was to stay during his visit, he and his brother John came to my house in Rosebery Crescent, that they might have a quiet smoke and talk over matters. They sat with me an hour or more, Carlyle as placid and hearty as could be, talking most pleasantly, a little dubious, indeed, as to how he might get through his Address, but for the rest unperturbed. As to the Address itself, when the old man stood up in the Music Hall before the assembled crowd, and threw off his Rectorial robes, and proceeded to speak, slowly, connectedly, and nobly raising his left hand at the end of each section or paragraph to stroke the back of his head as he cogitated what he was to say next, the crowd listening as they had never listened to a speaker before, and reverent even in those parts of the hall where he was least audible,--who that was present will ever forget that sight? That day, and on the subsequent days of his stay, there were, of course, dinners and other gatherings in Carlyle's honour. One such dinner, followed by a larger evening gathering, was in my house. Then, too, he was in the best of possible spirits, courteous in manner and in speech to all, and throwing himself heartily into whatever turned up. At the dinner-table, I remember, Lord Neaves favoured us with one or two of his humorous songs or recitatives, including his clever quiz called "Stuart Mill on Mind and Matter," written to the tune of "Roy's wife of Aldivalloch." No one enjoyed the thing more than Carlyle; and he surprised me by doing what I had never heard him do before,--actually joining with his own voice in the chorus. "Stuart Mill on Mind and Matter, Stuart Mill on Mind and Matter," he chaunted laughingly along with Lord Neaves every