In conversation the grave-digger said: 'Mr Carlyle comes here from London now and then to see this grave. He is a gaunt, shaggy, weird kind of old man, looking very old the last time he was here.' 'He is eighty-six now,' said I. 'Ay,' he repeated, 'eighty-six, and comes here to this grave all the way from London.' And I told him that Carlyle was a great man, the greatest man of the age in books, and that his name was known all over the world; but he thought there were other great men lying near at hand, though I told him their fame did not reach beyond the graveyard, and brought him back to talk of Carlyle. 'Mr Carlyle himself,' said the gravedigger softly, 'is to be brought here to be buried with his wife. Ay, he comes here lonesome and alone,' continued the gravedigger, 'when he visits the wife's grave. His niece keeps him company to the gate, but he leaves her there, and she stays there for him. The last time he was here I got a sight of him, and he was bowed down under his white hairs, and he took his way up by that ruined wall of the old cathedral, and round there and in here by the gateway, and he tottered up here to this spot.' Softly spake the gravedigger, and paused. Softer still, in the broad dialect of the Lothians, he proceeded:--"And he stood here awhile in the grass, and then he kneeled down and stayed on his knees at the grave; then he bent over and I saw him kiss the ground--ay, he kissed it again and again, and he kept kneeling, and it was a long time before he rose and tottered out of the cathedral, and wandered through the graveyard to the gate, where his niece was waiting for him." This is the epitaph composed by Carlyle, and engraved on the tombstone of Dr John Welsh in the chancel of Haddington Church:-- 'HERE LIKEWISE NOW RESTS JANE WELSH CARLYLE, SPOUSE OF THOMAS CARLYLE, CHELSEA, LONDON. SHE WAS BORN AT HADDINGTON, 14TH JULY 1801, ONLY DAUGHTER OF THE ABOVE JOHN WELSH, AND OF GRACE WELSH, CAPELGILL, DUMFRIESSHIRE, HIS WIFE. IN HER BRIGHT EXISTENCE SHE HAD MORE SORROWS THAN ARE COMMON; BUT ALSO A SOFT INVINCIBILITY, A CLEARNESS OF DISCERNMENT, AND A NOBLE LOYALTY OF HEART WHICH ARE RARE. FOR FORTY YEARS SHE WAS THE TRUE AND EVER-LOVING HELPMATE OF HER HUSBAND, AND, BY ACT AND WORD, UNWEARIEDLY FORWARDED HIM AS NONE ELSE COULD, IN ALL OF WORTHY THAT HE DID OR ATTEMPTED. SHE DIED AT LONDON, 21ST APRIL 1866, SUDDENLY SNATCHED AWAY FROM HIM, AND THE LIGHT OF HIS LIFE AS IF GONE OUT.' FOOTNOTES: [31] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. ii. p. 295. [32] Masson's 'Carlyle Personally and in his Writings,' pp. 27-9. [33] Alexander Smith's 'Sketches and Criticisms,' pp. 101-8. [34] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. ii. p. 312. [35] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. ii. p. 314. [36] Larkin's 'Carlyle and the Open Secret of his Life,' pp. 334-5. [37] 'Life of Jane Welsh Carlyle,' pp. 191-2.