According to the most probable chronology, for many of Carlyle's dates are hard to fix, the next important event of his life, his being introduced, on occasion of a visit to Haddington, to Miss Jane Welsh by her old tutor, Edward Irving--an event which marks the beginning of a new era in his career--took place towards the close of May or in the first week of June. To June is assigned the incident, described in _Sartor_ as the transition from the Everlasting No to the Everlasting Yea, a sort of revelation that came upon him as he was in Leith Walk--Rue St. Thomas de l'Enfer in the Romance--on the way to cool his distempers by a plunge in the sea. The passage proclaiming this has been everywhere quoted; and it is only essential to note that it resembled the "illuminations" of St. Paul and of Constantine merely by its being a sudden spiritual impulse. It was in no sense a conversion to any belief in person or creed, it was but the assertion of a strong manhood against an almost suicidal mood of despair; a condition set forth with superabundant paraphernalia of eloquence easily condensed. Doubt in the mind of Teufelsdroeckh had darkened into disbelief in divine or human justice, freedom, or himself. If there be a God, He sits on the hills "since the first Sabbath," careless of mankind. Duty seems to be but a "phantasm made up of desire and fear"; virtue "some bubble of the blood," absence of vitality perhaps. What in these days are terrors of conscience to diseases of the liver? Not on morality but on cookery let us build our stronghold.... Thus has the bewildered wanderer to stand, shouting question after question into the Sibyl cave, and receiving for answer an echo. From this scepticism, deeper than that of _Queen Mab,_ fiercer than that of _Candide,_ Carlyle was dramatically rescued by the sense that he was a servant of God, even when doubting His existence. After all the nameless woe that inquiry had wrought me, I nevertheless still loved truth, and would hate no jot of my allegiance....Truth I cried, though the heavens crush me for following her; no falsehood! though a whole celestial lubberland were the price of apostacy. With a grasp on this rock, Carlyle springs from the slough of despond and asserts himself: Denn ich bin ein Mensch gewesen Und das heisst ein Kaempfer seyn. He finds in persistent action, energy, and courage a present strength, and a lamp of at least such partial victory as he lived to achieve. He would not make his judgment blind; He faced the spectres of the mind,-- but he never "laid them," or came near the serenity of his master, Goethe; and his teaching, public and private, remained half a wail. He threw the gage rather in the attitude of a man turning at bay than that of one making a leap.