I asked him why he didn't visit America, and told him that I had
observed his name registered at Ambleside, on Lake Windermere. "Nae,
nae," said he, "I never scrabble my name in public places." I explained
that it was on the hotel register that I had seen "Thomas Carlyle." "It
was not mine," he replied, "I never travel only when I ride on a horse
in the teeth of the wind to get out of this smoky London. I would like
to see America. You may boast of your Dimocracy, or any other 'cracy, or
any other kind of political roobish, but the reason why your laboring
folk are so happy is that you have a vast deal of land for a very few
people." In this racy, picturesque vein he ran on for an hour in the
most cordial, good humor. He was then in his prime, hale and athletic,
with a remarkably keen blue eye, a strong lower jaw and stiff iron gray
hair, brushed up from a capacious forehead; and he had a look of a
sturdy country deacon dressed up on a Sunday morning for church. He was
very carefully attired in a new suit that day for visiting, and, as I
rose to leave, he said to me: "I am going up into London and I will walk
wi' ye." We sallied out and he strode the pavement with long strides
like a plowman. I told him I had just come from the land of Burns, and
that the old man at the native cottage of the poet had drunk himself to
death by drinking to the memory of Burns.

At this Carlyle laughed loudly, and remarked: "Was that the end of him?
Ah, a wee bit drap will send a mon a lang way." He then told me that
when he was a lad he used to go into the Kirkyard at Dumfries and,
hunting out the poet's tomb, he loved to stand and just read over the
name--"Rabbert Burns"--"Rabbert Burns." He pronounced the name with deep
reverence. That picture of the country lad in his earliest act of
hero-worship at the grave of Burns would have been a good subject for
the pencil of Millais or of Holman Hunt. At the corner of Hyde Park I
parted from Mr. Carlyle, and watched him striding away, as if, like the