PAST AND PRESENT
By Thomas Carlyle

Appreciation by Ralph Waldo Emerson


First published 1843



THOMAS CARLYLE, born in 1795 at Ecclefechan, the son of a
stonemason. Educated at Edinburgh University. Schoolmaster for
a short time, but decided on a literary career, visiting Paris
and London. Retired in 1828 to Dumfriesshire to write. In 1834
moved to Cheyne Row, Chelsea, and died there in 1881.





INTRODUCTION
Being an appreciation from "The Dial" (July 1843)
by Ralph Waldo Emerson


Here is Carlyle's new poem, his _Iliad_ of English woes, to
follow his poem on France, entitled the _History of the French
Revolution._ In its first aspect it is a political tract, and
since Burke, since Milton, we have had nothing to compare with
it. It grapples honestly with the facts lying before all men,