It is not necessary to bring to light, and in regular order, the
external history of Thomas Carlyle, or of Jane Baillie Welsh, who
married him. There is an extraordinary amount of rather fanciful
gossip about this marriage, and about the three persons who had to
do with it.

Take first the principal figure, Thomas Carlyle. His life until
that time had been a good deal more than the life of an ordinary
country-man. Many persons represent him as a peasant; but he was
descended from the ancient lords of a Scottish manor. There was
something in his eye, and in the dominance of his nature, that
made his lordly nature felt. Mr. Froude notes that Carlyle's hand
was very small and unusually well shaped. Nor had his earliest
appearance as a young man been commonplace, in spite of the fact
that his parents were illiterate, so that his mother learned to
read only after her sons had gone away to Edinburgh, in order that
she might be able to enjoy their letters.

At that time in Scotland, as in Puritan New England, in each
family the son who had the most notable "pairts" was sent to the
university that he might become a clergyman. If there were a
second son, he became an advocate or a doctor of medicine, while
the sons of less distinction seldom went beyond the parish school,
but settled down as farmers, horse-dealers, or whatever might
happen to come their way.

In the case of Thomas Carlyle, nature marked him out for something
brilliant, whatever that might be. His quick sensibility, the way
in which he acquired every sort of learning, his command of logic,