the discipline of the Roman-like domestic law, "In an orderly house,
where the litter of children's sports is hateful, your training is rather
to bear than to do. I was forbid much, wishes in any measure bold I had
to renounce; everywhere a strait bond of obedience inflexibly held me
down. It was not a joyful life, yet ... a wholesome one." The following
oft-quoted passage is characteristic of his early love of nature and the
humorous touches by which he was wont to relieve his fits of sentiment:--

On fine evenings I was wont to carry forth my supper (bread crumb boiled
in milk) and eat it out of doors. On the coping of the wall, which I
could reach by climbing, my porringer was placed: there many a sunset
have I, looking at the distant mountains, consumed, not without relish,
my evening meal. Those hues of gold and azure, that hush of world's
expectation as day died, were still a Hebrew speech for me: nevertheless
I was looking at the fair illumined letters, and had an eye for the
gilding.

In all that relates to the writer's own education, the Dichtung of
_Sartor_ and the Wahrheit of the _Reminiscences_ are in accord. By
Carlyle's own account, an "insignificant portion" of it "depended on
schools." Like Burns, he was for some years trained in his own parish,
where home influences counted for more than the teaching of not very
competent masters. He soon read eagerly and variously. At the age of
seven he was, by an Inspector of the old order, reported to be "complete
in English." In his tenth year (1805) he was sent to the Grammar School
of Annan, the "Hinterschlag Gymnasium," where his "evil days" began.
Every oversensitive child finds the life of a public school one long
misery. Ordinary boys--those of the Scotch borderland being of the most
savage type--are more brutal than ordinary men; they hate singularity as
the world at first hates originality, and have none of the restraints