[Chapter 5, note 13, of the author's Carlyle and the Search for Authority, which the Ohio State University Press published in 1991. It appears in the Victorian web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright. indicates a link to material not in the original print version. GPL]

This manuscript, written in November 1852, was printed by Froude in EL, 2:8-15. I cite the more accurate transcription of Murray Baumgarten in "Carlyle and 'Spiritual Optics."' Other manuscripts produced during this period include "On the project of appointing to the civil service by merit alone" (Beinecke Library, New Haven), a manuscript on constitutional government (National Library of Scotland), and another arguing that the aristocracy only survived historically because they "were the beautiftillest" (National Library of Scotland; reprinted in Trela, "Carlyle and the Beautiful People").

The letters of the early 1850s also abound with opinions on recent political and cultural events: Irish land reform (Duffy, 450, 454; NL, 2:121-22); education reform (Wilson, 5:19, 24; Shepherd, 2:135); the Great Exhibition of "Wind-ustry" (LMSB, 287; RWE, 468; NL, i:io6; LL, 2:84; Sadler, 286); Napoleon III's coup (Wilson, 5: 25; NL, 2: 119); changes in the English cabinet (Wilson, 5:2526; NL, 1: 124-25, 141; Sadler, 289); and the Crimean War (RWE, 5o6; LL, 2: 163-64).

Victorian Website Overview Thomas Carlyle John Ruskiin Contents

Contents last modified 2 August 2002