Last words of Thomas Carlyle - Warburg Institute

!20 WOTTON liElKFKEBprayer came evening and morning from a full heart,and life,in the thought of the innocent boy, seemedlittle elsethan a pilgrimage through a sacred alley,with the pinnacles of the Eternal Temple at its close.With increase of years came new feelings, stillfarther complicated by change of scene. In hisfifteenth winter he was sent to college ; a measureto which hismother had consented by the advice ofher ancient pastor, and the still more earnest persuasionof Wotton's teacher, and to the fulfilment ofwhich the boy himself had long looked forward withunspeakable anticipations. The seminary was in alarge town, at a distance of many miles ;to Wotton,a pure ' city of the mind,' glorious as the habitationof wisdom, and cloud-capt in his fancy with all earthlysplendour.This new scene might have worked upon himbeneficially, but for the present it did not. It wasa university in which the great principle of spiritualliberty was admitted in its broadest sense, and naturewas left to all not only without misguidance, butwithout any guidance at all. Wotton's tasks wereeasy of performance, or, rather, the performance ofthem was recommended not enforced ; while for therest he was left to choose his own society and formhis own habits, and had unlimited command of reading.What a wild world rose before him as he read,and felt, and saw, with as yet unworn avidityYoung Nature was combining with this strange