I.

BEFORE THE EDINBURGH PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTION.

On Saturday evening, November 6, 1880, the directors of the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution entertained Mr. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, American Minister, at dinner in the Balmoral Hotel in that city. Dr. W. Smith, senior vice-president of the institution, occupied the chair, and among others present were the Earl of Rosebery, Lord Reay, Principal Sir Alexander Grant, the Rev. Professor Flint, and Professor Blackie. Mr. LOWELL, in returning thanks for the toast of his health, said:

He thought that they in America had done quite their share of work in their short life, although he was always inclined to question the statement that they were a young people. It was supposed, somehow or other, that they were autochthonic; that they had sprung from the earth of America, as the Athenians were said to have done from the soil of Attica. But it was nothing of the kind. If he might be allowed to say so, they began where those in this country left off. It must be remembered that they took with them all the traditions of English freedom and of English civilization, and that they not only maintained them, but, in his humble judgment, carried them further. (_Cheers._)

Mr. LOWELL concluded by referring to early association on his part with Edinburgh.

Afterwards, proposing “The health of Mr. Carlyle and the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh,” Mr. LOWELL said that--

America in a certain sense performed the office of posterity to England and Scotland. Their authors were first recognized across the Atlantic. (_Cheers._) He would not say it was owing to quicker perception, but rather to their clearness of atmosphere (_laughter_) that they had this luck sometimes. He remembered particularly a book which was published while he was still at college, and which produced in his young mind as great a ferment as it did among all his contemporaries. That book was “Sartor Resartus.” (_Cheers._) It was first collected and published in the year 1836 in the city of Boston, in the United States of America (_cheers_); and it there received its first approbation. Their chairman, Dr. Smith, had told him during the course of the evening that when “Sartor Resartus” first began to appear in _Fraser’s Magazine_ the editor received two letters, one from an Irishman, if he was not mistaken, saying that if that particular kind of stuff--describing it with what usually began with a “d” (_laughter_)--was to be continued he wished his subscription to be stopped. The other letter was from an American, saying that if the writer of “Sartor Resartus” in _Fraser’s Magazine_ had written anything else he wished it all to be sent to him. (_Laughter._) The second writer was a man he knew well--Ralph Waldo Emerson. (_Cheers._) He remembered being very much struck many years ago with something which Thackeray said to him. It was that Carlyle was his master. That was said nearly thirty years ago. The other day he took up a number of the _Nineteenth Century_, and in an article by Mr. Ruskin he observed that he said Carlyle was his master. This coincidence, the difference between Thackeray and Ruskin being remembered, only showed, he thought, the universality of Carlyle’s influence. (_Cheers._) He meant to say that Carlyle approached different men on different sides, which was one of the strongest marks that could be mentioned of genius. Carlyle had found an approach to their intellects and to their hearts, to the intellects and hearts of a great variety of men of different nations. He had introduced a new style--a peculiarly English style--of looking at things, quite as much as Sir Walter Scott introduced a new style of novel-writing. Sir Walter Scott, he considered, was the greatest story-teller of the age. (_Cheers._) Carlyle had the surprising gift of expressing poetic thought in prose. (_Cheers._) It was particularly their gratitude to him on the moral and human side that they would feel in drinking, not only with enthusiasm, but with a sort of reverence, the health of Mr. Carlyle.

The toast was received with much enthusiasm. Other toasts followed.

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