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Last Words of Thomas Carlyle, 1882 (ed.
by J.C.A.) Last Words of Thomas
Carlyle, 1892. Rescued Essays (ed.
P. Newberry) 1892.
Historical Sketches of Notable Persons and
Events in the Reign of James I. and Charles I. (ed. A. Carlyle), 1898.
Sir Leslie Stephen's article on Carlyle in the Dictionary of National
Biography gives a list of his occasional writings which have never been
collected or reprinted.
Contents
Book I--Proem
I. Midas.
II. The Sphinx
III. Manchester Insurrection
IV.
Morrison's Pill
V. Aristocracy of Talent
VI. Hero-Worship
Book II--The Ancient Monk
I. Jocelin of Brakelond
II. St. Edmundsbury
III. Landlord Edmund

IV. Abbot Hugo
V. Twelfth Century
VI. Monk Samson
VII.
The Canvassing
VIII. The Election
IX. Abbot Samson
X.
Government
XI. The Abbot's Ways
XII. The Abbot's Troubles


XIII. In Parliament
XIV. Henry of Essex
XV. Practical-Devotional

XVI St. Edmund
XVII The Beginnings
Book III--The Modern Worker
I. Phenomena,
II. Gospel of Mammonism
III. Gospel of
Dilettantism
XV. Happy
V. The English
VI. Two Centuries
VII.
Over-Production
VIII. Unworking Aristocracy
IX. Working
Aristocracy
X. Plugson of Undershot
XI. Labour
XII Reward

XIII. Democracy
XIV Sir Jabesh Windbag
XV. Morrison Again
Book IV--Horoscope
I. Aristocracies
II. Bribery Committee
III. The One Institution
IV
Captains of Industry
V. Permanence
VI. The Landed
VII. The
Gifted
VIII The Didactic
Summary
Book I--Proem
Chapter I
Midas
The condition of England, on which many pamphlets are now in the
course of publication, and many thoughts unpublished are going on in
every reflective head, is justly regarded as one of the most ominous,
and withal one of the strangest, ever seen in this world. England is full
of wealth, of multifarious produce, supply for human want in every
kind; yet England is dying of inanition. With unabated bounty the land
of England blooms and grows; waving with yellow harvests;
thick-studded with
workshops, industrial implements, with fifteen
millions of
workers, understood to be the strongest, the cunningest
and the willingest our Earth ever had; these men are here; the work they
have done, the fruit they have realised is here, abundant, exuberant on
every hand of us: and behold, some baleful fiat as of Enchantment has

gone forth, saying, "Touch it not, ye workers, ye master-workers, ye
master-idlers; none of you can touch it, no man of you shall be the
better for it; this is enchanted fruit!" On the poor workers such fiat falls
first, in its rudest shape; but on the rich masterworkers too it falls;
neither can the rich master-idlers, nor any richest or highest man escape,
but all are like to be brought low with it, and made 'poor' enough, in the
money-sense or a far fataller one.
Of these successful skillful workers some two millions, it is now
counted, sit in Workhouses, Poor-law Prisons; or have 'out-door relief'
flung over the wall to them,--the workhouse Bastille being filled to
bursting, and the strong Poor-law broken asunder by a stronger.* They
sit there, these many months now; their hope of deliverance as yet
small. In workhouses, pleasantly so named, because work cannot be
done in them. Twelve hundred thousand workers in England alone;
their cunning right-hand lamed, lying idle in their sorrowful bosom;
their hopes,
outlooks, share of this fair world, shut in by narrow walls.
They sit there, pent up, as in a kind of horrid enchantment; glad to be
imprisoned and enchanted, that they may not perish starved. The
picturesque Tourist, in a sunny autumn day,
through this bounteous
realm of England, describes the Union Workhouse on his path. 'Passing
by the Workhouse of St. Ives in Huntingdonshire, on a bright day last
autumn,' says the
picturesque Tourist, 'I saw sitting on wooden
benches, in front of their Bastille and within their ringwall and its
railings, some half-hundred or more of these men. Tall robust figures,
young mostly or of middle age; of honest countenance, many of them
thoughtful and even intelligent-looking men. They sat there, near by
one another; but in a kind of torpor, especially in a silence, which was
very striking. In silence: for, alas, what word was to be said? An Earth
all lying round, crying, Come and till me, come and reap me;--yet we
here sit enchanted! In the eyes and brows of these men hung the
gloomiest expression, not of anger, but of grief and shame and
manifold inarticulate distress and weariness; they returned my glance
with a glance that seemed to say, "Do not look at us. We sit enchanted
here, we know not why. The Sun shines and the Earth calls; and, by the
governing Powers and Impotences of this England, we are forbidden to
obey. It is impossible, they tell us!" There was something that reminded

me of Dante's Hell in the look of all this; and I rode swiftly away.

* The Return of Paupers for England and Wales, at Ladyday, 1842, is,
"In-door 221,687, Out-door 1,207,402, Total 1,429,089."-- (Official
Report)

So many hundred thousands sit in workhouses: and other hundred
thousands have not yet got even workhouses; and in thrifty Scotland
itself, in Glasgow or Edinburgh City, in