Disraelian Conservatives and Gladstonian Liberals by what
Carlyle himself called abysmal chasms and immeasurabilities.
Carlyle had been concerned throughout his life with problems
of social action and the means of creating a harmonious
community; and yet he had persistently avoided linking himself
with any political group or party. That this isolated figure
should have succeeded the leader of the Liberal Party, and
defeated so decisively the leader of the Conservatives, was a
remarkable tribute to the vague but widespread feeling of his
importance in Victorian society. His popularity was recent.
When, eleven years earlier, some students had nominated
Carlyle for the position of Rector of Glasgow University, he
had been vilified in the press, the benches of the room in
which his supporters met had been broken, and he had at last
withdrawn his candidature.

Among all those involved and interested in the election
the person apparently least affected was Carlyle himself. In
the previous year he had refused to accept the nomination
against Gladstone on the ground that he was still occupied
with his book about Frederick the Great. Now, after more than
thirteen years' labour, that book was finished: but still, as he
told the student who came to see him, there were difficulties.
He was nearly seventy years old, and suffering as always
from what he called dyspepsia -- "weak as a sparrow", he told
his brother Dr. John Carlyle, "liver and nerves deeply wrong".
And, most important, there was the customary installation
speech which, Carlyle declared, he positively could not
manage. With gallant rashness the young student said that
they would dispense with the speech; and on this understand-
ing Carlyle accepted the nomination.

It became plain after the election, none the less, that an
address of some kind must be delivered; and Mrs. Carlyle
confidently assured friends that it would be forthcoming in
good time, while Carlyle himself said that the whole affair
was a bore which must be endured patiently, since certain
friends had been kind enough to take trouble and interest in it.
He found himself unable to adhere to the usual practice of
writing a speech in advance; and an additional uncertainty
about whether the speech would actually be delivered was thus
added to the normal hazards of travelling, which assumed
always a monstrous aspect in Carlyle's eyes. To alleviate as
much as possible the agonies he must endure Carlyle arranged

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