"I found at Liverpool, after a couple of days, a letter which had
been seeking me, from Carlyle, addressed to 'R.W.E. on the
instant when he lands in England,' conveying the heartiest
welcome and urgent invitation to house and hearth. And finding
that I should not be wanted for a week in the Lecture-rooms I
came down to London on Monday, and, at ten at night, the door was
opened by Jane Carlyle, and the man himself was behind her with a
lamp in the hall. They were very little changed from their old
selves of fourteen years ago (in August), when I left them at
Craigenputtock. 'Well,' said Carlyle, 'here we are shoveled
together again.' The floodgates of his talk are quickly opened,
and the river is a plentiful stream. We had a wide talk that
night until nearly one o'clock, and at breakfast next morning
again. At noon or later we walked forth to Hyde Park and the
Palaces, about two miles from here, to the National Gallery, and
to the Strand, Carlyle melting all Westminster and London into
his talk and laughter, as he goes. Here, in his house, we
breakfast about nine, and Carlyle is very prone, his wife says,
to sleep till ten or eleven, if he has no company. An immense
talker, and altogether as extraordinary in that as in his
writing; I think, even more so; you will never discover his
real vigor and range, or how much more he might do than he has
ever done, without seeing him. My few hours discourse with him,
long ago, in Scotland, gave me not enough knowledge of him; and
I have now at last been taken by surprise by him."
"C. and his wife live on beautiful terms. Their ways are very
engaging, and, in her bookcase, all his books are inscribed to her,
as they came from year to year, each with some significant lines."
"I had a good talk with C. last night. He says over and over,
for months, for years, the same thing. Yet his guiding genius is
his moral sense, his perception of the sole importance of truth
and justice; and he, too, says that there is properly no
religion in England. He is quite contemptuous about _'Kunst,'_
also, in Germans, or English, or Americans;* and has a huge
respect for the Duke of Wellington, as the only Englishman, or
the only one in the Aristocracy, who will have nothing to do with
any manner of lie."
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* See _English Traits,_ Ch. XVI.; and _Life of Sterling,_ Part
II. Ch. VII. "Among the windy gospels addressed to our poor
century there are few louder than this of Art."
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