mirror had been broken and the image irrevocably

gone.

Miserable! (he enters in his notebook on the 10th of April). I can in no way get on with this wretched work of mine. For the last fortnight, moreover, there seems to have been a kind of conspiracy of people to ask us out, from every one of which expeditions, were it only to 'tea and no party,' I return lamed for the next day. My sight, inward and even outward, is all as if bedimmed. I grow desperate, but that profits not. Mrs. Somerville's rout the other night, from which I whisked out in about an hour! Mad as Bedlam is that whole matter!

There was no hope now of the promised summer holiday when John Carlyle was to come home from Italy, and the French Revolution' was to have been finished, and the brothers to have gone to Scotland together and settled their future plans in family council. Holidays were not now to be thought of, at least till the loss was made good. Then, as always when in real trouble, Carlyle faced his difficulties like a man.

To John Carlyle.

Chelsea: April 30.

I assure you my health is not bad nor worsening. I am yellow, indeed, and thin, and feel that a rest will be very welcome and beneficial. Nevertheless, I repeat, my health, though changed, is not worse than it was. I can walk further than I used to do. My spirits, if never high, are in general quiet. I have more and more a kind of hope I shall get well again before my life ends. With health and peace for one year, it seems to me often as if I could write a better book than any there has been in this country for generations.

If it be God's ordering, I shall get well. If not, I hope I shall work on indomitably as I am. Beautiful is that of brave

POVERTY AND CONFIDENCE.

35

old Voss, and often comes in my mind: 'As the earth, now in azure sunshine seen of all the stars, now in dark tempests hidden, holds on her journey round the sun.' Good also is this that you give me: Lass es um Dich wettern. I really try to do so, and succeed. . . . Mill and I settled: he pleaded for 2001. or some intermediate sum. But I found we must stick by the rigorous calculation, and I took 100l. Since then I have seen almost less of Mill than before, nor am I sorry at it, till this work be done. There is an express agreement we are not to mention it till then. . . . I believe I might have plenty of work in his 'London Review' for a time, but pay shall not tempt me from the other duty. We shall be provided for one way or the other, independently of the devil. Indeed, it often strikes me as strange what an unspeakable composure I have got into about economics and money. It seems to me, I should not mind a jot if hard had come to hard, and they had rouped me out of house and hold, and the very shirt off my back. I should say, 'Be it so; our course lies elsewhither then.' Forward, my boy! let us go with God, towards what God has chosen us for. We have struggled on hitherto without taking the devil into partnership. The time that remains is short; the eternity is long. My little Heldinn is ready to share any fortune with me. We will fear nothing but falling into the hands of the destroyer.

The household at Chelsea was never closer drawn together than in these times of trial. Mrs. Carlyle adds her usual postscript.

Dearest John,-Your letter not only raised our spirits at the time, but has kept them raised ever since. Its good influence is traceable in the diminished yellow of my husband's face, and the accelerated speed of his writing. Bless you for it, and for the kind feelings which make you a brother well worth having a man well worth loving. Surely we shall not quarrel any more after having ascertained in absence how well we like one another. Alas! surely we shall; for one of us at least is only a plain human creature,' liable to quarrel

and do everything that is unwise. But we will do it as little as possible, and be good friends all the while at heart. The book is going to be a good book in spite of bad fortune, and what is lost is by no means to be looked on as wasted. What he faithfully did in it, and also what he magnanimously endured, remains for him and us, not to be annihilated. How we shall enjoy our visit to Scotland when the volume is redone! Shall we resume Ariosto where we left him? And the battledores are here, and more suitable ceilings. Much is more suitable. Heaven send you safe!

Carlyle was brave; his Heldinn cheering him with word and look, his brother strong upon his own feet and heartily affectionate. But he needed all that affection could do for him. The accelerated speed' slackened to slow, and then to no motion at all. He sat daily at his desk, but his imagination would not work. Early in May, for the days passed heavily, and he lost the count of them, he notes that at no period of his life had he ever felt more disconsolate, beaten down, and powerless than then;' as if it were simply impossible that his weariest and miserablest of tasks should ever be accomplished.' A man can rewrite what he has known; but he cannot rewrite what he has felt. Emotion forcibly recalled is artificial, and, unless spontaneous, is hateful. He laboured on with the feeling of a man swimming in a rarer and rarer element.' At length there was no element at all. My will,' he said, 'is not conquered, but my vacuum of element to swim in seems complete.' He locked up his papers, drove the subject out of his mind, and sat for a fortnight reading novels, English, French, German-anything that came to hand. In this determination,' he thought, there might be instruction for him.' It was the first of the kind that he had ever

BLANK PROSPECTS.

deliberately formed.

37

He would keep up his heart. He would be idle, he would rest. He would try, if the word was not a mockery, to enjoy himself.

In this suspended condition he wrote several letters, one particularly to his mother, to relieve her anxieties about him.

To Margaret Carlyle, Scotsbrig.

Chelsea: May 12, 1835.

You will learn without regret that I am idling for these last two days. My poor work, the dreariest I ever undertook, was getting more and more untoward on me. I began to feel that toil and effort not only did not perceptibly advance it, but was even, by disheartening and disgusting me, retarding it. . . . A man must not only be able to work, but to give over working. I have many times stood doggedly to work, but this is the first time I ever deliberately laid it down without finishing it. . . . It has given me very great trouble, this poor book; and Providence, in the shape of human mismanagement, sent me the severest check of all. However, I still trust to get it written sufficiently, and if thou even canst write it (as I have said to myself in late days), why then be content with that too. God's creation will get along exactly as it should do without the writing of it.

There are other proposals hovering about me, but not worth speaking of yet. The literary world' here is a thing which I have had no other course left me but to defy in the name of God; man's imagination can fancy few things madder; but me (if God will) it shall not madden; take a knapping hammer first.

Everything is confused here with the everlasting jabber of politics, in which I struggle altogether to hold my peace. The Radicals have made an enormous advance by the little Tory interregnum; it is not unlikely the Tories will try it one other time. They would even fight if they had anybody to fight for them. Meanwhile these poor Melbourne people will be obliged to walk on at a quicker pace than formerly (considerably against their will, I

believe), with the Radical bayonets pricking them behind. And so, whether the Tories stay out, or whether they try to come in again, it will be all for the advance of Radicalism, which means revolt against innumerable things, and (as I construe it) dissolution and confusion at no great distance, and a darkness which no man can see through. Everybody, Radical and other, tells me that the condition of the poor people-is-improving. My astonishment was great at first, but I now look for nothing else than this improving daily.' 'Well, gentlemen,' I answered once, 'the poor, I think, will get up some day, and tell you how improved their condition is!' It seems to me the vainest jangling, this of the Peels and Russells, that ever the peaceful air was beaten into dispeace by. But we are used to it from of old. Leave it alone. Permit it while God permits it, and so for work and hope elsewhither.

Another effect of Carlyle's enforced period of idleness was that he saw more of his friends, and of one especially, whose interest in himself had first amused and then attracted him. John Sterling, young, eager, enthusiastic, had been caught by the Radical epidemic on the spiritual side. Hating lies as much as Carlyle hated them, and plunging like a high-bred colt under the conventional harness of a clergyman, he believed, nevertheless, as many others then believed, that the Christian religion would again become the instrument of a great spiritual renovation. While the Tractarians were reviving mediavalism at Oxford, Sterling, Maurice, Julius Hare, and a circle of Cambridge liberals were looking to Luther, and through Luther to Neander and Schleiermacher, to bring revelation' into harmony with intellect, and restore its ascendency as a guide into a new era. Coleridge was the high priest of this new prospect for humanity. It was a beautiful hope, though not destined to be realised. Sterling,