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For several days no answer at all came from Mrs. Carlyle, and he grew impatient.

What am I to make (he asked) of this continued silence? It surely is not fair. Write to me as briefly as you likebut write. There can be no propriety in punishing me by such feelings as these are. It is like seething a kid in its mother's milk. If I cared less about you, the punishment would be less. It is not fair nor right. What thoughts I have day and night I will not state at all till there come some means of getting belief to my words again. Oh, if you could look into my heart of hearts, I do not think you could be angry with me, or sorry for yourself either! May good angels instead of bad again visit you! May I soon meet you again, for I still think I can be your good angel if you will not too much obstruct me.

On the point of starting on August 14 to join his friends at Carlisle, he wrote again :

No word from you yet; not the scrape of a pen this morning either. It is not right, my poor dear Jeannie! it is not just nor according to fact; and it deeply distresses and disturbs me who had no need of disturbance or distress otherwise, if all were well known to thee. But it is best that I suffer it with little commentary. To thee, also, I will believe it is no luxury. I said to myself last night, while tossing and tumbling amid thousandfold annoyances, outward and inward, 'It is not fair all this-really it is not fair.' I wanted to do none any injury. My one wish and aim was to pass among them without hurting any, doing good to some if I could. My own lot has been but emptiness, and they all cry: See, thou hast taken something of mine!' The jackass brayed, or the horse neighed, or some of the children coughed, and roused me from these unprofitable reflections. Silence is better than most speech in the case. This, however, I will say and repeat: "The annals of insanity contain nothing madder than "jealousy" directed against such a

journey as I have before me to-day.' Believed or not, that is verily a fact. To the deepest bottom of my heart that I can sound, I find far other feelings, far other humours and thoughts at present than belong to 'jealousy' on your part. Alas! alas! I must, on the whole, allow the infernal deities. to go their full swing: but madness shall not conquer, if all my saints can hinder it. Oh, my Jeannie! my own true Jeannie! bravest little life-companion, hitherto, into what courses are we tending? God assist us both, and keep us free of frightful Niagaras and temptations of Satan. I am, indeed, very miserable. My mother asks: No word from Jane yet?' And, in spite of her astonishment, I am obliged to answer: None.'

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It is ludicrous to contrast with all this tempest the fate of the expedition which was the occasion of it. The projected tour with Mr. Baring and Lady Harriet lasted but five days, and was as melancholy as Mrs. Carlyle could have desired. They went from Carlisle to Moffat, sleeping in noisy cabins, in confused whisky inns,' and in the worst of weather. The lady was cross; Mr. Baring only patient and good-humoured. They had designed a visit to Drumlanrig but the Buccleuch household gave notice that they had the hooping-cough,' and were not to be approached; and Beattock, near Moffat, was the furthest point of the journey.

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Beattock (Carlyle reported) was very bad. In blinks of fair weather we did tolerably well; but they were rare. During rain we had to sit in a little room where neither fire in the grate nor the smallest chink of ventilation otherwise could be permitted. One grew half distracted, naturally, in such an element, and prayed for fair weather as the alternative of suicide. The brave Baring's cheerfulness and calmness never failed him for a moment.

GLORIANA.

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They had one fine day, which was given to Moffat and the neighbourhood, and then parted, the Barings to go on to the Highlands, Carlyle to retreat to Scotsbrig again to sleep, and practical sense, and the free use of tobacco,' and to prepare for his trip to Ireland. Mrs. Carlyle was in no spirits for Haddington, and returned alone to her own resting-place in Cheyne Row, after a day or two with Miss Jewsbury at Manchester. So the weighty matter,' which had called up such a storm, was over, and the gale had blown itself out. She, like a sensible woman, crushed down her own dissatisfaction. The intimacy was to go on upon whatever terms Carlyle pleased, and she resigned herself to take a part in it, since there was no reasonable cause to be alleged for cessation or interruption. But the wound fretted inwardly and would not heal. She and her husband had quarrelled often enough before-they had quarrelled and made it up again, for they had both hot tempers and sharp tongues-but there had been at bottom a genuine and hearty confidence in each other, a strong sincere affection, resting on mutual respect and mutual admiration. The feeling remained essentially unbroken, but the fine edge of it had suffered. Small occasions of provocation constantly recurred. Mrs. Carlyle consented to stay with Lady Harriet and submit to her authority as often and as much as she required; the sense of duty acting as perpetual curb to her impatience. But the wound burst out at intervals, embittering Carlyle's life, and saddening a disposition which did not need further clouds upon it. She wrote to him while he was at Scotsbrig about indifferent things in the spirit of the

resolution which she had made, and he, man-like, believed that all was well again.

To Jane Welsh Carlyle.

Scotsbrig: August 26, 1846.

My dear Goody,-I had thy letter yesterday, at last. Many thanks for it, and do not keep me waiting so long again. No news could be welcomer than that you have been recreating and improving your mind by assiduous inspection. of the works and ways of Manchester-most welcome unexpected news. The black spider-webs that take possession of one's fancy, making one poor little heart and soul all one Golgotha and Egyptian darkness, are best of all to be sent about their business-home to the Devil, whose they are— by opening one's eyes to the concrete fact of human life in some such way as that. Oh, my Goody! my own dear little Jeannie! But we will hope all that black business has now got safe into the past, and will not tear up our poor forlorn existence in so sad a way again. God be thanked you are better; and now tell me that you eat a little food at breakfast as well as dinner, and I will compose myself till

we meet.

Total idleness still rules over me here. The brightest still autumn weather, blue skies, windless, with Noah's ark clouds hung over them, plenty of good tobacco, worthless Yankee literature, and many ruminations on the moor or Linn-that is all; the voice of the Devil's caldron singing me into really a kind of waking sleep. In spite of cocks, children, bulls, cuddies, and various interruptions at night, I victoriously snatch some modicum of real sleep for most part, and could certainly improve in health were a continuance of such scenes of quiet permitted me. But it is not. I must soon lift anchor again and go. . . . Jenny and my mother are this day washing with all their might, cleaning up my soiled duds for me.

...

I dare say.

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I lie totally inert here, like a dead dry bone bleaching in the silent sunshine; often enough, my feeling of loneliness, of utter isolation in this universe, is great. Useful, One requires, occasionally, to be somewhat severely taught. Abdallah, the Vizier, used to retire at intervals and contemplate the wooden clogs he had first started with, and found it do him good amid his vanities. Probably there may lie a little more work in me: nay, I think there will and shall. Complaint is not the dialect one should speak in. Courage! . . . I shall like better to fancy you in Chelsea, earthquaking and putting all in order, than tossing and tumbling as you now are. Home, therefore, is the word, and remember one thing, to write a little oftener to me, and as near the old tone as you can come to, before the spider-webs got upon the loom at all. In me is no change, nor was, nor is like to be. Alas! I do not much deserve to be loved by anybody-not much, or at all; but I am very grateful if anybody will take the trouble to do it. God guide us all, for our pathway is sometimes intricate, and our own insight is now and then very bad. But there will come a day when all that will be intelligible again. I should be miserable if I thought there would not.

courage!

Again,

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