Carlyle’s friendship for one of the most brilliant and cultivated women of England, which the breath of scandal never for a moment assailed, was reasonable and natural, and was a great comfort to him.  He persisted in enjoying it, knowing that his wife disliked it.  In this matter, which was a cloud upon his married life, and saddened the family hearth for years, Mrs. Carlyle was doubtless exacting and unreasonable; though some men would have yielded the point for the sake of a faithful wife,—­or even for peace.  There are those who think that Carlyle was selfish in keeping up an intercourse which was hateful to his wife; but the Ashburtons were the best friends that Carlyle ever had, after he became famous,—­and in their various country seats he enjoyed a hospitality rarely extended to poor literary men.  There he met in enjoyable and helpful intercourse, when he could not have seen them in his own house, some of the most distinguished men of the day,—­men of rank and influence as well as those of literary fame.

Until this intimacy with the Ashburtons, no domestic disturbances of note had taken place in the Carlyle household.  The wife may occasionally have been sad and lonely when her husband was preoccupied with his studies; but this she ought to have anticipated in marrying a literary man whose only support was from his pen.  Carlyle, too, was an inveterate smoker, and she detested tobacco, so that he did not spend as much time in the parlor as he did in his library, where he could smoke to his heart’s content.  On the whole, however, their letters show genuine mutual affection, and as much connubial happiness as is common to most men and women, with far more of intimate intellectual and spiritual congeniality.  Carlyle, certainly, in all his letters, ever speaks of his wife with admiration and gratitude.  He regarded her as not only the most talented woman that he had ever known, but as the one without whom he was miserable.  They were the best of comrades and companions from first to last, when at home together.

For a considerable period after the publication of the Life of Cromwell, Carlyle was apparently idle.  He wrote for several years nothing of note except his “Latter Day Pamphlets” (1850), and a Life of his friend John Sterling (1851), to whom he was tenderly attached.  It would seem that he was now in easy circumstances, although he retained to the end his economical habits.  He amused himself with travelling, and with frequent visits to distinguished people in the country.  If not a society man, he was much sought; he dined often at the tables of the great, and personally knew almost every man of note in London.  He sturdily took his place among distinguished men,—­the intellectual peer of the greatest.  He often met Macaulay, but was not intimate with him.  I doubt if they even exchanged visits.  The reason for this may have been that they were not congenial to each other in anything, and that the social position of Macaulay was immeasurably higher than Carlyle’s.  It would be hard to say which was the greater man.