I had, afterward, some talk with Mrs. C., whom hitherto I had only seen, for who can speak while her husband is there?  I like her very much;—­she is full of grace, sweetness, and talent.  Her eyes are sad and charming. * * *

After this, they went to stay at Lord Ashburton’s, and I only saw them once more, when they came to pass an evening with us.  Unluckily, Mazzini was with us, whose society, when he was there alone, I enjoyed more than any.  He is a beauteous and pure music; also, he is a dear friend of Mrs. C.; but his being there gave the conversation a turn to “progress” and ideal subjects, and C. was fluent in invectives on all our “rose-water imbecilities.”  We all felt distant from him, and Mazzini, after some vain efforts to remonstrate, became very sad.  Mrs. C. said to me, “These are but opinions to Carlyle; but to Mazzini, who has given his all, and helped bring his friends to the scaffold, in pursuit of such subjects, it is a matter of life and death.”

All Carlyle’s talk, that evening, was a defence of mere force,—­success the test of right;—­if people would not behave well, put collars round their necks;—­find a hero, and let them be his slaves, &c.  It was very Titanic, and anti-celestial.  I wish the last evening had been more melodious.  However, I bid Carlyle farewell with feelings of the warmest friendship and admiration.  We cannot feel otherwise to a great and noble nature, whether it harmonize with our own or not.  I never appreciated the work he has done for his age till I saw England.  I could not.  You must stand in the shadow of that mountain of shams, to know how hard it is to cast light across it.

Honor to Carlyle! Hoch! Although in the wine with which we drink this health, I, for one, must mingle the despised “rose-water.”

And now, having to your eye shown the defects of my own mind, in the sketch of another, I will pass on more lowly,—­more willing to be imperfect,—­since Fate permits such noble creatures, after all, to be only this or that.  It is much if one is not only a crow or magpie;—­Carlyle is only a lion.  Some time we may, all in full, be intelligent and humanly fair.

CARLYLE, AGAIN.

Paris, Dec, 1846.—­Accustomed to the infinite wit and exuberant richness of his writings, his talk is still an amazement and a splendor scarcely to be faced with steady eyes.  He does not converse;—­only harangues.  It is the usual misfortune of such marked men,—­happily not one invariable or inevitable,—­that they cannot allow other minds room to breathe, and show themselves in their atmosphere, and thus miss the refreshment and instruction which the greatest never cease to need from the experience of the humblest.  Carlyle allows no one a chance, but bears down all opposition, not only by his wit and onset of words, resistless in their sharpness as so many bayonets, but by actual physical superiority,—­raising