A high-soaring, clear, enthusiast soul; in
whose speech there is much of all that one wants to find in
speech. A sharp, subtle intellect too; and less of that
shoreless Asiatic dreaminess than I have sometimes met with in
her writings. We liked one another very well, I think, and the
Springs too were favorites. But, on the whole, it could not be
concealed, least of all from the sharp female intellect, that
this Carlyle was a dreadfully heterodox, not to say a dreadfully
savage fellow, at heart; believing no syllable of all that
Gospel of Fraternity, Benevolence, and _new_ Heaven-on-Earth,
preached forth by all manner of "advanced" creatures, from George
Sand to Elihu Burritt, in these days; that in fact the said
Carlyle not only disbelieved all that, but treated it as
poisonous cant,--_sweetness_ of sugar-of-lead,--a detestable
_phosphorescence_ from the dead body of a Christianity, that
would not admit itself to be dead, and lie buried with all its
unspeakable putrescences, as a venerable dead one ought!--Surely
detestable enough.
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