Here, in his house, we
breakfast about nine, and Carlyle is very prone, his wife says,
to sleep till ten or eleven, if he has no company. An immense
talker, and altogether as extraordinary in that as in his
writing; I think, even more so; you will never discover his
real vigor and range, or how much more he might do than he has
ever done, without seeing him. My few hours discourse with him,
long ago, in Scotland, gave me not enough knowledge of him; and
I have now at last been taken by surprise by him."
"C. and his wife live on beautiful terms. Their ways are very
engaging, and, in her bookcase, all his books are inscribed to her,
as they came from year to year, each with some significant lines."
"I had a good talk with C. last night. He says over and over,
for months, for years, the same thing. Yet his guiding genius is
his moral sense, his perception of the sole importance of truth
and justice; and he, too, says that there is properly no
religion in England. He is quite contemptuous about _'Kunst,'_
also, in Germans, or English, or Americans;* and has a huge
respect for the Duke of Wellington, as the only Englishman, or
the only one in the Aristocracy, who will have nothing to do with
any manner of lie.
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