Trade and shipping, and clubs and culture, and prestige, and guns,
and a fine select class of gentry and aristocracy, with every
modern improvement, cannot begin to salve or defend such stupendous
hoggishness.
The way to test how much he has left his country were to consider,
or try to consider, for a moment, the array of British thought, the
resultant _ensemble_ of the last fifty years, as existing to-day, _but
with Carlyle left out_. It would be like an army with no artillery.
The show were still a gay and rich one--Byron, Scott, Tennyson, and
many more--horsemen and rapid infantry, and banners flying--but the
last heavy roar so dear to the ear of the train'd soldier, and that
settles fate and victory, would be lacking.
For the last three years we in America have had transmitted glimpses
of a thin-bodied, lonesome, wifeless, childless, very old man, lying
on a sofa, kept out of bed by indomitable will, but, of late, never
well enough to take the open air. I have noted this news from time to
time in brief descriptions in the papers. A week ago I read such an
item just before I started out for my customary evening stroll between
eight and nine. In the fine cold night, unusually clear, (Feb. 5,
'81,) as I walk'd some open grounds adjacent, the condition of
Carlyle, and his approaching--perhaps even then actual--death, filled
me with thoughts eluding statement, and curiously blending with the
scene. The planet Venus, an hour high in the west, with all her volume
and lustre recover'd, (she has been shorn and languid for nearly a
year,) including an additional sentiment I never noticed before--not
merely voluptuous, Paphian, steeping, fascinating--now with calm
commanding seriousness and hauteur--the Milo Venus now.
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