United States or Equatorial Guinea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In 1826 occurred what Saintsbury calls the most important event in the life of Carlyle, his marriage with Jane Welsh, a young woman who traced her ancestry back to John Knox, the rugged Scotch reformer. Jane was a keen, active, high-strung, sensitive soul. There has arisen a formidable mass of literature discussing the relationship between Thomas and Jane. Were they happy or were they miserable?
Who knows what the private life of Shakspeare and Goethe may have been, but who would part with the writings they have left us? How soon the personal peculiarities of Coleridge and Carlyle will be forgotten, yet how permanent and healthy their utterances! It is truth, rather than man, that lives and conquers and triumphs. Man is nothing, except as the instrument of almighty power.
Before I enter upon it, you will give me your word, Ball, that my communication shall be held sacred, in the event of your not consenting to pursue it further." "Certainly I will. What business is it? Some that offends the delicacy of the Carlyle office?" he added, with a laugh. "A would-be client whom you turn over to me in your exclusiveness?" "It is a client for whom I cannot act.
But all nations are in the hands of God, who is above all second causes. And I know of no modern movement to which the words of Carlyle, when he was an optimist, when he wrote the most original and profound of his works, the "Sartor Resartus," apply with more force: "When the Phoenix is fanning her funeral pyre, will there not be sparks flying?
Emerson describes his mode of life in these years in a letter to Carlyle, dated May 10, 1838. "I occupy, or improve, as we Yankees say, two acres only of God's earth; on which is my house, my kitchen-garden, my orchard of thirty young trees, my empty barn. My house is now a very good one for comfort, and abounding in room.
Your humming birds may sip the sweet they need From every flower, and why not humming poets? Raymond makes Dante reply, The poets are not lesser men, but greater, And so should find unworthy of themselves A word, a deed, that makes them seem less worthy. Owing to the growth of specialization in modern life, this argument, despite Carlyle, has not attained much popularity.
Carlyle is a notable member of this class, that it is impossible not to be offended, when listening to their astounding falsehoods. But it is the British press that has done most to array Americans against England.
"If she could," said Mr. Carlyle, "she would be acting against human nature. There is one phase of the question which you may possibly not have glanced at, justice. You speak of delivering your son up to the law; has it ever struck you that you would be delivering up at the same time your wife's life?" "Stuff!" said the justice.
My Lady Isabel made no response to this. She took a seat and watched William through her glasses. His breathing was more labored than usual. "That idiot, Sarah, says to me to-day, says she, 'Which of his two grandpapas will they bury him by, old Mr. Carlyle or Lord Mount Severn? 'Don't be a calf! I answered her.
Carlyle's Frederick, vi. 363. There is no passage which Mr. Carlyle so often quotes as the sublime We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. If the ever present impression of this awful, most moving, yet most soothing thought, be a law of spiritual breadth and height, there is still a peril in it.
Word Of The Day