onstitution that she survived her remedies.

Carlyle was soon in the zenith of his fame, and the great men of the day
sat at his feet, figuratively speaking, and would literally have done so
had not his growl been so fierce that it kept them at bay. Of those who
did "beard the lion in his den, the Douglas in his hall," many were
immolated in his diary; and we see them, now that it has been published,
like so many flies with pins stuck through them, fastened to the paper.
Poor Charles Lamb stands there, bloodless, fleshless; but we think
scarcely the less of gentle Elia as we look upon him, but far less of
the cruel perpetrator of the atrocity. Leigh Hunt, too, has a pin quite
through his warm heart; and Stuart Mill, and many others. One wonders
sometimes if Froude himself escaped, or if he were there too, like a
giant bluebottle, desiccated as the rest; and was that the reason why he
did not suppress all the damaging letters and recollections, but
maliciously gave them to the world?

Mrs. Carlyle's pen could be dipped in acid also, as has been proved in
her comments upon the men and women of her time. These, to be sure, are
very brief and fragmentary, and it has been a source of much wonder
that, knowing intimately as she did many of the notable persons of her
time, she has not left behind in any single letter a valuable portrait
or even sketch of any of these great people. What priceless words of
Darwin she might have gathered up, which all the world would have
eagerly read; what characteristic anecdotes she could have told of
Tennyson,--what an insight she might have given into the man behind the
poet; what noble things she must have known of Stuart Mill; what
inimitable _facetiae_ concerning the Hunts; what spirited stories she
could have told of Jeffrey; what a light she could have cast over dark
places in the life of Edward Irving! Why did she not do this, we wonder.
Did the dread of assassination hover over her? For Charles Buller,
Carlyle's friend, had just made his plea for the man who killed his wife
for keeping a diary: "What else could a poor fellow do with a wife who
kept a diary, but murder her?"

We cannot but regret that the sketches were not written. They would have
been immortal; for her power in this line has been unequalled by any one
who has written in these later days. As it is, she has, unconsciously to
herself, left a picture of the greatest of all the men she knew--Carlyle
himself--which can ne