liver Cromwell will not prosper with me at all. I began
reading about that subject some four months ago. I learn almost nothing
by reading, yet cannot as yet heartily begin to write. Nothing on paper
yet. I know not where to begin.'

At the end of the year Mrs Carlyle wrote: 'Carlyle is reading
voraciously, preparatory to writing a new book. For the rest, he growls
away much in the old style. But one gets to feel a certain indifference
to his growling; if one did not, it would be the worse for one.' A month
or two later, Carlyle writes: 'Think not hardly of me, dear Jeannie. In
the mutual misery we often are in, we do not know how dear we are to one
another. By the help of Heaven, I shall get a little better, and
somewhat of it shall abate. Last night, at dinner, Richard Milnes made
them all laugh with a saying of yours. "When the wife has influenza, it
is _a slight cold_--when the man has it, it is, &c., &c."' Writing to
Sterling he exclaims, 'I shall verily fly to Craigenputtock again before
long. Yet I know what solitude is, and imprisonment among black cattle
and peat bogs. The truth is, we are never right as we are. "Oh, the
devil burn it"! said the Irish drummer flogging his countryman; "there's
no pleasing of you, strike where one will."'

Milnes prevailed on Carlyle, instead of flying to the bleak expanse of
Craigenputtock, to accompany him to his father's house at Fryston, in
Yorkshire, whence he sent a series of affectionate and graphic letters
to Mrs Carlyle. Being so far north, he took a run to Dumfriesshire to
see his mother, who had been slightly ailing. He was back in London,
however, in May, but not improved in mind or body. It was a hot summer,
and the Carlyles went to Scotsbrig, and took a cottage at Newby, close
to Annan. By the end of September, Carlyle was back in Cheyne Row. His
latest hero still troubled him. 'Ought I,' he asks, 'to write now of
Oliver Cromwell?... I cannot yet see clearly.'

Carlyle at one time had a hankering after a Scottish professorship, but
the 'door had been shut in his face,' sometimes contemptuously. He was
now famous, and the young Edinburgh students, having looked into his
lectures on Heroes, began to think that, whatever might be the opinions
of the authorities and patrons, they for their part must consider
lectures such as these a good exchange for what was provided for them. A
'History Chair' was about to be established. A party of them,
represented by a Mr Dunipac