of Carlyle's
nature; and throughout his letters and journal he appears wholly wrapt
up in himself and in his literary projects, without even a passing
allusion to the courageous woman who had shared his lot. Now and again
we alight upon a passage where special mention is made of her efforts,
but these have all a direct or indirect bearing upon _his_ work, _his_
plans, _his_ comforts.[38]

Carlyle never fully realised what his wife had been to him until she was
suddenly snatched from his side. And this was his testimony: 'I say
deliberately, her part in the stern battle, and except myself none
knows how stern, was brighter and braver than my own.' In one of those
terrible moments of self-upbraiding the grief-stricken husband exclaims:
'Blind and deaf that we are; oh, think, if thou yet love anybody living,
wait not till death sweep down the paltry little dust-clouds and idle
dissonances of the moment, and all be at last so mournfully clear and
beautiful, _when it is too late_!'

In a pamphlet quoted by Mrs Ireland we have a pathetic picture of
Carlyle in his lonely old age. A Mr Swinton, an American gentleman on a
visit to this country, went to see the grave of Mrs Carlyle.

In conversation the grave-digger said: 'Mr Carlyle comes here from
London now and then to see this grave. He is a gaunt, shaggy, weird kind
of old man, looking very old the last time he was here.' 'He is
eighty-six now,' said I. 'Ay,' he repeated, 'eighty-six, and comes here
to this grave all the way from London.' And I told him that Carlyle was
a great man, the greatest man of the age in books, and that his name was
known all over the world; but he thought there were other great men
lying near at hand, though I told him their fame did not reach beyond
the graveyard, and brought him back to talk of Carlyle. 'Mr Carlyle
himself,' said the gravedigger softly, 'is to be brought here to be
buried with his wife. Ay, he comes here lonesome and alone,' continued
the gravedigger, 'when he visits the wife's grave. His niece keeps him
company to the gate, but he leaves her there, and she stays there for
him. The last time he was here I got a sight of him, and he was bowed
down under his white hairs, and he took his way up by that ruined wall
of the old cathedral, and round there and in here by the gateway, and he
tottered up here to this spot.' Softly spake the gravedigger, and
paused. Softer still, in the broad dialect of the Lothians, he
proceeded:--"And