108 RIVERBY 



in Grecian times; he seemed out of place among 

 human beings." 



Of Carlyle, too, she has an independent opinion. 

 "It is a mystery to me why men so universally ad- 

 mire Carlyle ; women do not, or, if there is occasion- 

 ally one who does, she does not like him. A wo- 

 man's first thought about him would be, * I pity his 

 wife ! ' Do you remember what he said in answer 

 to Mrs. Welsh's proposal to come and live with 

 them and help support them? He said they could 

 only live pleasantly together on the condition that 

 she looked up to him, not he to her. Here is what 

 he says : * Now, think, Liebchen, whether your 

 mother will consent to forget her riches and our 

 poverty, and uncertain, more probably scanty, in- 

 come, and consent in the spirit of Christian meek- 

 ness to make me her guardian and director, and be 

 a second wife to her daughter's husband?' Now, 

 isn't that insufferable conceit for you? To expect 

 that a woman old enough to be his mother would 

 lay aside her self-respect and individuality to accept 

 him, a comparatively young and inexperienced man, 

 as her master? The cheekiness of it! Here you 

 have the key-note of his character, — * great I and 

 little u.' 



" I have tried faithfully to like him, for it seemed 

 as if the fault must be in me because I did not; I 

 have labored wearily through nearly all his works, 

 stumbling over his superlatives (why, he is an ad- 

 jective factory; his pages look like the alphabet 

 struck by a cyclone. You call it picturesqueness ; 



