LONDON. 77 



give up your fiddle-faddle of geology and zoology, and 

 turn to the occult sciences ? " The historian, then 

 Lord Mahon, seemed shocked at such a speech to 

 me, and his charming wife much amused. 



The last man whom I will mention is Carlyle, seen 

 by me several times at my brother's house, and two or 

 three times at my own house. His talk was very 

 racy and interesting, just like his writings, but he 

 sometimes went on too long on the same subject. I 

 remember a funny dinner at my brother's, where, 

 amongst a few others, were Babbage and Lyell, both 

 ,of whom liked to talk. Carlyle, however, silenced 

 every one by haranguing during the whole dinner on 

 the advantages of silence. After dinner Babbage, in 

 his grimmest manner, thanked Carlyle for his very 

 interesting lecture on silence. 



Carlyle sneered at almost every one : one day in my 

 house he called Crete's ' History' "a fetid quagmire, 

 with nothing spiritual about it." I always thought, 

 until his ' Reminiscences ' appeared, that his sneers 

 were partly jokes, but this now seems rather doubtful. 

 His expression was that of a depressed, almost despon- 

 dent yet benevolent, man ; and it is notorious how 

 heartily he laughed. I believe that his benevolence 

 was real, though stained by not a little jealousy. No 

 one can doubt about his extraordinary power of draw- 

 ing pictures of things and men far more vivid, as 

 it appears to me, than any drawn by Macaulay. 

 Whether his pictures of men were true ones is another 

 question. 



He has been all-powerful in impressing some grand 



