742 FINAL JOURNEYS AND WORK. [1883, 
you have turned your opportunities to full account, 
winning no end of gratitude and admiration. Now, 
do take the relaxation and repose which you have so 
completely earned; and take, as you may, great sat- 
isfaction and pride in all you have accomplished. 
At least your many friends will do so. . . 
I did hope to have got to the end of the Conpenie 
with the end of 1882; bnt I shall hardly do more 
than finish the Helenioidee. As I go on, I study all 
Mexican border things, at least these of our North 
American collectors. 
My health is excellent; so I may fairly hope to get 
the North American Composite off my hands and in 
print, barring accidents, and I shall be careful of my 
bones, and other contingencies. . . . 
TO J. D. HOOKER. 
May 1, 1883. 
. I have not read Carlyle’s Life, by Froude, but 
say articles, in which of course the points are 
mostly given. All seem to agree that Froude has 
blackened the memory of Carlyle irrecoverably, or 
rather with rude hand wiped off the whitewash which 
covered the blackness. He was a rude, unkempt soul. 
From the extracts I have seen, I fancy that Mrs. Car- 
lyle’s letters beat Carlyle’s all out for raciness and 
pith. 
I am content with the Romane correspondence as 
R. leaves it, and pleased with Romane’s tone, which 
I will try to tell him 
I think his first reply was a “beating of the air.” 
And for that reason I returned to the charge. His 
second is to the purpose. And he seems to feel that 
mine was to the purpose 
