impregnable: however, you see all the mad increase of entanglement
I have got to strive with, and will pity me in it. Bodily
exhaustion (and "Diana in the shape of bile")* I will at least
try to exclude from the controversy. By God's blessing, perhaps
the Book shall yet be written; but I find it will not do,
by sheer direct force; only by gentler side-methods. I have
much else to write too: I feel often as if with one year of
health and peace I could write something considerable;--the image
of which sails dim and great through my head. Which year of
health and peace, God, if He see meet, will give me yet; or
withhold from me, as shall be for the best.

---------
* This allusion to Diana as an obstruction was a favorite one
with Carlyle. "Sir Hudibras, according to Butler, was about to do
a dreadful homicide,--an all-important catastrophe,--and had
drawn his pistol with that full intent, and would decidedly have
done it, had not, says Butler, 'Diana in the shape of rust'
imperatively intervened. A miracle she has occasionally wrought
upon me in other shapes." So wrote Carlyle in a letter in 1874.
---------

I have dwelt and swum now for about a year in this World-Maelstrom
of London; with much pain, which however has given me many
thoughts, more than a counterbalance for that. Hitherto there
is no outlook, but confusion, darkness, innumerable things
against which a man must "set his face like a flint." Madness
rules the world, as it has generally done: one cannot,
unhappily, without loss, say to it, Rule then; and yet must say
it.--However, in two months more I expect my good Brother from