middle style, having passed the clarity of his early writings, and
not having yet reached the thunderous, strange-mouthed German
expletives which marred his later work. In the French Revolution
he bursts forth, here and there, into furious Gallic oaths and
Gargantuan epithets; yet this apocalypse of France seems more true
than his hero-worshiping of old Frederick of Prussia, or even of
English Cromwell.

All these days Thomas Carlyle lived a life which was partly one of
seclusion and partly one of pleasure. At all times he and his
dark-haired wife had their own sets, and mingled with their own
friends. Jane had no means of discovering just whether she would
have been happier with Irving; for Irving died while she was still
digging potatoes and complaining of her lot at Craigenputtock.

However this may be, the Carlyles, man and wife, lived an
existence that was full of unhappiness and rancor. Jane Carlyle
became an invalid, and sought to allay her nervous sufferings with
strong tea and tobacco and morphin. When a nervous woman takes to
morphin, it almost always means that she becomes intensely
jealous; and so it was with Jane Carlyle.

A shivering, palpitating, fiercely loyal bit of humanity, she took
it into her head that her husband was infatuated with Lady
Ashburton, or that Lady Ashburton was infatuated with him. She
took to spying on them, and at times, when her nerves were all a
jangle, she would lie back in her armchair and yell with paroxysms
of anger. On the other hand, Carlyle, eager to enjoy the world,
sought relief from his household cares, and sometimes stole away
after a fashion that was hardly guileless. He would leave false