addresses at his house, and would dine at other places than he had
announced.

In 1866 Jane Carlyle suddenly died; and somehow, then, the
conscience of Thomas Carlyle became convinced that he had wronged
the woman whom he had really loved. His last fifteen years were
spent in wretchedness and despair. He felt that he had committed
the unpardonable sin. He recalled with anguish every moment of
their early life at Craigenputtock--how she had toiled for him,
and waited upon him, and made herself a slave; and how, later, she
had given herself up entirely to him, while he had thoughtlessly
received the sacrifice, and trampled on it as on a bed of flowers.

Of course, in all this he was intensely morbid, and the diary
which he wrote was no more sane and wholesome than the screamings
with which his wife had horrified her friends. But when he had
grown to be a very old man, he came to feel that this was all a
sort of penance, and that the selfishness of his past must be
expiated in the future. Therefore, he gave his diary to his
friend, the historian, Froude, and urged him to publish the
letters and memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle. Mr. Froude, with an
eye to the reading world, readily did so, furnishing them with
abundant footnotes, which made Carlyle appear to the world as
more or less of a monster.

First, there was set forth the almost continual unhappiness of the
pair. In the second place, by hint, by innuendo, and sometimes by
explicit statement, there were given reasons to show why Carlyle
made his wife unhappy. Of course, his gnawing dyspepsia, which she
strove with all her might to drive away, was one of the first and