the heart of the mystery, be it of himself, as in _Sartor_; of Germany,
as in his Goethes and Richters; the state of England, as in _Chartism_
and _Past and Present;_ of _Cromwell_ or of _Friedrich,_ he faced all
obstacles and overthrew them. Dauntless and ruthless, he allowed nothing
to divert or to mar his designs, least of all domestic cares or even
duties. "Selfish he was,"--I again quote from his biographer,--"if it
be selfish to be ready to sacrifice every person dependent on him as
completely as he sacrificed himself." What such a man wanted was a
housekeeper and a nurse, not a wife, and when we consider that he had
chosen for the latter companionship a woman almost as ambitious as
himself, whose conversation was only less brilliant than his own, of
delicate health and dainty ways, loyal to death, but, according to Mr.
Froude, in some respects "as hard as flint," with "dangerous sparks of
fire," whose quick temper found vent in sarcasms that blistered and words
like swords, who could declare during the time of the engagement, to
which in spite of warnings manifold she clung, "I will not marry to live
on less than my natural and artificial wants"; who, ridiculing his accent
to his face and before his friends, could write, "apply your talents to
gild over the inequality of our births"; and who found herself obliged
to live sixteen miles from the nearest neighbour, to milk a cow, scour
floors and mend shoes--when we consider all this we are constrained to
admit that the 17th October 1826 was a _dies nefastus,_ nor wonder that
thirty years later Mrs. Carlyle wrote, "I married for ambition, Carlyle
has exceeded all that my wildest hopes ever imagined of him, and I am
miserable,"--and to a young friend, "My dear, whatever you do, never
marry a man of genius."

Carlyle's own references to the life at Craigenputtock are marked by all
his aggravating inconsistency. "How happy we shall be in this Craig o'
Putta," he writes to his wife from Scotsbrig, April 17th 1827; and later