CARLYLE ' S FLIIST LOVE.
[To THE EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR:1 you allow me to remark that, in your issue of October 9th, your reviewer does not reproduoe with any degree of exactness my discussion of the claims of " Kitty " Kirk- patrick as the "Blumine" original when he states that I allude to, but disregard, Mr. George Strachey's Nineteenth Century article, because apparently it does not agree with my view of the case ! So far from disregarding this article, I consider it directly (by pointing out one serious error in Mr. Strachey's claim) and indirectly (by exact references to Mr. Alexander Carlyle's full discussion of the article)—in some detail—and then, as you say, "dismiss" the claimant with the sentence which you quote in part : "There is not one atom of evidence to show that Carlyle was at any time in love with Bitty Kirkpatrick," &c. Your reviewer attempts to make me deny Carlyle's "fondness for 'Kitty," which can hardly be twisted into a paraphrase of this quotation. I incline the more to think your reviewer unconversant with Mr. Carlyle's discussion (as well as with the details of " Sartor Resartus "), since nowhere in " Sartor" is Blumine "described as the 'many-tinted Aurora.' "—I am, Sir, &o., 3 Bite Soufflot, Paris. B. C. ARCHIBALD.
[Perhaps the best answer to Mr. Archibald's remonstrance is to give the quotation from "Sartor" (chap. 5, "Romance") :--" Such was the element they [Blumine and Tenfelsdrockh] now lived in ; in such a many-tinted, radiant Aurora, and by this fairest of Orient Light-bringers must our Friend be blandished, and the new Apocalypse of Nature unrolled to him. Fairest Blumine!"—ED. Spectator.]
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