MRS. C.A.RLYLE'S EARLY LETTERS.*

SEVERAL of these letters were addressed to Eliza Stodart, Mr. Ritchie's great-aunt, when she and Jane Welsh were unmarried ; others were written during Mrs. Carlyle's early

married life ; and nearly four-fifths of the number belong to the years before 1834, the date at which the letters published by Mr. Froude begin.

The editor observes that since the private life .of Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle has been, whether rightly or wrongly, already

so exposed to the general gaze, " it is only fair that important evidence should not be withheld ;" and we think he is right.

No woman ever wrote brighter letters than Mrs. Carlyle, so natural and lifelike are they, so free from the appearance of art. The aspect of her character presented here is almost wholly pleasant. Her strong intelligence, her sense of humour, her enthusiasm and depth of feeling, are all ex- pressed in these unrestrained communications. And the young lady is by no means forgetful of her personal charms, and of the lovers who flitted around her, partly, perhaps, for the sake of the " weel-stocket mailen " at Craigenputtoch. She puts her heart into her words, and affection and con- tempt are expressed with equal warmth. Small sympathy

do some of her numerous wooers gain from Jane Welsh, if we may credit her confessions. One of them she de- scribes as announcing his "nonsensical arrival at the inn in a few nonsensical lines." Anon the lover appears, and relates how he had gone to a party the night before, "where he had been (he told us) for half-an-hour with his arm under his hat, and then he corrected himself, and said with his head under his arm ! It was of very little consequence where his head was, it is not worth much; but the Lord defend me from visitors so equipped, when I come to give parties !" " The imbecile" dressed for dinner in all the pride of two

waistcoats (one of figured velvet, another of sky-blue satin), gossamer-silk stockings, and morocco-leather slippers, and the lady observes that she should not like to pay his tailor's bill ; " Craigenputtoch could not stand it." For another rejected lover there is a feeling of regret and sympathy. She does not like the thought that he is going abroad, and that seas and countries should lie betwixt them : and when the weather is stormy, she writes :—" It is impossible to hear such winds and not to think of him. God grant he may not be drowned ! and that he may return to Scotland alive ! Were he dead, you know, I should forget his faults ; and that, that would be dreadful. Could I ever forget his faults P He might then, indeed, have the glory of having made the proudest heart in Britain break."

After reading Rousseau's Hildise with the passionate

*enthusiasm of a girl of twenty, she is less and less enraptured with her mortal lovers. But in writing of them, her feeling towards Edward Irving was too deep for his name to be men- tioned :—

"No lover will Jane Welsh ever find like St. Preux, no husband like Wolmar (I don't mean to insinuate that I should like both), and to no man will she ever give her heart and pretty hand who bears to these no resemblance. George Rennie ! James Aitken ! Robert MacTurk ! James Baird ! I ! Robby Angus ! 0 Lord, 0 Lord ! where is the St. Preux ? Where is the Wolmar ? Bess, I am in earnest. I shall never marry."

In the same letter she announces that she has just had a letter from Carlyle, whom she compares to St. Preux :—

" He has his talents, his vast and cultivated mind, his vivid • Early Letters of Jane Welsh Carlyle, together with a Fete of Later Years, and Some of Thomas Carlyle,. All hitherto Unpublished. Edited by David G. Ritchie, London: Sonnensehein and Co. imagination, his independence of soul, and his high-souled prin- ciples of honour. But then—. Ah, these buts ! St. Preux never kicked the fire-irons, nor made puddings in his tea-cup. Want of Elegance ! want of Elegance, Rousseau says, is a defect which no woman can overlook."

Miss Welsh, in addition to that passion for knowledge which excited the admiration of Irving, had more feminine attrac-

tions, to which she playfully alludes. " I have got," she writes, " a fine head of hair lately ; altogether I am looking more capti- vating than usual. I pray Venus it may last till I get to town."

And in another letter, after regretting that, between head- aches and visiting, her education is at a standstill, she adds :—

"After all, I am not very blameable on the score of idleness ; it is in vain to think of toiling up the steep of Knowledge with a burden of sickness on one's shoulders, and hardly less difficult for a young person with my attractions to lead the life of a recluse, however much I wish it."

In 1826, Jane Welsh, writing for the last time in her maiden name, says that the idea of marriage is more agreeable to her than ever, the greenest, sunniest spot in all her being.

Two years later, the extraordinary but not ill-mated couple were at Craigenputtoch, whence Mrs. Carlyle writes to Miss Stodart to send her all household necessaries, including 4 lb.

of tea at 5s. 4d. a pound, and 2 lb. at 7s. The solitude, she says, is not so irksome as might be thought. "If we are cut off from good society, we are also delivered from bad ; the roads are less pleasant to walk on than the pavement of Princes Street, but we have horses to ride, and instead of shopping and making calls, I have bread to bake and chickens to hatch. I read and work, and talk with my husband, and never weary." And the following extract shows that in the Craigenputtoch days Mrs. Carlyle had much rest and content- ment of spirit :-

" You would know what I am doing in these moors ? Well, I am feeding poultry (at long intervals, and merely for form's sake), and I am galloping over the country on a bay horse, and baking bread, and improving my mind, and eating, and sleeping, and making, and mending, and, in short, wringing whatever good I can from the ungrateful soil of the world. On the whole, I was never more contented in my life ; one enjoys such freedom and quietude here. Nor have we purchased this at the expense of other accommodations ; for we have a good house to live in, with all the necessaries of life, and even some touch of the superfluities. De you attempt to raise any corn ?' the people ask us. Bless their hearts ! we are planning strawberry-banks, and shrubberies, and beds of roses, with the most perfect assurance that they will grow. As to the corn, it grows to all lengths, without ever consulting the public about the matter. Another question that is asked me, so often as I am abroad, is, how many cows I keep ; which question, to my eternal shame as a housewife, I have never yet been enabled to answer, having never ascertained, up to this moment, whether there are seven cows or eleven. The fact is, I take no delight in cows, and have happily no concern with them. Carlyle and I are not playing farmers here, which were a rash and unnatural attempt. My brother-in-law is the farmer, and fights his own battle, in his own new house, which one of his sisters manages for him" That Mrs. Carlyle found the atmosphere at Craigenputtoch

fresh and wholesome, there are many indications in these letters; and although there was no society, and but.one post-day in the week, her resources were manifold. If she did not count the cows, she baked bread and made cheese, and boasts of pro. ducing a well-fitting gown and a rather stylish bonnet. " 0 my dear cousin," she exclaims, " what a fine thing is a fine natural taste, especially for the wife of an author, at a time when the booksellers' trade is so low !" Then in the course of the day's work, or when it was over, there were talks with Carlyle that could not be interrupted. " On the crumbs that fall from his table," she writes, " I might positively set up a respectable little bread-shop of my own, if I were not too indolent to gather them up into a whole."

In 1834, Scotland was deserted for Chelsea, and the new home is described by Mrs. Carlyle in cheerful language to the "only right female friend" she ever had in the world, and one to whom she could talk nonsense without misgiving, "a pretty good test of friendship." She found it good for her to live in London, and to learn to love people ; for " a long sojourn in the wilder- ness" had developed znisanthropical tendencies. So she relates how, with much effort, she has got up something like a Mend- ship with several men and women, and has " even executed two or three innocent flirtations with good effect." " They call me `sweet' and gentle,' and some of the men go the length of calling me endearing ;' and I laugh in my sleeve, and think, 0 Lord! if you but knew what a brimstone of a creature I am

behind all this amiability." And then she adds, in a very different but equally characteristic tone :-

" But my sentiment for you, dearest, is not ' got up,' but grown up with me out of my sunny childhood, and wears always a sunny, healthful look, that these half-literary, half-sentimental intimacies contracted after thirty can never match. The fault, however, is not in the people, but in the time. You great fool,' said my Uncle Robert once to me when I was flying into somebody's arms on the North Bridge, you will surely learn some time or other that every- body is not in such ecstasies to see you as you are in to see every-

body.' My judicious Uncle ! You were there and then a true prophet."

The whole interest of this attractive volume is to be found in Mrs. Carlyle's letters, for her husband's are of small account. It is probably true that a union with Edward Irving would have made Jane Welsh happier, for to him the first and deepest love of her heart was given; but these letters at least give no authority to the opinion of Mr. Fronde, that it would have been better for her, and for Carlyle, if she had persevered in her refusal to marry him.

Mr. Ritchie deserves the thanks of the public for the part that he has taken in the production of this book. To judge, however, from the precise and rather pedantic notes which are intended to explain the letterpress, he would have done better if he had done less. Jane Welsh cannot quote the familiar saying that "the times are changed," &c., without Mr. Ritchie referring us to its Latin origin and to Matthias Borbonius ; and when the young lady writes that " the glory of this world passeth away," the editor supplies the following com- mentary :—" Sic transit gloria mundi ! the beginning of a `sequence' in the Roman Church, and said to have been formerly used at the inauguration of the Popes. (Bohn's Dictionary of Latin Quotations.) But probably I. Corinthians, vii., 31, was in her mind, 'For the fashion of this world passeth away." Even Aristotle is quoted to assist in the elucidation of the easy chit-chat and the open-hearted utterances that will make this volume welcome to all readers.