Page:Daughters of Genius.djvu/180

 XIII. THE WIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. • I " ON'T marry a man of genius," Mrs. Carlyle used I J to say, in moments of depression, to her intimate friends. Who would like to be judged by the words that escape when the burthens of life press too heavily, or when morbid conditions distort the view ? Carlyle inherited from a line of laborious ancestors the frame and constitution of a bricklayer, with the peasant instinct of mastership over the female. A little Latin, Greek, and German do not radically change a man's nature. The old saying, that it takes three generations to make a gentleman, is not destitute of truth, and the process did not begin in Thomas Carlyle till he was already too old to take to it kindly. The true moral to be deduced from the mass of Carlylian material with which we have been recently favored, is: Destroy your letters, or else have them edited by a person who can discriminate between words that express an exceptional and transitory feeling, and those which reveal the state of mind which is habitual and characteristic. Jeannie Welsh, at all periods of her life, was a cheery, fascinating creature. The very earliest incidents related of her exhibit to us a little person of will, opinion, and talent. She was quick at her lessons, a capital mimic, and possessed by a wide and intelligent curiosity which it was not always easy to satisfy. The usual girl's educa- tion was not enough for her : modern languages, music, and drawing were well in their way ; but she aspired to (172)