Page:Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (IA memoirsofmargare02fullrich).pdf/196

188 hero, and let them be his slaves, &c. It was very Titaniec, and anti-celestial. I wish the last evening had been more melodious. However, I bid Carlyle farewell with feelings of the warmest friendship and admiration. We cannot feel otherwise to a great and noble nature, whether it harmonize with our own or not. I never appreciated the work he has done for his age till I saw England. I could not. You must stand in the shadow of that mountain of shams, to know how hard it is to cast light across it.

Honor to Carlyle! Hoch! Although in the wine with which we drink this health, I, for one, must mingle the despised “rose-water.”

And now, having to your eye shown the defects of my own mind, in the sketch of another, I will pass on more lowly, — more willing to be imperfect, — since Fate permits such noble creatures, after all, to be only this or that. It is much if one is not only a crow or magpie; — Carlyle is only a lion. Some time we may, all in full, be intelligent and humanly fair.

Paris, Dec., 1846. — Accustomed to the infinite wit and exuberant richness of his writings, his talk is still an amazement and a splendor scarcely to be faced with steady eyes. He does not converse; — only harangues. It is the usual misfortune of such marked men, — happily not one invariable or inevitable, — that they cannot allow other minds room to breathe, and show themselves in their atmosphere, and thus miss the refreshment and instruction which the greatest never cease to need from the experience of the humblest. Carlyle allows no one