JANE WELSH CARLYLE. JANE (WELSH) CARLYLE, wife of Thomas Carlyle, born at Haddington, Scotland, July 14, 1801; died in London, April 21, 1866. She was the daughter of John Welsh, a physician of eminence, who when he died left his estate to his daughter, then eighteen. She married the famous author of "Sartor Resartus," but their life together was far from happy as may be read in her letters. Jane Carlyle died suddenly. Early in 1866 her husband had been chosen Lord Rector of the University of Edinburgh. He had gone thither to deliver his Inaugural Address, and was to come home in a day or two. On the 21st of April his wife having posted a pleasant note to her husband, went out for a drive in Hyde Park. After an hour or two the coachman, having received no orders for returning, looked into the carriage. Mrs. Carlyle sat there dead, with her hands folded in her lap. "Her Letters," edited by her husband, were published in 1883, the work being given to the world by J. A. Froude. To T. CARLYLE, ESQ., CHELSEA. TROSTON: Monday, Aug. 15, 1842. Dearest,It was the stupidest-looking breakfast this morning without any letters! - the absence of the loaf or coffee-pot would have been less sensibly felt! However, there is no redress against these London Sundays. I went to church yesterday afternoon, according to programme, and saw and heard "strange things, upon my honor." The congregation consisted of some thirty or forty poor people-chiefly adults; who all looked at me with a degree of curiosity rather "strong" for the place. Reginald ascended the pulpit in his white vestment, and, in a loud sonorous, perfectly Church-of-England-like tone, gave out the Psalm, whereupon there arose, at the far end of the moldering church, a shrill clear sound, something between a squeal of agony and the highest tone of a bagpipe! I looked in astonishment, but could discover nothing; the congregation joined in with the invisible thing, which continued to assert its predominance, and it was not till the end of the service that Hesketh informed me that the strange instrument was a "clarionet"! Necessity is the mother of invention. The service went off quite respectably; it is wonderful how little faculty is needed for saying prayers perfectly well! But when we came to the sermon! greater nonsense I have often enough listened to for, in fact, the sermon (Mrs. Buller, with her usual sincerity, informed me before I went) "was none of his;" he had scraped together as many written by other people as would serve him for years, "which was much better for the congregation;" but he delivered it exactly as daft Mr. Hamilton used to read the newspaper, with a noble disdain of everything in the nature of a stop; pausing just when he needed breath, at the end of a sentence, or in the middle of a word, as it happened! In the midst of this extraordinary exhortation an infant screamed out, "Away, mammy! Let's away!" and another bigger child went off in whooping cough! For my part, I was all the while in a state between laughing and crying; nay, doing both alternately. There were two white marble tablets before me, containing one the virtues of a wife and the sorrow of a husband (Capel Loft), the other a beautiful character of a young girl dead of consumption; and both concluded with the "hopes of an immortality through Jesus Christ." And there was an old sword and sword-belt hung on the tomb of another, killed in Spain at the age of twenty-eight; he also was to be raised up through Jesus Christ; and this was the Gospel of Jesus Christ I was hearing — made into something worse than the cawing of rooks. I was glad to get out, for my thoughts rose into my throat at last, as if they would choke me; and I privately vowed never to go there when worship was going on again! We drove as usual in the evening, and also as usual played the game at chess-"decidedly improper," but I could not well refuse. I sat in my own room reading for two hours after I went upstairs; slept indifferently, the heat being extreme, and the cocks indefatigable; and now Mrs. Buller has sent me her revised "Play," begging I will read it, and speak again my candid opinion as to its being fit to be acted. So goodbye, dearest, I shall have a letter to-morrow. Love to Babbie. I wish she had seen the Queen. Affectionately yours, JANE CARLYLE. To T. CARLYLE, ESQ., CHELSEA. TROSTON: Wednesday, Aug. 17, 1842. - Dearest, There will be no news from me at Chelsea this day; it is to be hoped there will not be any great dismay in consequence. The fact is, you must not expect a daily letter: it occasions more trouble in the house than I was at first aware of; nobody goes from here regularly to the Post-office, which is a good two miles off; only, when there are letters to be sent, Mr. and Mrs. Buller take Ixworth in their evening drive and leave them at the post-office themselves. Now, twice over, I have found on getting to Ixworth that but for my letters, there would have been no occasion to go that road, which is an ugly one, while there are beautiful drives in other directions; besides that, they like, as I observe, to show me the county to the best advantage. They write, themselves, hardly any letters; those that come are left by somebody who passes this way from Ixworth early in the morning. Yesterday after breakfast, Mr. Buller said we should go to Ampton in the evening — a beautiful deserted place belonging to Lord Calthorpe "Unless," he added, raising his eyebrows, "you have letters to take to Ixworth." Of course I said my writing was not so urgent that it could not be let alone for a day. And to Ampton we went, where Reginald and I clambered over a high gate, with spikes on the top of it, and enjoyed a stolen march through gardens unsurpassed since the original Eden, and sat in a pavilion with the most Arabian-tale-looking prospect; "the kingdom of the Prince of the Black Islands" it might have been! — and peeped in at the open windows of the old empty house-empty of people, that is for there seemed in it everything mortal could desire for ease with dignity: such quantities of fine bound books in glass bookcases, and easy-chairs, etc., etc.! And this lovely place Lord Calthorpe has taken some disgust to; and has never set foot in it again! Suppose you write and ask him to give it to us! He is nearly mad with Evangelical religion, they say; strange that he does not see the sense of letting somebody have the good of what he cannot enjoy of God's providence himself! "Look at this delicious and deserted place, on the one side, and the two thousand people standing all night before the Provost's door on the other! And yet you believe," says Mrs. Buller, "that it is a good spirit who rules this world." You never heard such strange discourse as we go on with, during the hour or so we are alone before dinner! How she contrives, with such opinions or no opinions, to keep herself so serene and cheerful, I am perplexed to conceive: is it the old story of the "cork going safely over the falls of Niagara, where everything weightier would sink?" I do not think she is so light as she gives herself out for at all events, she is very clever, and very good to me. On our return from Ampton, we found Mr. Loft waiting to tea with us the elder brother of the Aids-to-Self-Development Loft an affectionate, intelligent-looking man, "but terribly off for a language." Though he has been in India, and is up in years, he looks as frightened as a hare. There were also here yesterday the grandees of the district, Mr. and the Lady Agnes Byng one of the Pagets "whom we all know" an advent which produced no inconsiderable emotion in our Radical household! For my part, I made myself scarce; and thereby "missed," Reginald told me, "such an immensity of petty talk the Queen, the Queen, at every word with Lady A.” To T. CARLYLE, ESQ., CHELSEA. TROSTON: Tuesday, Aug. 23, 1842. My dear Husband, - The pen was in my hand to write yesterday; but nothing would have come out of me yesterday except "literature of desperation;" and, aware of this, I thought it better to hold my peace for the next twenty-four hours, till a new night had either habilitated me for remaining awhile longer, or brought me to the desperate resolution of flying home for my life. Last night, Heaven be thanked, went off peaceably; and to-day I am in a state to record my last trial, without danger of becoming too tragical, or alarming you with the prospect of my making an unseemly termination of my visit. (Oh, what pens!) To begin where I left off. On Sunday, after writing to you, I attended the afternoon service! Regy looked so wae when I answered his question "whether I was going?" in the negative, that a weak pity induced me to revise my determination. "It is a nice pew, that of ours," said old Mr. Buller; "it suits me remarkably well, for, being so deep, I am not overlooked; and in virtue of that, I read most part of the Femme de Qualité this morning!" "But don't," he added, "tell Mr. Regy this! Had Theresa been there, I would not have done it, for I like to set a good example!" I also turned the depth of the pew to good account; when the sermon began, I made myself, at the bottom of it, a sort of Persian couch out of the praying-cushions; laid off my bonnet, and stretched myself out very much at my ease. I seemed to have been thus just one drowsy minute when a slight rustling and the words "Now to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," warned me to put on my bonnet, and made me for the first time aware that I had been asleep! For the rest, the music that day ought to have satisfied me; for it seemed to have remodeled itself expressly to suit my taste-Scotch tunes, produced with the nasal discordant emphasis of a Scotch country-congregation, and no clarionet. I noticed in a little square gallery seat, the only one in the church, a portly character, who acts as blacksmith, sitting with a wand, some five feet long, in his hand, which he swayed about majestically as if it had been a scepter! On inquiring of our man-servant what this could possibly mean or symbolize, he informed me it was "to beat the bad children." "And are the children here so bad that they need such a functionary?" "Ah, they will always, them little 'uns, be doing mischief in the church: it's a-wearisome for the poor things, and the rod keeps them in fear!" In the evening, the drive, as always, with this only difference, that on Sunday evenings Mr. Buller only walks the horse, from principle! After this conscientious exercising, the game at chess! My head had ached more or less all day, and I was glad to get to bed, where I was fortunate enough to get to sleep without any violent disturbance. The next day, however, my head was rather worse than better; so that I would fain have "declined from" calling on Lady Agnes; but Mrs. Buller was bent on going to Livermere, and so, as I did not feel up to walking, it was my only chance of getting any fresh air and exercise that day. To Livermere we went, then, before dinner, the dinner being deferred till five o'clock to suit the more fashionable hours of our visitees. "The Pagets" seem to be extremely like other mortals, neither better nor bonnier nor wiser. To do them justice, however, they might, as we found them, have been sitting for a picture of high life doing the amiable and the rural in the country. They had placed a table under the shadow of a beech-tree; and at this sat Mr. Byng studying the "Examiner;" Lady Agnes reading "Oh, nothing at all, only some nonsense that Lord Londonderry has been printing; I cannot think what has tempted him;" and a boy and girl marking for a cricketparty, consisting of all the men-servants, and two older little |