ink
I don't admire her because I don't stare at her; they call her a flirt
to me--what a want of knowledge! She walks across a room in such a
manner that a man is drawn towards her with a magnetic power; this they
call flirting! They do not know things; they do not know what a woman
is. I believe, though, she has faults; the same as Charmian and
Cleopatra might have had. Yet she is a fine thing, speaking in a worldly
way; for there are two distinct tempers of mind in which we judge of
things--the worldly, theatrical and pantomimical; and the unearthly,
spiritual and ethereal. In the former, Buonaparte, Lord Byron and this
Charmian hold the first place in our minds; in the latter, John Howard,
Bishop Hooker rocking his child's cradle, and you, my dear sister, are
the conquering feelings. As a man of the world I love the rich talk of
a Charmian; as an eternal being I love the thought of you. I should
like her to ruin me, and I should like you to save me.

"I am free from men of pleasure's cares,
By dint of feelings far more deep than theirs."

This is "Lord Byron," and is one of the finest things he has said.

THE CARLYLES--THOMAS (1795-1881) AND
JANE WELSH (1801-1866)

A paradoxer, even of a less virulent-frivolous type than
that with which we have been recently afflicted, might
sustain, for some little time at any rate, the argument
against preservation of letters from the case of this
eminent couple. If Mrs. Carlyle had not written hers, or if
they had remained unknown, the whole sickening controversy
about the character and married life of the pair might, as
was said in the Introduction, never have existed. And if
Carlyle himself had written none, persons of any
intelligence would still have had a pretty adequate idea of
him from his _Works_. On the other hand the addition to
knowledge in his case is quite welcome: and in hers it
practically gives us what we could hardly have known
otherwise--one of the most remarkable of woman-natures, and
one of the most striking confirmations of the merciless
adage "Whom the gods curse, to them they grant the desires
of their hearts." For she wanted above all things to be the
wife of a man of genius--and she was. So the _pro_ and the
_con_ in this matter may so far be set against each other.
But there remains to credit a considerable amount of most
welcom