e to keep the
necessary servants. In Carlyle's home there were no servants at all.
His father was a mason, and the work of the house was done by the
family. Why should his wife be in a different position from his
mother's? There was no reason, in the nature of things. But custom
is very strong, and the early years of Mrs. Carlyle's married life
were a hard struggle against grinding poverty. Carlyle was grandly
indifferent to material things. He wanted no luxuries, except
tobacco and a horse. He would not have altered his message to
mankind, or his mode of delivering it, for the wealth of the Indies.
What he had to say he said, and men might take it or leave it as
they thought proper. He never swerved from the path of integrity. He
did not know his way to the house of Rimmon. The mere practical
ability required to produce such a book as Frederick the Great might
have realised a fortune in business. Carlyle just made enough money
to live in decent and wholesome comfort.

From the first Carlyle's conversation attracted Froude, and dazzled
him. But he felt, as others felt, that submission rather than
intimacy was the attitude which it suggested or compelled. There was
no republic of letters in Carlyle's house. It was a dictatorship,
pure and simple. What the dictator condemned was heresy. What he did
not know was not knowledge. Mill was a poor feckless driveller.
Darwin was a pretentious sciolist. Newman had the intellect of a
rabbit. Herbert Spencer was "the most unending ass in Christendom."
"Scribbling Sands and Eliots" were unfit to tie Mrs. Carlyle's
shoe-strings. Editing Keats was "currying dead dog." Ruskin could only
point out the correggiosity of Correggio. Political economy was the
dismal science, or the gospel according to McCrowdie.* Carlyle's
eloquent and humourous diatribes were wonderful, laughter-moving,
awe-compelling. They did not put his hearers at their ease, and
Froude felt more admiration than sympathy.

--
* McCulloch, the editor of Adam Smith, was meant
--

In 1861, when Froude had been settled in London about a year, he
received a visit from the great author himself. Carlyle did not take
to many people, but he took to Froude. Perhaps he was touched by the
younger man's devotion. Perhaps he saw that Froude was no ordinary
disciple, and would be able to carry on the torch when he
relinquished it himself. At all events he expressed a wish to see
him oftener in his walks, in his rides, in his home