Lincoln's Inn and Bayswater: but I have seen Alfred once; Carlyle once;
Thackeray twice; and Spedding many times. I did not see Mrs. A.: but am
to go and dine there one day before I leave. Carlyle has been undergoing
the Water System at Malvern, and says it has done him a very little good.
He would be quite well, he says, if he threw his Books away, and walked
about the mountains: but that would be 'propter vitam, etc.' Nature made
him a Writer: so he must wear himself out writing Lives of Sterling,
etc., for the Benefit of the World. Thackeray says he is getting tired
of being witty, and of the great world: he is now gone to deliver his
Lectures {272} at Edinburgh: having already given them at Oxford and
Cambridge. Alfred, I thought looking pretty well. Spedding is immutably
wise, good, and delightful: not so immutably well in Body, I think:
though he does not complain. But I will deal in no more vaticinations of
Evil. I can't think what was the oracle in my Letters you allude to, I
mean about the three years' duration of our lives. I have long felt
about England as you do, and even made up my mind to it, so as to sit
comparatively, if ignobly, easy on that score. Sometimes I envy those
who are so old that the curtain will probably fall on them before it does
on their Country. If one could save the Race, what a Cause it would be!
not for one's own glory as a member of it, nor even for its glory as a
Nation: but because it is the only spot in Europe where Freedom keeps her
place. Had I Alfred's voice, I would not have mumbled for years over In
Memoriam and the Princess, but sung such strains as would have revived
the [Greek text] to guard the territory they had won. What can 'In
Memoriam' do but make us all sentimental? . . .

My dear Frederic, I hope to see you one day: I really do look forward one
day to go and see you in Italy, as well as to see you here in England. I
know no one whom it would give me more pleasure to think of as one who
might perhaps be near me as we both go down the hill together, whether in
Italy or England. You, Spedding, Thackeray, and only one or two more.
The rest have come like shadows and so departed.

_To G. Crabbe_.

[_Feb_. 27, 1852.]

MY DEAR GEORGE,

. . . I rejoice in your telling me what you think; or I should rejoice if
these books were of importance enough to require honest advice. I think
you may be very right about the length of the Preface; {273} that I do