t
the auspices are so favourable. This welcome 'Agent,' so willing and
beneficent, will contrive, I hope, to spare you a good deal of the
trouble,--except indeed that of seeing with your own eyes that the Stone
is put in its right place, and the number of 'yards rearward' is exactly
given.

I think the Inscription will do; and as to the shape, etc., of the
monument, I have nothing to advise,--except that I think it ought to be
of the most perfect _simplicity_, and should {136} go direct to its
object and punctually stop there. A small block of Portland
stone--(Portland excels all stones in the world for durability and
capacity for taking an exact inscription)--block of Portland stone of
size to contain the words and allow itself to be sunk firmly in the
ground; to me it could have no other good quality whatever; and I should
not care if the stone on three sides of it were squared with the hammer
merely, and only _polished_ on its front or fourth side where the letters
are to be.

In short I wish _you_ my dear friend to take charge of this pious act in
all its details; considering me to be loyally passive to whatever you
decide on respecting it. If on those terms you will let me bear half the
expense and flatter myself that in this easy way I have gone halves with
you in this small altogether genuine piece of patriotism, I shall be
extremely obliged to you.

Pollock has told you an altogether flattering tale about my strength, as
it is nearly impossible for any person still on his feet to be more
completely useless.

Yours ever truly,

T. CARLYLE.

J. A. Froude (just come to walk with me) _scripsit_.

_To W. F. Pollock_.

WOODBRIDGE, _June_ 16, [1872].

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

Some forty years ago there was a set of Lithograph Outlines from Hayter's
Sketches of Pasta in Medea: caricature things, though done in earnest by
a Man who had none of the Genius of the Model he admired. Looking at
them now people who never saw the Original will wonder perhaps that Talma
and Mrs. Siddons should have said that they might go to learn of Her: and
indeed it was only the Living Genius and Passion of the Woman herself
that could have inspired and exalted, and enlarged her very incomplete
Person (as it did her Voice) into the Grandeur, as well as the _Niobe_
Pathos, of her Action and Utterance. All the nobler features of Humanity
she had indeed: finely shaped Head, Neck, Bust, and Arms: all finely
related to one another: th