e notices on that subject by
the bye would not necessarily command assent.'

_From Thomas Carlyle_.

5 CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA
6 _Nov._ 1874.

DEAR FITZGERALD,

Thanks for your kind little Letter. I am very glad to learn that you are
so cheerful and well, entering the winter under such favourable omens. I
lingered in Scotland, latterly against my will, for about six weeks: the
scenes there never can cease to be impressive to me; indeed as natural in
late visits they are far too impressive, and I have to wander there like
a solitary ghost among the graves of those that are gone from me, sad,
sad, and I always think while there, ought not this visit to be the last?

But surely I am well pleased with your kind affection for the Land,
especially for Edinburgh and the scenes about it. By all means go again
to Edinburgh (tho' the old city is so shorn of its old grim beauty and is
become a place of Highland shawls and railway shriekeries); worship
Scott, withal, as vastly superior to the common run of authors, and
indeed grown now an affectingly _tragic_ man. Don't forget Burns either
and Ayrshire and the West next time you go; there are admirable
antiquities and sceneries in those parts, leading back (Whithorn for
example, _Whitterne_ or _candida casa_) to the days of St. Cuthbert; not
to speak of Dumfries with Sweetheart Abbey and the brooks and hills a
certain friend of yours first opened his eyes to in this astonishing
world.

I am what is called very well here after my return, worn weak as a
cobweb, but without bodily ailment except the yearly increasing inability
to digest food; my mind, too, if usually mournful instead of joyful, is
seldom or never to be called miserable, and the steady gazing into the
great unknown, which is near and comes nearer every day, ought to furnish
abundant employment to the serious soul. I read, too; that is my
happiest state, when I can get _good books_, which indeed I more and more
rarely can.

Like yourself I have gone through _Spedding_, seven long long volumes,
not skipping except where I had got the sense with me, and generally
reading all of Bacon's own that was there: I confess to you I found it a
most creditable and even surprising Book, offering the most perfect and
complete image both of Bacon and of Spedding, and distinguished as the
hugest and faithfullest bit of literary navvy work I have ever met with
in this generation. Bacon is washed clean down to the natural skin