oke out with this wild phrase, "I could plunge
into the bottom of Hell, if I were sure of finding the Devil there and
getting him strangled!" Which produced the loudest laugh of all; and had
to be repeated, on Mrs. Crawford's inquiry, to the house at large; and,
creating among the elders a kind of silent shudder,--though we
urged that the feat would really be a good investment of human
industry,--checked or stopt these theologic thunders for the evening.
I still remember Sterling as in one of his most animated moods that
evening. He probably returned to Herstmonceux next day, where he
proposed yet to reside for some indefinite time.

Arrived at Herstmonceux, he had not forgotten us. One of his Letters
written there soon after was the following, which much entertained
me, in various ways. It turns on a poor Book of mine, called _Sartor
Resartus_; which was not then even a Book, but was still hanging
desolately under bibliopolic difficulties, now in its fourth or fifth
year, on the wrong side of the river, as a mere aggregate of Magazine
Articles; having at last been slit into that form, and lately completed
_so_, and put together into legibility. I suppose Sterling had borrowed
it of me. The adventurous hunter spirit which had started such a bemired
_Auerochs_, or Urus of the German woods, and decided on chasing that as
game, struck me not a little;--and the poor Wood-Ox, so bemired in the
forests, took it as a compliment rather:--

"_To Thomas Carlyle, Esq., Chelsea, London_.
"HERSTMONCEUX near BATTLE, 29th May, 1835.

"MY DEAR CARLYLE,--I have now read twice, with care, the wondrous
account of Teufelsdrockh and his Opinions; and I need not say that it
has given me much to think of. It falls in with the feelings and tastes
which were, for years, the ruling ones of my life; but which you will
not be angry with me when I say that I am infinitely and hourly thankful
for having escaped from. Not that I think of this state of mind as one
with which I have no longer any concern. The sense of a oneness of life
and power in all existence; and of a boundless exuberance of beauty
around us, to which most men are well-nigh dead, is a possession which
no one that has ever enjoyed it would wish to lose. When to this we add
the deep feeling of the difference between the actual and the ideal
in Nature, and still more in Man; and bring in, to explain this, the
principle of duty, as that which