radiating man. He is now much richer in money than he was, and
poorer by the loss of a good Mother and good Wife: I understand
he is building himself a brave house, and also busy writing a
poem. He flings too much "sheet-lightning" and unrest into me
when we meet in these low moods of mine; and yet one always
longs for him back again: "No doing with him or without him,"
the dog!

My thrice unfortunate Book on Cromwell,--it is a real descent to
Hades, to Golgotha and Chaos! I feel oftenest as if it were
possibler to die one's self than to bring it into life. Besides,
my health is in general altogether despicable, my "spirits" equal
to those of the ninth part of a dyspeptic tailor! One needs to
be able to go on in all kinds of spirits, in climate sunny or
sunless, or it will never do. The planet Earth, says Voss,--take
four hexameters from Voss:

Journeys this Earth, her eye on a Sun, through the heavenly spaces;
Joyous in radiance, or joyless by fits and swallowed in tempests;
Falters not, alters not, equal advancing, home at the due hour:
So thou, weather-proof, constant, may, equal with day, March!

I have not a moment more tonight;--and besides am inclined to
write unprofitables if I persist. Adieu, my friend; all
blessings be with you always.

Yours ever truly,
T. Carlyle