The "very
little herring" who declined to be made a part of Lady Ashburton's
luggage now suffered more than ever from her inanimate rival. The
highly-endowed wife of one of the most eminent philanthropists of
America, whose life was devoted to the awakening of defective intellects,
thirty-five years ago murmured, "If I were only an idiot!" Similarly Mrs.
Carlyle might have remonstrated, "Why was I not born a book!" Her letters
and journal teem to tiresomeness with the refrain, "I feel myself
extremely neglected for unborn generations." Her once considerable
ambitions had been submerged, and her own vivid personality overshadowed
by a man she was afraid to meet at breakfast, and glad to avoid at
dinner. A woman of immense talent and a spark of genius linked to a man
of vast genius and imperious will, she had no choice but to adopt his
judgments, intensify his dislikes, and give a sharper edge to his sneers.
Mr. Froude, who for many years lived too near the sun to see the sun,
and inconsistently defends many of the inconsistencies he has himself
inherited from his master, yet admits that Carlyle treated the Broad
Church party in the English Church with some injustice. His recorded
estimates of the leading theologians of the age, and personal relation to
them, are hopelessly bewildering. His lifelong friendship for Erskine of
Linlathen is intelligible, though he did not extend the same charity to
what he regarded as the muddle-headedness of Maurice (Erskine's spiritual
son), and keenly ridiculed the reconciliation pamphlet entitled
"Subscription no Bondage.
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