“You inquire with such warm interest respecting our present abode and occupations, that I feel bound to say a few words about both, while there is still room left.  Dumfries is a pleasant town, containing about fifteen thousand inhabitants, and may be considered the centre of the trade and judicial system of a district which possesses some importance in the sphere of Scottish industry.  Our residence is not in the town itself, but fifteen miles to the north-west, among the granite hills and the black morasses which stretch westward through Galloway, almost to the Irish Sea.  In this wilderness of heath and rock, our estate stands forth a green oasis, a tract of ploughed, partly enclosed, and planted ground, where corn ripens, and trees afford a shade, although surrounded by sea-mews and rough-woolled sheep.  Here, with no small effort, have we built and furnished a neat, substantial dwelling; here, in the absence of professorial or other office, we live to cultivate literature according to our strength, and in our own peculiar way.  We wish a joyful growth to the rose and flowers of our garden; we hope for health and peaceful thoughts to further our aims.  The roses, indeed, are still in part to be planted, but they blossom already in anticipation.  Two ponies, which carry us everywhere, and the mountain air, are the best medicines for weak nerves.  This daily exercise—­to which I am much devoted—­is my only recreation:  for this nook of ours is the loneliest in Britain—­six miles removed from any one likely to visit me.  Here Rousseau would have been as happy as on his island of St. Pierre.  My town friends, indeed, ascribe my sojourn here to a similar disposition, and forbode me no good result.  But I came hither solely with the design to simplify my way of life, and to secure the independence through which I could be enabled to remain true to myself.  This bit of earth is our own; here we can live, write, and think, as best pleases ourselves, even though Zoilus himself were to be crowned the monarch of literature.  Nor is the solitude of such great importance; for a stage-coach takes us speedily to Edinburgh, which we look upon as our British Weimar.  And have I not, too, at this moment piled up upon the table of my little library a whole cart-load of French, German, American, and English journals and periodicals—­whatever may be their worth?  Of antiquarian studies, too, there is no lack.  From some of our heights I can descry, about a day’s journey to the west, the hill where Agricola and his Romans left a camp behind them.  At the foot of it I was born, and there both father and mother still live to love me.  And so one must let time work.”

The above letter was printed by Goethe himself, in his Preface to a German transition of Carlyle’s “Life of Schiller,” published at Frankfort in 1830.  Other pleasant records of the intercourse between them exist in the shape of sundry graceful copies of verses addressed by Goethe to Mrs. Carlyle, which will be found in the collection of his poems.