Humbug I have ever seen in this world; the emblem to me, he and his talk and the worship and credence it found, of all the miseries that can befall a Nation.  I also conversed with Young Ireland in a confidential manner; for Young Ireland, really meaning what it says, is worth a little talk:  the Heroism and Patriotism of a new generation; welling fresh and new from the breasts of Nature; and already poisoned by O’Connellism and the Old Irish atmosphere of bluster, falsity, fatuity, into one knows not what.  Very sad to see.  On the whole, no man ought, for any cause, to speak lies, or have anything to do with lies; but either hold his tongue, or speak a bit of the truth:  that is the meaning of a tongue, people used to know!—­Ireland was not the place to console my sorrows.  I returned home very sad out of Ireland;—­and indeed have remained one of the saddest, idlest, most useless of Adam’s sons ever since; and do still remain so.  I care not to write anything more,—­so it seems to me at present.  I am in my vacant interlunar cave (I suppose that is the truth);—­and I ought to wrap my mantle round me, and lie, if dark, silent also.  But, alas, I have wasted almost all your poor sheet first!—­

Miss Fuller came duly as you announced; was welcomed for your sake and her own.  A high-soaring, clear, enthusiast soul; in whose speech there is much of all that one wants to find in speech.  A sharp, subtle intellect too; and less of that shoreless Asiatic dreaminess than I have sometimes met with in her writings.  We liked one another very well, I think, and the Springs too were favorites.  But, on the whole, it could not be concealed, least of all from the sharp female intellect, that this Carlyle was a dreadfully heterodox, not to say a dreadfully savage fellow, at heart; believing no syllable of all that Gospel of Fraternity, Benevolence, and new Heaven-on-Earth, preached forth by all manner of “advanced” creatures, from George Sand to Elihu Burritt, in these days; that in fact the said Carlyle not only disbelieved all that, but treated it as poisonous cant,—­sweetness of sugar-of-lead,—­a detestable phosphorescence from the dead body of a Christianity, that would not admit itself to be dead, and lie buried with all its unspeakable putrescences, as a venerable dead one ought!—­Surely detestable enough.—­To all which Margaret listened with much good nature; though of course with sad reflections not a few.*—­She is coming back to us, she promises.  Her dialect is very vernacular,—­extremely exotic in the London climate.  If she do not gravitate too irresistibly towards that class of New-Era people (which includes whatsoever we have of prurient, esurient, morbid, flimsy, and in fact pitiable and unprofitable, and is at a sad discount among men of sense), she may get into good tracks of inquiry and connection here, and be very useful to herself and others.  I could not show her Alfred (he has been here since)