a Future lies before us, for centuries to | not good for much, hardly one or two - if we had any thought within us, which very few have.

come,

by persons of any note or singularity, whom you are not already acquainted with, The feeling here among considerate so far as handwriting can bring acquaintY persons is, that Germany, in spite of all ance: such were those now fallen aside, the explosions of nonsense we have seen, such are these now sent; if they yield you will certainly recover some balance; and a moment's amusement in your solitude, march, like a brave country,—not towards and kindly bring you in mind of a friendly of Chaos, as some others seem to do! We hand far away, they will do all the function can understand that it is all the dirty, the they are fit for. About a fortnight ago I foul and mutinous folly that comes first despatched, without any letter enclosed, a to the top; but Germany deceives us all volume I have been publishing lately, if there be not abundant silent heroic Biography of a deceased Friend of mine. faculty in the heart of it; and indeed it This also I hope you have got, or will is to England and Deutschland that the soon get, and may derive a little pleasure Problem seems to me now to have fallen: from. It will give you a kind of glimpse and a dreadful Problem it is, insoluble into modern English life; and may sug by the Southern genius, as we see. God gest reflections and considerations which, I assist us all! I am ever your affectionate to a human reader like yourself, are not friend, without value. I wrote it last summer when we were all in Babel uproar with the gathering of jubilant Windbeutelm from thing they called "Crystal Palace,❞—such

T. CARLYLE.

Goethe and Frau von Stein: but that

deserves a chapter by itself! I read your
copy. With pleasant wonder, which has
not yet subsided into clear appreciation.
[There is a "Memorandum" joined to
this letter, on a particular bit of paper: ]
My wife, for above a year past, is ac-
quainted with your works done on paper
by the scissors; works that fill the female
fingers with despair,
with desire to possess for itself a few
specimens. Can you kindly think of this,
some after-dinner?—T. C.

the female heart

a

all the four corners of the world as was never let loose on our poor city before ! in which sad circumstances all serious study was as good as impossible; and, not resolve on doing something that did not to go quite out of patience, one had to need study. Thank the gods, we are now rid of that loud delirium, of street cabs, stump-oratory, and general Hallelujah to the Prince of the Power of the Air,what I used to call the "Wind-dust-ry of all Nations";-and may the angry Fates never send the like of it again in my time !

Chelsea: Octr. 29, 1851. MY DEAR SIR, Mr. Neuberg inti- What my next task is to be? That is mated to me, the other night, that he is the question! If I were a brave Prussian, about returning to Germany, probably to I believe I should forthwith attempt some Berlin among other places, and that he Picture of Friedrich the Great, the last will take charge of any packet of "Auto- real king that we have had in Europe, graphs" or other small ware, which I may a long way till the next, I fear—and nothhave to send you. By way of acknowling but sordid loud anarchy till the next. edgment for your great kindness to Neuberg, if not for infinitely more solid reasons, I ought to rouse myself, and constitute him my messenger on this occasion! He is deeply sensible of your goodness to him; and surely so am I, to whom it is not the first nor the hundredand-first example of your disposition in that respect. Many thanks I give you always, whether I express them in words or do not at all express them. This I believe you know; and so we need not say more of it at present.

But I am English, admonished towards England; -and Friedrich, too, is sure enough to be known in time without aid of mine. And so I remain in suspense; have however got Preuss' big book, and decide to read that again very soon. I am much at a loss for maps and good topographies on that subject: if you could select me a very recommendable name or two, it might be of real help. We have huge map-dealers here, a wilderness of wares; and can get any German thing at once, if we will know which. Item, I There were other letters I had laid up have been reading again (for curiosity for you; which seem, in some household merely) about Catharine II.: -you who earthquake, to have been destroyed, at know Russian might guide me a little least they are undiscoverable now when I there too. Catharine is a most remarkable search for them: but by the present sam-woman; and we are to remember that, ple. I think you will infer that they were if she had been a man (as Francis I.,

Henry IV., &c.), much of the scandal attached to her name would at once fall away. Doubtless you have read Kropomisky's "Tagebuch ;" is it good for anything? Are there no Histories but Castera's and Took's? Any news on that subject would be welcome too, some time when you are benevolent to me. Adieu, my dear Sir, and do not forget me!

T. CARLYLE.

We have lost Miss Wynne's latitude and longitude in these her travels. If she comes to Berlin, remind her punctually of that fact. Milnes, as you perhaps know, is at last wedded; just returning from his marriage-jaunt: a very eligible wife he

got.

I have not been a very victorious laborer for the last seven or eight months.

Nevertheless, I decidedly grow in love for my Hero, and go on; and can by no means decide to throw him up at this stage of the inquiry. That I should ever write anything on Frederick seems more and more unlikely; but perhaps it would be good that my reading upon him, which has been a kind of intermitting pursuit with me all my life, should now finish and complete itself at last. Accordingly friend Neuberg, I believe, has won aDother small cargo of Books on the road for me; nay other wider schemes of inquiry are opening: one way or other, I suppose, I ought to play the game out.

From Reymann's Kreiskarten," and Stieler's maps, joined to an invaluable old Büsching" which has come to me, I get, or can get fair help towards all manner of topography; on the other hand, I greatly want some other kind of Book or Books which should give me with the due minute. ness and due indubitability a correct basis of Chronology; in all former inquiries, I had some Contemporary set of Newspapers, Analyse du Moniteur, Commons Journals, private Diary or the like, to serve me in this respect; but here I have yet found nothing, and do much want something, the result being always an indispensable one with me, and preliminary to all other results. Had faithful Preuss done the "Euvres de " Frederick according to what I think the right plan, all would have been safe in this particular, in the hands of so exact a man: but unfortu. nately he has looked on Frederick's works as literature (which they hardly are, or not at all are) and not as Autobiographic Documents of a World-Hero (which is their real character); and thus, tying up every little ounce-weight of different ware into a bundle of his own, we have a most perverse regularity of method; the book, in spite of its painful unrememberable annotations, very often unintelligible to the earnest reader; not to be read in any way except with all the volumes about you at once; and yielding at last a result which is quite bewildering, not a living hero and the shadow of his history, but the disjecta membra of him and it. From these "Euvres," were they even completed, there will be no Chronology easily attainable, — If you know of any such book as would serve me in this particular, or can hear of any, I will beg you to let me know of it. Also (after all my Büschings and Reymanns) I should be very thankful for a little Topographical Dictionary of

66 Chelsea, London: June 6, 1852. MY DEAR SIR, Since you last heard of me, I have been reading and inquiring not a little about Frederick the Great; and have often had it in view to write to you, but was always driven back by the vague state of my affairs in that quarter. For all is yet vague; I may say chaotic, pathless; and on the whole, my studies (if they deserve that name) have hitherto served less to afford me direct vision on the subject, than to show what darkness still envelopes it for me. Books here are pretty abundant upon Frederick, for he has always been an object of interest to the English; but on the whole not the right Books, the right Books, materials and helps are not accessible here, and indeed do not exist here even if one could (which I cannot) sit in the British Museum to read them. On the other hand, importation of books from Germany, I find, is intolerably tedious and uncertain: - so that, I have to admit that my real progress, in proportion to my labor, is quite mournfully small; and after struggling with so many dull reporters, Preuss (in all forms), Ranke, Frédéric ("Euvres de," in two editions), Voltaire, Lloyd (" Tempelhof" still unattainable), Fomini, Archenholz, Retsow, not to speak of Zimmermann, Nicolai, Denina, &c. &c., "reporters "enough, I find the thing reported of still hovering at an immeasurable distance, and only revealing itself to me in fitful enigmatic glimpses, not quite identical with any of the " reports" I have heard! Add to which, I have no definite literary object of my own in view, to animate me in this inquiry; nothing but a natural human curiosity, and love of the Heroic, in the absence of other livelier interests from my sphere of work at present: you may figure

3

acter of place, sequence of time, Topography and Chronology, these are the warp and woof of all historical intelligibility to me.

There is a letter, from a

Prussia, or even of Germany (if not too | undertaken. big): Büsching's "Indexes " being hith- poor English soldier, acting as servant erto my only help in this respect. Char- to Marshal Keith, which gives some poor glimpses of Keith in his last moments, and of the terrible mewing of Hochkirch: you must see this poor Tebay's letter (that is the name of him) for your second edition of "Keith;" if you have it not at hand, pray apply to me for a copy, which will be very easily got. It seems there are large masses of Mitchell Correspondence still unprinted in the British Museum, and various MSS. of Frederick included in them; which, however, I believe, have been seen by Raumer and other Prussians. I read "Mirabeau," and still have him; but except Maubillon's volume on the Prussian soldiers, I found the rest mainly a huge and to me quite questionable lecture on Free-trade à la Cobden; well worth its reading too, for Mirabeau is Mirabeau wherever one finds him. I have often pictured to myself the one interview of Vater Fritz and Gabriel Honoré on the stage of this world!

Another book which I want still more, if there be such a book, is some Biographical Dictionary, or were it even an authentic old "Peerage Book" such as we have in England, or even a distillation of old Army-lists and Court Calendar, some Prussian Book, I mean, or general German Book, which would tell me a little who these crowds of empty names are, at least which of them is meant, when one hears them mentioned. This is a quite frightful want with me. There are such multitudes of different Schwerins ("of Schwerins," I somewhere heard), all of them unknown to me, so many Brandenburg-Schwedl Brunswick Bewerns, halfdozens of Dukes of Würtemberg, &c. &c. —it becomes like a Walpurgis-Nacht, where you can fix some of them into the condition of visual shadows at least! The very Margraves of Baireuth and Anspach are and continue mere echoes to me. The Duchess of Saxe-Gotha too (Frederick's and Voltaire's), I have asked on all sides who or what she is and nobody can so much as show me the color of a ribbon of her! Voltaire's five thousand letters (one hundred times too many) I find as imperfectly edited as any; indeed they are three-parts utterly illegible already, for want of editing, and must end by being flung out, as portions of Chaos or the utterly Dark, for most part before very long, I apprehend. It was Frederick alone that first sent me into that black element, or beyond the very shores of it; and I confess I had no idea how dark and vacant it had grown. If you can think of any guide or guides for me, in this important particular at once so essential and so completely unprovided for, surely it will be a great favor. Of course there are guides better or worse, to an inquiring stranger; and the worst of them, if only authentic and intelligible, would be a kind of heaven to me in this enterprise.

Did you see the Selection from Sir Andrew Mitchell's Correspondence, two thick volumes which appeared here some years ago? Doubtless they are in some of your Berlin libraries. The Editor, one Birret, is a man of some energy and talent; but said to be very vain and illnatured; and is, beyond doubt, profoundly ill-informed on the matter he has here

But, on the whole, I must now tell you of a project that has risen here of a little tour to Germany itself on our part; of which the chief justification to me, though the female mind withal has other views in it, would be to assist myself in the inquiries after Frederick. To look with my eyes upon Potsdam, Ruppin, Rheinsberg, Küstrin, and the haunts of Frederick; to see the Riesengebirge country and the actual fields of Frederick's ten or twelve grand battles: this would be a real and great gain to me. Hohenfriedberg, Soor, Leuthen, I could walk these scenes as truly notable ones on this Earth's surface; footsteps of a most brilliant, valiant, and invincible human soul which had gone before me through the countries and left indelible trace of himself there. Then at Berlin, one could see at least immensities of portals, Chodowieski Engravings, &c. &c. which are quite wanting in this country; as well as all manner of books to be read or to be collected and carried home for reading; not to mention oral inquiries and communications, or the very sight of friends who might otherwise remain always invisible to me! In short, I think it not unlikely that we may actually come, my Wife and I, this very summer; and try the business a little; for there are Homburg or other watering places in the game too, and we really both of us need a little change of scene, after so many years of this Babel. The drawbacks are sad incapacity, especially on my part, for sleeping, for digest

ing, for supporting the conditions of travel, | night of sound sleep; I am obliged to which are sport to most people, and help myself along with broken sleep, in alas are death to poor us! However, if about half the natural quantity, — which the motive energy were sufficiently great! circumstance necessarily modifies very We can both of us speak, or could soon much the objects I can hope to attempt learn to speak, a kind of Deutsch-Kauder- with success in this journey of mine. To wälsch, which might be intelligible to the gather some old books (on the subject of quick-eared; and for me, I have a certain Frederick), to see Portraits and Places, readiness in bad French as well. Miss this is nearly all I can aim at, as matters Wynne eagerly urges the attempt on hy-go. gienic grounds; others urge, and, in fact, there is a kind of stir in the matter, which may perhaps come to something.

Berlin is to be my last station; from Berlin I go home by the shortest route, and at the quickest rate of steam conWill you, at any rate, be so kind as to veyance. I calculate on staying there describe to me a little what you reckon perhaps a week; longer if I could get a the resources of Berlin in regard to my lodging where sleep were possible; but Frederick speculations might be.-Berlin, of that I fancy there is no hope! I am I conclude, must be the headquarter in habitually a bad sleeper; cannot do with regard to all that; -and mention espe- noises, &c., at all: and the arrangements cially what the proper time, both in regard for sleep, in all German places where to climate and to the presence of instruc- I have tried, are eminently unsuitable tive persons, might be for visiting your hitherto. If you or any of your people city. People speak of Berlin heats, and sand, and blazing pavements, and again of Berlin sleets and frosts: a still more important point would be the possibility of lodging in some open-aired and above all quiet place; doubtless all this is manageable, with a maximum quidem, and also with a minimum. Till your answer comes, I will stir no farther.

Miss Wynne, home from Paris this good while, seems as well as ever, and quite beautiful again. We all salute Varnhagen. Yours always,

T. CARLYLE.

Dresden: Septr. 25, 1852. MY DEAR SIR, Here I actually am in Germany, and have been there three or four weeks; in my great haste and confusion I despatch a line to announce that small fact to you, and farther that I hope to be in Berlin itself (and to see you, if I am lucky) about Tuesday or at farthest Wednesday next. I have come up the Rhine from Rotterdam; have been at Ems, Homburg, Frankfurt, Weimar, &c.: this afternoon we go towards Schandau, Lobositz; and after Lobositz, direct to Berlin, I suppose by Zittau and Frankfurt a. O.

could advise where a quiet bedroom was to be had in Berlin, that would be one of the valuablest favors! At all events, leave a line for me "Berlin, Poste restante"; that I may know at once whether you are in Town; and where to find you.

And now for the Sächsische Schweiz, and other confused journeyings! - Yours always truly, T. CARLYLE.

Chelsea: Janr. 15, 1854. MY DEAR SIR, Your "Bülow's Leben," with the kind letter in it, has come safe to hand: many thanks for so welcome and friendly a Gift, which so many others, a long list now, have preceded! It lay waiting for me here, on my return from a short sad visit I had made to Scotland, whither I had been called on the mournfullest errand, the death of my aged, dear, and excellent Mother, whose departure I witnessed on Christmas day; a scene which, as you can well believe, has filled me with emotions and reflexions ever since, and cannot for the rest of my life be forgotten. I have kept myself very silent, and as solitary as possible ever since my return; looking out more earnestly towards new labor (if that might but be possible for me), as the one My wife is not here; she is safe at consolation in this and in all afflictions home, where I wish I too were! Neu- that can come. In the evenings of last berg alone accompanies me; one of the week, three of them at least, I have read friendliest and helpfullest road-compan-" Bülow," as an agreeable halting-place ions man ever had. I have of course for my mind; and was very sorry last seen many interesting things; in fact I night when it ended upon me, as all have prospered well in all respects, except things have to do. that I can hardly get any sleep, in these noisy bedrooms, in these strange beds: in fact it is now four weeks since I had a

You have given us a flowing Narration, in your old clear style; painted out a stormy battling Life-Pilgrimage, with