MR. CARLYLE INTERVIEWED.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume III, Issue 316, 16 October 1875, Page 2

MR. CARLYLE INTERVIEWED.

The San Francisco Chronicle publishes a long letter from London, written by a Lady Correspondent.” The writer says: —“ The pictures in our country of Carlyle are not very good; he has not the wrinkled visage and thought-weary, almost unhappy expression generally seen in them, but rather the friendly, happy look so apt to characterize the old age of a well-spent life ; this thick head of hair not entirely whitened; his blue eye is bright, but looks worn with use; his form is thin and feeble, and the continual trembling of his baud must interfere greatly, if not entirely, with the use of his pen. Expecting our visit, his eyes and whole face lighted up with a smile of welcome as he entered the room, extending both hands in greeting. His first words, after those of welcome, were of singular beauty and appropriateness; they were a quotation from his own farorite Ossian, in reply to my companion’s congratulation on his apparent good health; ‘Yes, but “Age is dark aud unlovely.” ’ The almost solemn sadness of the tone in which he spoke the words changed to cheerfulness as he immediately added, ‘ But I ought not to complain,’ and then to vivacity as thought and reminiscence followed each otherin uninterrupted flow. It was quite wonderful to recall how much he had said in our short visit; he knew that we had come to see and hear a great man, and he paid us the compliment of putting as much of himself as possible into our half-hour with him. He ran over this and that history with apparently no mental effort, and then, touching upon the present and himself, said that the strangest things in the world to him were the little boys and girls in the streets. Of course it would not have been Thomas Carlyle had he not indulged in a little downright good scolding, and that scolding was about California. ‘ You are doing no good there ; you are harming the world. Cover over your mines, leave your gold in the earth, and go to planting potatoes. Every man who gives a potato to the world is the benefactor of his race ; but you, with your gold, are overturning society, making the ignoble prominent, increasing everywhere the expenses of living, aud confusing all things. Expressing the hope that he would live years, to which he replied, ‘ You need not wish it for me, but I must awftit my summons,” we hade him adieu and passed out again into the world, which for the moment seemed shrunken and small.”