[Postmark: June 29, 1846]
Sunday.
My last letter will have answered this of yours, my
dearest, – I agree in all you say ; and sooner or later comes
to the same thing, if to any possible increase of difficulty is
brought a proportionate increase of strength to undergo it –
as let us hope will be the case ! So you see you have to
‘ understand ‘ and understand me, – I keep your faculty in
constant exercise, now with seeming to wish for postpone-
ment, and now, for anticipation ! And all the time do I
really ‘ grow greater ‘ in your eyes ? I might grow less woe-
fully, – ‘ for reasons for reasons ‘-
The sea will not be frozen, beside . . which makes me
think to tell you that Carlyle is wanting to visit only one
foreign country – Iceland. The true cradle of the Northmen
and their virtues . . all that is worth a Northman’s caring
to see is there, he thinks, and nowise in Italy. Perhaps !
Indeed, so I reason and say – Did I not once turn on myself
and speak against the Southern spirit, and even Dante, just
because of that conviction ? – (or imperfect conviction,
whence the uneasy exaggeration). Carlyle thinks modern
Italy’s abasement a direct judgment from God. ‘ Here is a
nation in whose breast arise men who could doubt, examine
the new problems of the reformation &c. – trim the balance at
intervals, and throw overboard the accumulation of falsehood
– all other nations around, less favoured, are doing it labori-
ously for themselves . . now is the time for the acumen of
the Bembos, the Bentivoglios and so forth . . and these and
their like, one and all, turn round, decline the trouble, say
‘ these things may be true, or they may not, meantime let us
go on verse-making, painting, music-scoring’ – to which all
the nation accedes as if relieved of a trouble – upon which
God bids the Germans go in and possess them ; pluck their
fruits and feel their sun after their own hard work.’ Carlyle
said the sense of this, between two huge pipe-whiffs, the other
afternoon.
‘ Pluck their fruits ‘ – some four years ago I planted . .
or held straight while my mother planted, a fig-tree, – for
love of Italy ! This year it bears its first fruit . . a single
one ! what does that bode ?
Since I wrote the last paragraph, the wind took my
thoughts away, as it always does, and I saw you again as I
used to see, before I knew you, so very substanceless, faint,
unreal – when I was struck by the reality again, – by this
paper, – by to-morrow’s visit I shall pay . . it was as if some-
one had said ‘ but that star is your own.’
I fancied you just what I find you – I knew you from the
beginning.
Let me kiss you dearest dearest –