"It costs nothing," will poor Mrs. Ashburn observe; "let 'em enjoy
it. It isn't often we have such good luck."
* * * * *
=_Margaret Fuller Ossoli, 1810-1850._= (Manual, p. 502.)
From "At Home and Abroad."
=_210._= CHARACTER OF CARLYLE.
Accustomed to the infinite wit and exhuberant richness of his writings,
his talk is still an amazement and a splendor scarcely to be faced with
steady eyes. He does not converse,--only harangues. It is the usual
misfortune of such marked men (happily not one invariable or inevitable)
that they cannot allow other minds room to breathe and show themselves
in their atmosphere, and thus miss the refreshment and instruction which
the greatest never cease to need from the experience of the humblest.
Carlyle allows no one a chance, but bears down all opposition, not only
by his wit and onset of words, resistless in their sharpness as so many
bayonets, but by actual physical superiority, raising his voice and
rushing on his opponent with a torrent of sound. This is not the least
from unwillingness to allow freedom to others; on the contrary, no
man would more enjoy a manly resistance to his thought; but it is the
impulse of a mind accustomed to follow out its own impulse as the hawk
its prey, and which knows not how to stop in the chase.
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