Last words of Thomas Carlyle - Warburg Institute

120 WOTTON EEINFREDIt was an upland wavy expanse of heath or roughbroken downs, where valleys in complex branchingwere, openly or imperceptibly, arranging their declivitytowards every quarter of the sky. The hilltopswere beneath his feet ; the cottages, the groves,and meadows lapped up in the folds of these lowerranges and hid from sight ; but the loftiest summitsof the region towered up here and there as fromtheir base; gray chffs also were scattered over thewaste, and tarns lay clear and earnest in theirsolitude. Close on the left was a deep chasm, thebeginning of another valley, on the farther side ofwhich abruptly rose a world of fells, as it were, thecrown and centre of the whole mountain country ; ahundred and a hundred savage peaks attracting eyeand heart by their form, for all was glowing likemolten gold in the last Hght of the sun now settmgbehind them, and in this majestic sUence to thewanderer, pensive and lonely in this wilderness, thescene was not only beautiful but solemn. Wottonwas affected to his inmost soul ; he gazed over thesestupendous masses in their strange light, and itseemed to him as if till now he had never knownNatm-e ; never felt that she had, indeed, a fairy andunspeakable loveliness ; nay, that she was his motherand divine. And as the ruddy glow faded mto clearnessin the sky, and the sheen of the peaks grewpurple and sparkling, and the day was now to depart,a murmur of eternity and immensity, a voice from