Last words of Thomas Carlyle - Warburg Institute

!VAENHAGEN VON ENSE IN THE YEARS 1837-57 201IIIChelsea, London : Nov. 7, 1840.My dear Sir,—A fair traveller from your country,who has done us the honour and pleasure of a visit,reminds me that I ought to write, that I ought tohave written long weeks ago. Weeks, or even months :for on looking at your lastnote I am shocked to discoverthat it must be almost half a year since it,andthe new volume accompanied by it, arrived hereWhy I have shamefully delayed so long were nowhard to say. Certainly it was not for want of thankfulness; neither was it for the rather common reason,that I had not read the book and so knew not how tospeak of it. The new volume of the ' Denkwiirdigkeiten' was eagerly read in the first days after itsarrival here, and with a pleasure which is still vividlypresent to me. Alas, you are a sickly man like myself;you know well enough, I doubt not, whatProcrastination means ! One of our poets calls it the'thief of time.' After long months one is suddenlyastonished, some day, to find how much of life, andof the best uses of life, it has stolen from us.The most striking piece in this fifth volume was,to me, the ' Congress of Vienna.' All was good, andvery good ; but this best. At the risk of speakingthings which, in a rapid hollow time like ours, wereperhaps as well unspoken, I must express my realD D