Last words of Thomas Carlyle - Warburg Institute

;58 WOTTON REINFREDimages, full of loveliness and persuasion.Fain wouldthe poor youth have spoken to her, fain have repliedto her courtesieswith a copiousness proportioned tohis feeling of them : but his heart was pressed togetherby so singular an environment ; he felt as ifhe had no right to be so splendidly welcomed, as ifitwere by mistake that he was here.Other ladies also there were ;young, beautiful, andblooming ; visitors, as it might be gathered, from nodistant neighbourhood ; and not without fit gallantsproud to do them service : but these fair ones skirmishedonly in buckram or from afar ; what mannerof persons they might be you did not learn ;andVirgil could only have described them as pidchramAnnam, pulchramque Elisam. With one of theseBernard entered on a sort of distant flirtation toWotton's astonishment, who could not comprehendsuch audacity, or help half-envying the success itappeared to meet with. Though he had loved, hewas an utter novice in affairs of love : vain had itbeen for Chesterfield to tell him and assure him thatevery woman wishes us to love her ; in his tenfolddiffidence and disbelief it never struck him that hisapprobation could be of worth to any one. He waseven threatening to become absent, for sad thoughtswere gathering on him : these beauties were blondbut dark locks clustered round another face far noblerand black eyes had told him such things ! Lies theywere — perhaps not altogether lies ! yet lovelier than