“Of my late history I need not speak, for you already know it: I am wedded; to the best of wives, and with all the elements of enjoyment richly ministered to me, and health—rather worse than even it was wont to be. Sad contradiction! But I were no apt scholar if I had not learned long ago, with my friend Tieck, that ‘in the fairest sunshine a shadow chases us, that in the softest music there is a tone which chides.’ I sometimes hope that I shall be well: at other times I determine to be _wise_ in spite of sickness, and feel that wisdom is better even than health; and I dismiss the lying cozener Hope entirely, and fancy I perceive that even the rocky land of Sorrow is not without a heavenly radiance overspreading it, lovelier than aught that this Earth, with all its joys, can give. At all events, what right have we to murmur? It is the common lot: the Persian King could not find three happy men in the wide world to write the names of on his queen’s tomb, or the Philosopher would have recalled her from death. Every son of Adam has his task to toil at, and his stripes to bear for doing it wrong. There is one deadly error we commit at our entrance on life, and sooner or later we must lay it aside, for till then there is neither peace nor rest for us in this world: we all start, I have observed, with the tacit persuasion that, whatever become of others, we (the illustrious all-important we) are entitled of _right_ to be _entirely fortunate_, to accumulate all knowledge, beauty, health, and earthly felicity in _our_ sacred person, and to pass _our_ most sovereign days in rosy bowers, with distress never seen by us, except as an interesting shade in the distance of our landscape.... But I must descend from life in general to life in Edinburgh. In spite of ill-health, I reckon myself moderately happy here, much happier than men usually are, or than such a fool as I deserves to be. My good wife exceeds all my hopes, and is, in truth, I believe, among the best women that the world contains. The philosophy of the heart is far better than that of the understanding. She loves me with her whole soul, and this one sentiment has taught her much that I have long been vainly at the schools to learn. Good Jane! She is sitting by me knitting you a purse: you must not cease to love her, for she deserves it, and few love you better. [Mrs. Carlyle and Mrs. Montagu had never yet met, but are here considered as already fast friends, through Carlyle’s talks with each about the other.] Of society, in this Modern Athens, we have no want, but rather a superabundance; which, however, we are fast and successfully reducing down to the fit measure. True it is, one meets with many a Turk in grain among these people; but it is some comfort to know beforehand what Turks are, have been, and for ever will be, and to understand that from a Turk no Christian word or deed can rationally be expected.