And it may be said here that his wife had the same complaint, and had it bad, the feminine form of it, and without the vent and assuagement of it that her husband found in literature. Little wonder that between two such persons, living childless together for forty years, each assiduously cultivating their sensibilities and idiosyncrasies, there should have been more or less frictions. Both sarcastic, quick-witted, plain-spoken, sleepless, addicted to morphia and blue-pills, nerves all on the outside; the wife without any occupation adequate to her genius, the husband toiling like Hercules at his tasks and groaning much louder; both flouting at happiness; both magnifying the petty ills of life into harrowing tragedies; both gifted with "preternatural intensity of sensation;" Mrs. C. nearly killed by the sting of a wasp; Mr. C. driven nearly distracted by the crowing of a cock or the baying of a dog; the wife hot-tempered, the husband atrabilarious; one caustic, the other arrogant; marrying from admiration rather than from love--could one reasonably predict, beforehand, a very high state of domestic felicity for such a couple? and would it be just to lay the blame all on the husband, as has generally been done in this case? Man and wife were too much alike; the marriage was in no sense a union of opposites; at no point did the two sufficiently offset and complement each other; hence, though deeply devoted, they never seemed to find the repose and the soothing acquiescence in the society of one another that marriage should bring. They both had the great virtues,--nobleness, generosity, courage, deep kindliness, etc.,--but neither of them had the small virtues. Both gave way under small annoyances, paltry cares, petty interruptions,--bugs, cocks, donkeys, street noises, etc. To great emergencies, to great occasions, they could oppose great qualities; there can be no doubt of that, but the ordinary every-day hindrances and petty burdens of life fretted their spirits into tatters. Mrs. C. used frequently to return from her trips to the country with her "mind all churned into froth,"--no butter of sweet thought or sweet content at all. Yet Carlyle could say of her, "Not a bad little dame at all. She and I did aye very weel together; and 'tweel, it was not every one that could have done with her," which was doubtless the exact truth. Froude also speaks from personal knowledge when he says: "His was the soft heart and hers the stern one."