I have also been reading Carlyle's Cromwell: which I think will last also, and so carry along with it many of his more perishable tirades. I don't know indeed if his is the Final Verdict on Oliver: or on so many of the subordinate Characters whom he sketches in so confidently. A shrewd Man is he; but it is not so easy to judge of men by a few stray hints of them in Books. A quaint instance of this Carlyle himself supplied me with, in his total misapprehension of his hitherto unseen Correspondent 'Squire,' who burned the Cromwell Diary. I was the intelligent Friend who interviewed Squire; as unlike as might be in Age, Person, and Character, to the Man Carlyle had prefigured from his Letters. One day I will send you the little Correspondence between T. C. and his intelligent Friend, as rather a Curiosity in Historical Acumen. I, Dryasdust, want to know if the Moon, the 'Harvest' Moon, too, really 'waded through the Clouds' on the night before Dunbar Battle. She makes so good a Figure in the Scene that I wish the Almanack to authorize her Presence. Carlyle is, I believe, generally accurate in these as in sublunary matters, but I had just found him writing of Orion looking down on Paris on August 9, when Orion is hardly up before Sunrise. . . . And you have been so near where once I lived as Wherstead! in which Parish my Family resided from about 1822 to 1835, at a large Square House on the hill opposite to the Vicarage. I know no more of Mr. Zincke than his Books, which are very good, I think: there is a bit concerning Hodge the English Labourer's inward thoughts as he works in a ditch through a Winter's Day, that is--a piece of Shakespeare. It is one of my few recital pieces: and I was quoting it the other day to two People, who wondered they had never observed it in the Book it came from, which is 'Egypt under the Pharaohs,' {231} I think. WOODBRIDGE. _February_ 14/78. MY DEAR SIR, It is so long since I have heard from you that, in spite of knowing how inopportunely an idle Letter may reach any one amid any sorrows, or much business, I venture one, you see: but whether it be a trouble to lead or not, do not feel bound to answer it except in the fewest words, in case you are any way indisposed. You have--a family: you had an aged Mother, when last I heard from you: room enough for anxieties and sorrows!