Not long thereafter Carlyle met Wordsworth. 'I did not expect much,' he said in a letter, 'but got mostly what I expected. The old man has a fine shrewdness and naturalness in his expression of face, a long Cumberland figure; one finds also a kind of _sincerity_ in his speech. But for prolixity, thinness, endless dilution, it excels all the other speech I had heard from mortals. A genuine man, which is much, but also essentially a small, genuine man.' Early in October 1835 Carlyle started for his old home. His mother-in-law had arrived on a visit at Cheyne Row, and remained there with her daughter during Carlyle's absence in Scotland. He returned improved in health and spirits. Nothing came of the National Education scheme. Carlyle was not a person to push himself into notice, remarks Froude; and his friends did not exert themselves for him, or they tried and failed; 'governments, in fact, do not look out for servants among men who are speculating about the nature of the Universe. Then, as always, the doors leading into regular employment remained closed.' Shortly after his return from the North, he was offered the editorship of a newspaper at Lichfield. This was unaccepted for the same reason that weighed with him when he refused a post on the _Times_. In the following summer money matters had become so pressing that Carlyle wrote the article on Mirabeau, now printed among the _Miscellanies_, for Mill's review, which brought him £50. Mrs Carlyle's health began to suffer, and a visit to Annandale became imperative. She returned 'mended in spirits.' Writing of her arrival in London, she said: 'I had my luggage put on the backs of two porters, and walked on to Cheapside, when I presently found a Chelsea omnibus. By-and-bye the omnibus stopped, and amid cries of "No room, sir; can't get in," Carlyle's face, beautifully set off by a broad-brimmed white hat, gazed in at the door like the peri "who, at the gate of heaven, stood disconsolate." In hurrying along the Strand, his eye had lighted on my trunk packed on the top of the omnibus, and had recognised it. This seems to me one of the most indubitable proofs of genius which he ever manifested.'