A very severe blow now fell upon Mrs Carlyle, who received news from Templand that her mother had been struck by apoplexy, and was dangerously ill. Although unfit for travelling, she caught the first train from Euston Square to Liverpool, but at her uncle's house there she learnt that all was over. Mrs Carlyle lay ill in Liverpool, unable to stir. After a while she was able to go back to London, where Carlyle joined her in the month of May. It was on his return journey that he paid a visit to Dr Arnold at Rugby, when he had an opportunity, under his host's genial guidance, to explore the field of Naseby. His sad occupations in Scotland, and the sad thoughts they suggested, made Carlyle disinclined for society. He had a room arranged for him at the top of his house, and there he sate and smoked, and read books on Cromwell, 'the sight of Naseby having brought the subject back out of "the abysses."' Meanwhile he had a pleasant trip to Ostend with Mr Stephen Spring Rice, Commissioner of Customs, of which he wrote vivid descriptions. On October 25, 1842, Carlyle wrote in his journal: 'For many months there has been no writing here. Alas! what was there to write? About myself, nothing; or less, if that was possible. I have not got one word to stand upon paper in regard to Oliver. The beginnings of work are even more formidable than the executing of it.' But another subject was to engross his attention for a little while. The distress of the poor became intense; less in London, however, than in other large towns. 'I declare,' he wrote to his mother early in January 1843, 'I declare I begin to feel as if I should not hold my peace any longer, as if I should perhaps open my mouth in a way that some of them are not expecting--we shall see if this book were done.' On the 20th he wrote: 'I hope it will be a rather useful kind of book.' He could not go on with Cromwell till he had unburdened his soul. 'The look of the world,' he said, 'is really quite oppressive to me. Eleven thousand souls in Paisley alone living on threehalfpence a day, and the governors of the land all busy shooting partridges and passing corn-laws the while! It is a thing no man with a speaking tongue in his head is entitled to be silent about.' The outcome of all his soul-burnings and cogitations was _Past and Present_, which appeared at the beginning of April. The reviewers set to work, 'wondering, admiring, blaming, chiefly the last.'