On February 9, 1848, Carlyle wrote in his journal: 'Chapman's money [Chapman & Hall were his publishers] all paid, lodged now in the Dumfries Bank. New edition of "Sartor" to be wanted soon. My poor books of late have yielded me a certain fluctuating annual income; at all events, I am quite at my ease as to money, and that on such low terms. I often wonder at the luxurious ways of the age. Some £1500, I think, is what has accumulated in the bank. Of fixed income (from Craigenputtock) £150 a year. Perhaps as much from my books may lie fixed amid the huge fluctuation (last year, for instance, it was £800: the year before, £100; the year before that, about £700; this year, again, it is like to be £100; the next perhaps nothing--very fluctuating indeed)--some £300 in all, and that amply suffices me. For my wife is the best of housewives; noble, too, in reference to the property, which is _hers_, which she has never once in the most distant way seemed to know to be hers. Be this noted and remembered; my thrifty little lady--every inch a lady--ah me! In short, I authentically feel indifferent to money; would not go this way or that to gain more money.'[20] The Revolution of February 24th at Paris surprised Carlyle less than most of his contemporaries, as it confirmed what he had been saying for years. He did not believe, we are told, in immediate convulsion in England; but he did believe that, unless England took warning and mended her ways, her turn would come. The excitement in London was intense, and leading men expressed themselves freely, but Carlyle's general thoughts were uttered in a lengthy letter to Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, for whom he entertained a warm regard. On March 14 he met Macaulay at Lord Mahon's at breakfast; 'Niagara of eloquent commonplace talk,' he says, 'from Macaulay. "Very good-natured man"; man cased in official mail of proof; stood my impatient fire-explosions with much patience, merely hissing a little steam up, and continued his Niagara--supply and demand; power ruinous to powerful himself; _im_possibility of Government doing more than keep the peace; suicidal distraction of new French Republic, etc. Essentially irremediable, commonplace nature of the man; all that was in him now gone to the tongue; a squat, thickset, low-browed, short, grizzled little man of fifty.'