THE WIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 181 after all ! Such thoughts maddened me, till I laid down my head on the table and sobbed aloud. It was then that somehow the idea of Benvenuto Cellini sitting up all night watching his Perseus in the furnace came into my head, and suddenly I asked myself, ' After all, in the sight of the Upper Powers, what is the mighty difference between a statue of Perseus and a loaf of bread, so that each be the thing one's hand has found to do ? The man's determined will, his energy, his patience, his resource, were the really admirable things, of which his statue of Perseus was the mere chance expression. If he had been a woman living at Craigenputtock, with a dyspeptic husband, sixteen miles from a baker, and he a bad one. all these same qualities would have come out more fully in a good loaf of bread.'" Of these labors she never complained till her health gave way, though the solitude of the place was terrible to her, and Carlyle, occupied with his work and blind to her misery, withdrew himself from her society, and rode, smoked, and mused by himself. His nervous condition made it impossible for him to sleep unless he slept alone : at least, it made him think he could not. Some- times ior days she scarcely saw him, except at meals, and in the early morning when she stole into his room for the few moments while he was shaving. It is little wonder that she called the place "the Desert," or shuddered to remember that of the three previous resi- dents one had taken to drink, and two had gone mad. A touching relic of this time is a little poem of hers, enclosed in a letter to her friend, Lord Jeffrey. It is called " To a Swallow Building Under Our Eaves " : "Thou too hast traveled, little fluttering thing — Hast seen the world, and now thy weary wing Thou too must rest. But much my little bird, couldst thou but tell, I'd give to know why here thou lik'st so well To build thy nest.
