A practical Christian would have asked God to pardon him, and made amends by active kindness to his surviving fellow- creatures.

Carlyle took another course.

In 1871, five years after his wife's death, he suddenly brought Froude a large bundle of papers, containing a memoir of Mrs.Carlyle by himself, a number of her letters, and some other biographical fragments.

Froude was to read them, to keep them, and to publish them or not, as he pleased, after Carlyle was dead.+ -- * This passage was suppressed by Froude when he published Mrs.Carlyle's Diary and Letters.

But he kept the copy made by Carlyle's niece under his superintendence, which still exists; and as an incorrect version has appeared since his death, I give the correct one now.
+ "I long much, with a tremulous, deep, and almost painful feeling, about that other Manuscript which you were kind enough to read at the very first.