I have read - nay, I have bought! - Carlyle's 'Latter Day Pamphlets,' and look on my eight shillings as very much thrown away. To me it appears that the grain of sense is so smothered up in a sack of the sheerest trash, that the former is valueless. . . . I look on him as a man who was always in danger of going mad in literature and who has now done so.
My grandmother I admired even more [than mother]. She was an Irish lady and a very kind-hearted person. She had a lot of talent, she painted extremely well. She was quite a strong factor in my life.