26 November 1877 – 2 December 1877

^Carlyle is very weary and depressed — 'unwilling to live longer — but must be patient. Mary is planning a horse and carriage. Omnibus has advantages and is decidedly economical — but a carriage might help me. But nothing can give me any satisfaction at this date I have arrived at,' he adds. * But I am better off than many a one. I am free of an irritability of nerves that tortured me a year ago. Things hurt me and rankled in me, I know not at all why. The recollection, for instance, of some man I knew forty years ago perhaps — often some one I had but the slightest acquaintance with, or only knew by eye — would suddenly, without any reason at all, come into my mind, and prick into me in the most painful manner. That is all over now.'