Last Words of Thomas Carlyle Author:Thomas Carlyle, Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, Richard Preuss Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Well mounted, wrapped and equipped for travelling, our friends were on horseback at an early hour. The sunbeam was still dewy and level as they r... more »eached by a slanting path the brow of the hill-range which bounded in the valley to the left, and Wotton looked back for a moment on the blue streak of smoke which was rising from his own chimney far down in the bottom, where all that he possessed or delighted to remember on earth lay clustered together in peaceful brightness. The sound of a distant steeple-clock came faint and saddened through the sunny morning. " How trim the burgh stands among its woods and meadows! " cried Bernard, looking far across the dale ; " how gay its red steeples rise through the fleece of blue, where many a thrifty mother is cooking breakfast for herloved ones! The place is alive and astir and full of busy mortals though you think here you might cover it all with your hat. It is speaking to us, too, with its metal tongue!" Wotton moved on, for to him it was speaking not in pleasure but in pain. It was the sound which had announced to him in schoolboy years the scene of his daily martyrdom ; it was the sound he had often heard beside Jane Montagu; the note of that bell was getting doleful and of evil presage to him. " I know not how it comes," said he, " but to my imagination this journey of ours, simple as it is, seems strangely momentous. It is as if we were leaving our hampered but safe and hospitable ark to venture forth on a world of waters." "A sign that hope is not dead in you," said Bernard, " since you can still fear. We shall return with olive leaves, I prophesy." " Or at least fly to and fro upon the waters," answered Wotton. " Well, that is better than pining in the prison. We shall be among the mountains to-morrow," add...« less