He was much delighted with the scenery of the place;found the climate wholesome to him in a marked degree;and,with good news from home,and kindly interests here abroad,passed no disagreeable winter in that exile.There was talking,there was writing,there was hope of better health;he rode almost daily,in cheerful busy humor,along those fringed shore-roads:--beautiful leafy roads and horse-paths;with here and there a wild cataract and bridge to look at;and always with the soft sky overhead,the dead volcanic mountain on one hand,and broad illimitable sea spread out on the other.Here are two Letters which give reasonably good account of him:--"_To Thomas Carlyle,Esq.,Chelsea,London_.
"FUNCHAL,MADEIRA,16th November,1837.
"MY DEAR CARLYLE,--I have been writing a good many letters all in a batch,to go by the same opportunity;and I am thoroughly weary of writing the same things over and over again to different people.My letter to you therefore,I fear,must have much of the character of remainder-biscuit.But you will receive it as a proof that I do not wish you to forget me,though it may be useless for any other purpose.
"I reached this on the 2d,after a tolerably prosperous voyage,deformed by some days of sea-sickness,but otherwise not to be complained of.I liked my twenty fellow-passengers far better than Iexpected;--three or four of them I like much,and continue to see frequently.The Island too is better than I expected:so that my Barataria at least does not disappoint me.The bold rough mountains,with mist about their summits,verdure below,and a bright sun over all,please me much;and I ride daily on the steep and narrow paved roads,which no wheels ever journeyed on.The Town is clean,and there its merits end:but I am comfortably lodged;with a large and pleasant sitting-room to myself.I have met with much kindness;and see all the society I want,--though it is not quite equal to that of London,even excluding Chelsea.
"I have got about me what Books I brought out;and have read a little,and done some writing for _Blackwood_,--all,I have the pleasure to inform you,prose,nay extremely prose.I shall now be more at leisure;and hope to get more steadily to work;though I do not know what I shall begin upon.As to reading,I have been looking at _Goethe_,especially the _Life_,--much as a shying horse looks at a post.In truth,I am afraid of him.I enjoy and admire him so much,and feel I could so easily be tempted to go along with him.And yet Ihave a deeply rooted and old persuasion that he was the most splendid of anachronisms.A thoroughly,nay intensely Pagan Life,in an age when it is men's duty to be Christian.I therefore never take him up without a kind of inward check,as if I were trying some forbidden spell;while,on the other hand,there is so infinitely much to be learnt from him,and it is so needful to understand the world we live in,and our own age,and especially its greatest minds,that I cannot bring myself to burn my books as the converted Magicians did,or sink them as did Prospero.There must,as I think,have been some prodigious defect in his mind,to let him hold such views as his about women and some other things;and in another respect,I find so much coldness and hollowness as to the highest truths,and feel so strongly that the Heaven he looks up to is but a vault of ice,--that these two indications,leading to the same conclusion,go far to convince me he was a profoundly immoral and irreligious spirit,with as rare faculties of intelligence as ever belonged to any one.All this may be mere _goody_weakness and twaddle,on my part:but it is a persuasion that I cannot escape from;though I should feel the doing so to be a deliverance from a most painful load.If you could help me,I heartily wish you would.I never take him up without high admiration,or lay him down without real sorrow for what he chose to be.
"I have been reading nothing else that you would much care for.
Southey's _Amadis_has amused me;and Lyell's _Geology_interested me.
The latter gives one the same sort of bewildering view of the abysmal extent of Time that Astronomy does of Space.I do not think I shall take your advice as to learning Portuguese.It is said to be very ill spoken here;and assuredly it is the most direful series of nasal twangs I ever heard.One gets on quite well with English.
"The people here are,I believe,in a very low condition;but they do not appear miserable.I am told that the influence of the priests makes the peasantry all Miguelites;but it is said that nobody wants any more revolutions.There is no appearance of riot or crime;and they are all extremely civil.I was much interested by learning that Columbus once lived here,before he found America and fame.I have been to see a deserted _quinta_(country-house),where there is a great deal of curious old sculpture,in relief,upon the masonry;many of the figures,which are nearly as large as life,representing soldiers clad and armed much as I should suppose those of Cortez were.
There are no buildings about the Town,of the smallest pretensions to beauty or charm of any kind.On the whole,if Madeira were one's world,life would certainly rather tend to stagnate;but as a temporary refuge,a niche in an old ruin where one is sheltered from the shower,it has great merit.I am more comfortable and contented than I expected to be,so far from home and from everybody I am closely connected with:but,of course,it is at best a tolerable exile.
