While engaged on this work, Carlyle went down to Rugby by express
invitation, on Friday, 13th May, 1842, and on the following day
explored the field of Naseby, in company with Dr. Arnold. The meeting
of two such remarkable men--only six weeks before the death of
the latter--has in it something solemn and touching, and unusually
interesting. Carlyle left the school-house, expressing the hope that
it might "long continue to be what was to him one of the rarest sights
in the world--a temple of industrious peace."
Arnold, who, with the deep sympathy arising from kindred nobility of
soul, had long cherished a high reverence for Carlyle, was very proud
of having received such a guest under his roof, and during those few
last weeks of life was wont to be in high spirits, talking with his
several guests, and describing with much interest, his recent visit to
Naseby with Carlyle, "its position on some of the highest table-land
in England--the streams falling on the one side into the Atlantic, on
the other into the German Ocean--far away, too, from any town--Market
Harborough, the nearest, into which the cavaliers were chased late in
the long summer evening on the fourteenth of June.
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