Some time after his return, he wrote,—"Really, I may say I am only just beginning to recover my spirits after returning from the young and hopeful and humane republic, to this cruel, unbelieving, inveterate old monarchy. There are deeper waters of ancient knowledge and experience about one here, and one is saved from the temptation of flying off into space; but I think you have, beyond all question, the happiest country going. Still, the political talk of America, as one hears it here, is not always true to the best intentions of the country, is it?"
Writing on a July day from his office in Whitehall, he says, after speaking of the heat of the weather,—"Time has often been compared to a river: if the Thames at London represent the stream of traditional wisdom, the comparison will indeed be of an ill odor; the accumulated wisdom of the past will be proved upon analogy to be as it were the collected sewage of the centuries; and the great problem, how to get rid of it."
In March, 1854, he wrote,—"People talk a good deal about that book of Whewell's on the Plurality of Worlds. I recommend Fields to pirate it. Have you seen it? It is to show that Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, etc., are all pretty certainly uninhabitable,—being (Jupiter, Saturn, etc., to wit) strange washy limbos of places, where at the best only mollusks (or, in the case of Venus, salamanders) could exist. Hence we conclude we are the only rational creatures, which is highly satisfactory, and, what is more, quite Scriptural. Owen, on the other hand, I believe, and other scientific people, declare it a most presumptuous essay,— conclusions audacious, and reasoning fallacious, though the facts are allowed; and in that opinion I, on the ground that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the inductive philosophy, incline to concur."
Of his work he wrote,—"Well, I go on in the office, operose nihil agenda, very operose, and very nihil too. For lack of news, I send you a specimen of my labors."—"We are here going on much as usual, —occupied with nothing else but commerce and the money-market. I do not think any one is thinking audibly of anything else."—"I have read with more pleasure than anything else that I have read lately Kane's Arctic Explorations, i.e., his second voyage, which is certainly a wonderful story. The whole narrative is, I think, very characteristic of the differences between the English and the American-English habits of command and obedience."
In the autumn of 1857, after speaking of some of the features of the Sepoy revolt, he said,—"I don't believe Christianity can spread far in Asia, unless it will allow men more than one wife,—which isn't likely yet out of Utah. But I believe the old Brahmin 'Touch not and taste not, and I am holier than thou, because I don't touch and taste,' may be got rid of. As for Mahometanism, it is a crystallized monotheism, out of which no vegetation can come. I doubt its being good even for the Central negro."
March, 1859. "Excuse this letter all about my own concerns. I am pretty busy, and have time for little else: such is our fate after forty. My figure 40 stands nearly three months behind me on the roadway, unwept, unhonored, and unsung, an octavum lustrum bound up and laid on the shelf. 'So-and-so is dead,' said a friend to Lord Melbourne of some author. 'Dear me, how glad I am! Now I can bind him up.'"
It was not until 1859 that the translation of Plutarch, begun six years before, was completed and published. It had involved much wearisome study, and gave proof of patient, exact, and elegant scholarship. Clough's life in the Council-Office was exceedingly laborious, and for several years his work was increased by services rendered to Miss Nightingale, a near relative of his wife. He employed "many hours, both before and after his professional duties were over, to aid her in those reforms of the military administration to which she has devoted the remaining energies of her overtasked life." For this work he was the better fitted from having acted, during a period of relief from his regular employment, as Secretary to a Military Commission appointed by Government shortly after the Crimean War to examine and report upon the military systems of some of the chief Continental nations. But at length his health gave way under the strain of continuous overwork. He had for a long time been delicate, and early in 1861 he was obliged to give up work, and was ordered to travel abroad. He went to Greece and Constantinople, and enjoyed greatly the charms of scenery and of association which he was so well fitted to appreciate. But the release from work had come too late. He returned to England in July, his health but little improved. In a letter written at that time he spoke of Lord Campbell's death, which had just occurred. "Lord Campbell's death is rather the characteristic death of the English political man. In the Cabinet, on the Bench, and at a dinner-party, busy, animated, and full of effort to-day, and in the early morning a vessel has burst. It is a wonder they last so long." But of himself he says, in words of striking contrast,—"My nervous energy is pretty nearly spent for to-day, so I must come to a stop. I have leave till November, and by that time I hope I shall be strong again for another good spell of work." After a happy three weeks in England, he went abroad again, and spent some time with his friends the Tennysons in Auvergne and among the Pyrenees. In September he was joined by his wife in Paris, and thence went with her through Switzerland to Italy. He had scarcely reached Florence before he became alarmingly ill with symptoms of a low malaria fever. His exhausted constitution never rallied against its attack. He sank gradually away, and died on the 13th of November. "I have leave till November, and by that time I hope I shall be strong again for another good spell of work." That hope is accomplished;—
"For sure in the wide heaven there is room
For love, and pity, and for helpful deeds."
He was buried in the little Protestant cemetery at Florence, a fit resting-place for a poet, the Protestant Santa Croce, where the tall cypresses rise over the graves, and the beautiful hills keep guard around.
"Every one who knew Clough even slightly," says one of his oldest friends, "received the strongest impression of the unusual breadth and massiveness of his mind. Singularly simple and genial, he was unfortunately cast upon a self-questioning age, which led him to worry himself with constantly testing the veracity of his own emotions. He has delineated in four lines the impression which his habitual reluctance to converse on the deeper themes of life made upon those of his friends who were attracted by his frank simplicity. In one of his shorter poems he writes,—