Thomas Carlyle’s Wonderful Words Celebrating the Continuing Importance of the Printed Word

At the State Library Today, we also genuflected in front of these amazing words from that extraordinary 19th Century wordsmith, the historian Charles (to whom Dickens dedicated his Hard Times). To anyone who still reads and benefits from the written word, these words carved in Sydney sandstone inside the vestibule to the Mitchell Library will have a vibrant, resounding, soul-stirring resonance (click on the image to see it writ-large): 

Of course, as we also realised, the powerful words herein inscribed do conflict just a little with the words we heard recently in William Wordsworth’s “Expostulation and Reply” and “The Tables Turned”. But then we do also need to realise, how much Wordsworth himself gained from the printed word!