The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I

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Title: The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I
Author: Carlyle, Thomas, 1795-1881, Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I" ***

THE CORRESPONDENCE OF THOMAS CARLYLE AND RALPH WALDO EMERSON

1834-1872

VOLUME I.

"To my friend I write a letter, and from him I receive a letter.
It is a spiritual gift, worthy of him to give, and of me to
receive."--Emerson

"What the writer did actually mean, the thing he then thought of,
the thing he then was."--Carlyle

EDITORIAL NOTE

The trust of editing the following Correspondence, committed to
me several years since by the writers, has been of easy
fulfilment. The whole Correspondence, so far as it is known to
exist, is here printed, with the exception of a few notes of
introduction, and one or two essentially duplicate letters. I
cannot but hope that some of the letters now missing may
hereafter come to light.

In printing, a dash has been substituted here and there for a
proper name, and some passages, mostly relating to details of
business transactions, have been omitted. These omissions are
distinctly designated. The punctuation and orthography of the
original letters have been in the main exactly followed. I have
thought best to print much concerning dealings with publishers,
as illustrative of the material conditions of literature during
the middle of the century, as well as of the relations of the
two friends. The notes in the two volumes are mine.

My best thanks and those of the readers of this Correspondence
are due to Mr. Moncure D. Conway, for his energetic and
successful effort to recover some of Emerson's early letters
which had fallen into strange hands.
--Charles Eliot Norton

Cambridge, Massachusetts
January 29, 1883

---------

NOTE TO REVISED EDITION

The hope that some of the letters missing from it when this
correspondence was first published might come to light, has been
fulfilled by the recovery of thirteen letters of Carlyle, and of
four of Emerson. Besides these, the rough drafts of one or two
of Emerson's letters, of which the copies sent have gone astray,
have been found. Comparatively few gaps in the Correspondence
remain to be filled.

The letters and drafts of letters now first printed are those
numbered as follows:--

Vol. I.
XXXVI. Carlyle
XLI. Emerson
XLII. Carlyle
XLVI. "
XLVII. "
LXVIII. "

Vol. II.
C. Emerson
CIV. Carlyle
CV. "
CVI. "
CVII. "
CVIII. "
CIX. "
CXII. "
CXVI. "
CXLIX. Emerson
CLII. "
CLXV. "
CLXXXVI. "

Emerson's letter of 1 May, 1859 (CLXIV.), of which only fragments
were printed in the former edition, is now printed complete, and
the extract from his Diary accompanying it appears in the form in
which it seems to have been sent to Carlyle.

--C.E.N.

December 31, 1884

-----------

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

Introduction. Emerson's early recognition of Carlyle's genius.
--His visit at Craigenputtock, in 1833.--Extracts concerning it
from letter of Carlyle, from letter of Emerson, and from English
Traits.

I. Emerson. Boston, 14 May, 1834. First acquaintance with
Carlyle's writings.--Visit to Craigenputtock.--_Sartor Resartus,_
its contents, its diction.--Gift of Webster's _Speeches_ and
Sampson Reed's _Growth of the Mind._

II. Carlyle. Chelsea, 12 August, 1834. Significance of
Emerson's gift and visit.--Sampson Reed.--Webster.--
Teufelsdrockh, its sorry reception.--Removal to London.--Article
on the Diamond Necklace.--Preparation for book on the French
Revolution.--Death of Coleridge.

III. Emerson. Concord, 20 November, 1834. Death of his brother
Edward.--Consolation in Carlyle's friendship.--Pleasure in
receiving stitched copy of Teufelsdrockh.--Goethe.--
Swedenborgianism.--Of himself.--Hope of Carlyle's coming to
America.--Gift of various publications.

IV. Carlyle. Chelsea, 3 February, 1835. Acknowledgments and
inquiries.--Sympathy for death of Edward Emerson.--Unitarianism.
--Emerson's position and pursuits.--Goethe.-Volume of French
Revolution finished.--Condition of literature.--Lecturing in
America.--Mrs. Austin.

V. Emerson. Concord, 12 March, 1835. Appreciation of Sartor.
--Dr. Channing.--Prospect of Carlyle's visit to America.--His
own approaching marriage.--Plan of a journal of Philosophy in
Boston.--Encouragement of Carlyle.

VI. Emerson. Concord, 30 April, 1835. Apathy of English public
toward Carlyle.--Hope of his visit to America.--Lectures and
lecturers in Boston.--Estimate of receipts and expenses.--Esteem
of Carlyle in America.

VII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 13 May, 1835. Emerson's marriage.
--Astonishing reception of Teufelsdrockh in New England.
--Boston Transcendentalism.--Destruction of manuscript of
first volume of _French Revolution._--Result of a year's
life in London.--Wordsworth.--Southey.

VIII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 27 June, 1835. Visit to America
questionable.--John Carlyle.--Tired out with rewriting _French
Revolution._--A London rout.--O'Connell.--Longfellow.--Emerson
and Unitarianism.

IX. Emerson. Concord, 7 October, 1835. Mrs. Child.--Public
addresses.--Marriage.--Destruction of manuscript of _French
Revolution._--Notice of _Sartor_ in _North American Review._
--Politics.--Charles Emerson.

X. Emerson. Concord, 8 April, 1836. Concern at Carlyle's
silence.--American reprint of _Sartor._--Carlyle's projected
visit.--Lecturing in New England.

XI. Carlyle. Chelsea, 29 April, 1836. Weariness over _French
Revolution._--Visit to Scotland.--Charm of London.--Letter from
James Freeman Clarke.--Article on _Sartor_ in _North American
Review._--Quatrain from Voss.

XII. Emerson. Concord, 17 September,1836. Death of Charles
Emerson.--Solicitude concerning Carlyle.--Urgency to him to come
to Concord.--Sends _Nature_ to him.--Reflections.

XIII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 5 November, 1836. Charles Emerson's
death.--Concord.--His own condition.--_French Revolution_ almost
ended.--Character of the book.--Weariness.--London and its
people.--Plans for rest.--John Sterling.--Articles on Mirabeau
and the _Diamond Necklace._--Mill's _London_ Review.--Thanks for
American Teufelsdrockh.--Mrs. Carlyle.--Might and Right, Canst
and Shalt.--Books about Goethe.

XIV. Carlyle. Chelsea, 13 February, 1837. Teufelsdrockh in
America and England.--_Nature._--Miss Martineau on Emerson.
--Mammon.--Completion of _French Revolution._--Scheme of
Lecturing in London.--America fading into the background.

XV. Emerson. Concord, 31 March, 1837. Receipt of the Mirabeau
and Diamond Necklace.--Their substance and style.--Proof-sheet of
_French Revolution._--Society in America.--Renewed invitation.
--Mrs. Carlyle.--His son Waldo.--Bronson Alcott.--Second edition
of _Sartor._

XVI. Carlyle. Chelsea, 1 June, 1837. Lectures on German
Literature.--Copy of _French Revolution_ sent.--Review of himself
in _Christian Examiner._--George Ripley.--Miss Martineau and her
book on America.--Plans.

XVII. Emerson. Concord, 13 September, 1837. _The French
Revolution._--Sale of Carlyle's books.--Lectures.

XVIII. Emerson. Concord, 2 November, 1837. Introduction given
to Charles Sumner.--Reprint of _French Revolution._--Lectures.

XIX. Carlyle. Chelsea, 8 December, 1837. Visit to Scotland.
--Mrs. Carlyle's ill-health.--His own need of rest.--John
Sterling; his regard for Emerson.--Emerson's Oration on the
American Scholar.--Proposed collection of his own Miscellanies.

XX. Emerson. Concord, 9 February, 1838. Lectures on Human
Culture.--Carlyle's praise of his Oration.--John Sterling.
--Reprint of _French Revolution._--Profits from it.--American
selection and edition of Carlyle's _Miscellanies._

XXI. Emerson. Boston, 12 March, 1838. Sale of _French
Revolution._--Arrangements concerning American edition of
_Miscellanies._

XXII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 16 March, 1838. Prospect of cash from
Yankee-land.--Poverty.--American and English reprints of
_Miscellanies._--Sterling's _Crystals from a Cavern._--Miss
Martineau on Emerson.--Lectures.--Plans.

XXIII. Emerson. Concord, 10 May, 1838. American edition of
_Miscellanies._--Invitation to Concord.--His means and mode of
life.--Sterling.--Miss Martineau.--Carlyle's poverty.

XXIV. Carlyle. Chelsea, 15 June, 1838. American _French
Revolution._--London edition of Teufelsdrockh.--Miscellanies.
--Lectures, their money result.--Plans.--Emerson's Oration.
--Mrs. Child's _Philothea._

XXV. Emerson. Boston, 30 July, 1838. Encloses bill for L50.
--_Miscellanies_ published.

XXVI. Emerson. Concord, 6 August, 1838. Publication of
_Miscellanies._--Two more volumes proposed.--Orations at
Theological School, Cambridge, and at Dartmouth College.--Carlyle
desired in America.

XXVII. Carlyle. Scotsbrig, Ecclefechan, 25 September, 1838.
Visit to his Mother.--Remittance from Emerson of L50.--
_Miscellanies_ again.--Another Course of Lectures.--Sterling.--
Miss Martineau.

XXVIII. Emerson. Concord, 17 October, 1838. Business.--Outcry
against address to Divinity College.--Injury to Carlyle's repute
in America from association with him.--Article in _Quarterly_ on
German Religious Writers.--Sterling.

XXIX. Carlyle. Chelsea, 7 November, 1838. Emerson's letters.--
Dyspepsia.--Use of money from America.--Arrangements concerning
publication of _Miscellanies._--Emerson's Orations.--Tempest in a
washbowl concerning Divinity School Address.--John Carlyle--
Postscript by Mrs. Carlyle.

XXX. Carlyle. Chelsea, 15 November, 1838. Arrangements
concerning Miscellanies.--Employments, outlooks.--Concord not
forgotten, but Emerson to come first to England.--John Carlyle.
--Miss Martineau and her books.

XXXI. Carlyle. Chelsea, 2 December, 1838. Arrival of American
reprint of _Miscellanies._--English and American bookselling.--
Proposed second edition of _French Revolution._--Reading Horace
Walpole.--Sumner.--Dartmouth Oration.--Sterling.--Dwight's
German Translations.

XXXII. Emerson. Concord, 13 January, 1839. Business.--
Remittance of L100.--Lectures on Human Life.--Dr. Carlyle.

XXXIII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 8 February, 1839. Acknowledgment of
remittance.--Arrangements for new edition of _French
Revolution._--London.--Wish for quiet.--Ill-health.--Suggestion
of writing on Cromwell.--Mr. Joseph Coolidge.--Divinity School
Address.--Mrs. Carlyle.--Gladstone cites from Emerson in his
Church and State.

XXXIV. Emerson. Concord, 15 March, 1839. Account of sales.--
Second series of _Miscellanies._--Ill wind raised by Address
blown over.--Lectures.--Birth of daughter.--_The Onyx Ring._
--Alcott.

XXXV. Emerson. Concord, 19 March, 1839. Need of copy to fill
out second series of _Miscellanies._--John S. Dwight.

XXXVI. Carlyle. Chelsea, 13 April, 1839. Solicitude on account
of Emerson's silence.--Gift to Mrs. Emerson.--Book business.
--New edition of _French Revolution._--New lectures.--Better
circumstances, better health.--Arthur Buller urges a visit to
America.--Milnes.--Emerson's growing popularity.

XXXVII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 17 April, 1839. Nothing in manuscript
fit for _Miscellanies._--Essay on Varnhagen.--Translation of
Goethe's _Mahrchen._--Cruthers and Jonson.--Dwight's book.
--Lectures.--Discontent among working people.

XXXVIII. Emerson. Boston, 20 April, 1839. Proposals of
publishers concerning _French Revolution._--Introduction of
Miss Sedgwick.

XXXIX. Emerson. Concord, 25 April, 1839. Account.--Sales
of books.

XL. Emerson. Concord, 28 April, 1839. Proposals of publishers
and accounts.

XLI. Emerson. Concord, 15 May, 1839. Arrangements with
publishers.--Matter for completion of fourth volume of
_Miscellanies._--Stearns Wheelers faithful labor.--Arthur
Buller's good witnessing.--Plans for Carlyle's visit to America.
--Milnes.--Copy of _Nature_ for him.

XLII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 29 May, 1839. Lectures happily over.--
Sansculottism.--Horse must be had.--Extempore speaking an art.--
Must lecture in America or write a book.--Wordsworth.--Sterling.
--Messages.

XLIII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 24 June, 1839. Delay in arrival of
_Miscellanies._--Custom-house rapacities.--Accounts..--No longer
poor.--Emerson's work.--Miss Sedgwick.--Daniel Webster.--Proposed
visit to Scotland.--Sinking of the Vengeur.

XLIV. Emerson. Concord, 4 July, 1839. Proof-sheet of new
edition of _French Revolution_ received.--Gift to Mrs. Emerson of
engraving of Guido's Aurora.--Publishers' accounts.--Sterling.--
Occupations.--Margaret Fuller.

XLV. Emerson. Concord, 8 August, 1839. _Miscellanies_ sent.
--Daniel Webster.--Alcott.--Thoreau.

XLVI. Carlyle. Scotsbrig, Ecclefechan, 4 September, 1839.
Rusticating.--Arrival of _Miscellanies._--Errata.--Reprint of
_Wilhelm Meister._--Estimate of the book.--Copies of _French
Revolution_ sent.--Eager expectation of Emerson's book.--
Sterling.--Plans.

XLVII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 8 December, 1839. Long silence.--Stay
in Scotland.--Chartism.--Reprint of _Miscellanies._--Stearns
Wheeler.--_Wilhelm Meister._--Boston steamers.--Speculations
about Hegira into New England.--Visitor from America who had
never seen Emerson.--Miss Martineau.--Silence and speech.--
Sterling.--Southey.--No longer desperately poor.

XLVIII. Emerson. Concord, 12 December, 1839. Copies of _French
Revolution_ arrived.--Lectures on the Present Age.--Letter from
Sterling, his paper on Carlyle.--Friends.

XLIX. Carlyle. Chelsea, 6 January, 1840. _Chartism._--
Sterling.--Monckton Milnes, paper by him on Emerson.

L. Carlyle. Chelsea, 17 January, 1840. Export and import of
books.--New editions.--Books sent to Emerson.--Cromwell as a
subject for writing.--No appetite for lecturing.--Madame Necker
on Emerson.

LI. Emerson. New York, 18 March, 1840. New York.--Loss of faith
on entering cities.--Margaret Fuller to edit a journal.--Lectures
on the Present Age.--His children.--Renewed invitation.

LII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 1 April, 1840. Count D'Orsay, his
portrait of Carlyle.--Wages for books, due to Emerson.--Milnes's
review.--Heraud.--Landor.--Lectures in prospect on Heroes and
Hero-worship.

LIII. Emerson. Concord, 21 April, 1840. Introduction of Mr.
Grinnell.--Chartism.--Reprint of it.--At work on a book.--
Booksellers' accounts.--_The Dial._--Alcott.

LIV. Emerson. Concord, 30 June, 1840. _Wilhelm Meister_
received.--Landor.--Letter to Milnes.--Lithograph of Concord.
--_The Dial,_ No. 1.

LV. Carlyle. Chelsea, 2 July, 1840. Bibliopoliana.--Lectures
about Great Men.--Lecturing in America.--Milnes and his _Poems._
--Controversial volume from Ripley.

LVI. Emerson. Concord, 30 August, 1840. Booksellers' accounts.
--Faith cold concerning Carlyle's coming to America.--
Transcendentalism and _The Dial._--Social problems.--Character of
his writing.--Charles Sumner.

LVII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 26 September, 1840. Not to go to
America for the present.--_Heroes and Hero-Worship._--Journey on
horseback.--Reading on Cromwell.--_Dial_ No. 1.--Puseyism.--Dr.
Sewell on Carlyle.--Landor.--Sterling.

LVIII. Emerson. Concord, 30 October, 1840. Booksellers'
accounts.--Projects of social reform.--Studies unproductive.
--Hopes to print a book of essays.

LIX. Carlyle. Chelsea, 9 December, 1840. Booksellers'
carelessness and accounts.--Puseyism.--Dial No. 2.--Goethe.
--Miss Martineau's _Hour and Man._--Working in Cromwellism.

LX. Carlyle. Chelsea, 21 February, 1841. To Mrs. Emerson.--
London transmuted by her alchemy.--Hope of seeing Concord.
--Miss Martineau.--Toussaint l'Ouverture.--Sheets of _Heroes
and Hero-worship_ sent to Emerson.

LXI. Emerson. Concord, 28 February, 1841. Accounts.--Essays
soon to appear.--Lecture on Reform.

LXII. Emerson. Boston, 30 April, 1841. Remittance of L100.--
Accounts.--Piratical reprint of _Heroes and Hero-worship._--
_Dial_ No. 4.

LXIII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 8 May, 1841. Visit to Milnes.--To his
Mother.--Emerson's _Essays._--His own condition.

LXIV. Carlyle. Chelsea, 21 May, 1841. Acknowledgment of
remittance of L100.--Unauthorized American reprint of _Heroes and
Hero-worship._--Improvement in circumstances.--Desire for
solitude.--Article on Emerson in _Fraser's Magazine._

LXV. Emerson. Concord, 30 May, 1841. Accounts.--Book by Jones
Very.--_Heroes and Hero-worship._--Thoreau.

LXVI. Carlyle. Chelsea, 25 June, 1841. Proposed stay at Annan.
--Motives for it.--London reprint of Emerson's Essays.--Rio.

LXVII. Emerson. Concord, 31 July, 1841. London reprint of
_Essays._--Carlyle in his own land.--Writing an oration.

LXVIII. Carlyle. Newby, Annan, Scotland, 18 August, 1841.
Speedy receipt of letter.--Stay in Scotland.--Seclusion and
sadness.--Reprint of Emerson's _Essays._--Shipwreck.

LXIX. Emerson. Concord, 30 October, 1841. Pleasure in English
reprint of _Essays._--Lectures on the Times.--Opportunities of
the Lecture-room.--Accounts.

LXX. Emerson. Concord, 14 November, 1841. Remittance of L40.--
His banker.--Gambardella.--Preparation for lectures on the Times.

LXXI. Carlyle. Chelsea, 19 November, 1841. Gambardella.--
Lawrence's portrait.--Emerson's Essays in England.--Address at
Waterville College.--_The Dial._--Emerson's criticism on Landor.

LXXII. Carlyle. Chelsea, 6 December, 1841. Acknowledgment of
remittance of L40.--American funds.--Landor.--Emerson's Lectures.

LXXIII. Emerson. New York, 28 February, 1842. Remittance of
L48.--American investments.--Death of his son.--Alcott going
to England.

LXXIV. Carlyle. Templand, 28 March, 1842. Sympathy, with
Emerson.--Death of Mrs. Carlyle's mother.--At Templand to settle
affairs.--Life there.--A book on Cromwell begun.

LXXV. Emerson. Concord, 31 March, 1842. Bereavement.--Alcott
going to England.--Editorship of _Dial._--Mr. Henry Lee.--
Lectures in New York.

---------------------

CORRESPONDENCE OF CARLYLE AND EMERSON

At the beginning of his "English Traits," Mr. Emerson, writing of
his visit to England in 1833, when he was thirty years old, says
that it was mainly the attraction of three or four writers, of
whom Carlyle was one, that had led him to Europe. Carlyle's name
was not then generally known, and it illustrates Emerson's mental
attitude that he should have thus early recognized his genius,
and felt sympathy with it.

The decade from 1820 to 1830 was a period of unusual dulness in
English thought and imagination. All the great literary
reputations belonged to the beginning of the century, Byron,
Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, had said their say.
The intellectual life of the new generation had not yet found
expression. But toward the end of this time a series of
articles, mostly on German literature, appearing in the Edinburgh
and in the Foreign Quarterly Review, an essay on Burns, another
on Voltaire, still more a paper entitled "Characteristics,"
displayed the hand of a master, and a spirit in full sympathy
with the hitherto unexpressed tendencies and aspirations of its
time, and capable of giving them expression. Here was a writer
whose convictions were based upon principles, and whose words
stood for realities. His power was slowly acknowledged. As yet
Carlyle had received hardly a token of recognition from his
contemporaries.

He was living solitary, poor, independent, in "desperate hope,"
at Craigenputtock. On August 24,1833, he makes entry in his
Journal as follows: "I am left here the solitariest, stranded,
most helpless creature that I have been for many years.....
Nobody asks me to work at articles. The thing I want to write is
quite other than an article... In _all_ times there is a word
which spoken to men; to the actual generation of men, would
thrill their inmost soul. But the way to find that word? The
way to speak it when found?" The next entry in his Journal shows
that Carlyle had found the word. It is the name "Ralph Waldo
Emerson," the record of Emerson's unexpected visit. "I shall
never forget the visitor," wrote Mrs. Carlyle, long afterwards,
"who years ago, in the Desert, descended on us, out of the clouds
as it were, and made one day there look like enchantment for us,
and left me weeping that it was only one day."

At the time of this memorable visit Emerson was morally not less
solitary than Carlyle; he was still less known; his name had
been unheard by his host in the desert. But his voice was soon
to become also the voice of a leader. With temperaments sharply
contrasted, with traditions, inheritances, and circumstances
radically different, with views of life and of the universe
widely at variance, the souls of these two young men were yet in
sympathy, for their characters were based upon the same
foundation of principle. In their independence and their
sincerity they were alike; they were united in their faith in
spiritual truth, and their reverence for it. Their modes of
thought of expression were not merely dissimilar, but divergent,
and yet, though parted by an ever widening cleft of difference,
they knew, as Carlyle said, that beneath it "the rock-strata,
miles deep, united again, and their two souls were at one"

Two days after Emerson's visit Carlyle wrote to his mother:--

"Three little happinesses have befallen us: first, a piano-tuner,
procured for five shillings and sixpence, has been here,
entirely reforming the piano, so that I can hear a little music
now, which does me no little good. Secondly, Major Irving, of
Gribton, who used at this season of the year to live and shoot at
Craigenvey, came in one day to us, and after some clatter offered
us a rent of five pounds for the right to shoot here, and even
tabled the cash that moment, and would not pocket it again.
Money easilier won never sat in my pocket; money for delivering
us from a great nuisance, for now I will tell every gunner
applicant, 'I cannot, sir; it is let.' Our third happiness was
the arrival of a certain young unknown friend, named Emerson,
from Boston, in the United States, who turned aside so far from
his British, French, and Italian travels to see me here! He had
an introduction from Mill, and a Frenchman (Baron d'Eichthal's
nephew) whom John knew at Rome. Of course we could do no other
than welcome him; the rather as he seemed to be one of the most
lovable creatures in himself we had ever looked on. He stayed
till next day with us, and talked and heard talk to his heart's
content, and left us all really sad to part with him. Jane says
it is the first journey since Noah's Deluge undertaken to
Craigenputtock for such a purpose. In any case, we had a
cheerful day from it, and ought to be thankful."

On the next Sunday, a week after his visit, Emerson wrote the
following account of it to his friend, Mr. Alexander Ireland.

"I found him one of the most simple and frank of men, and became
acquainted with him at once. We walked over several miles of
hills, and talked upon all the great questions that interest us
most. The comfort of meeting a man is that he speaks sincerely;
that he feels himself to be so rich, that he is above the
meanness of pretending to knowledge which he has not, and Carlyle
does not pretend to have solved the great problems, but rather to
be an observer of their solution as it goes forward in the world.
I asked him at what religious development the concluding passage
in his piece in the Edinburgh Review upon German literature
(say five years ago), and some passages in the piece called
'Characteristics,' pointed. He replied that he was not competent
to state even to himself,--he waited rather to see. My own
feeling was that I had met with men of far less power who had got
greater insight into religious truth. He is, as you might guess
from his papers, the most catholic of philosophers; he forgives
and loves everybody, and wishes each to struggle on in his own
place and arrive at his own ends. But his respect for eminent
men, or rather his scale of eminence, is about the reverse of the
popular scale. Scott, Mackintosh, Jeffrey, Gibbon,--even Bacon,
--are no heroes of his; stranger yet, he hardly admires Socrates,
the glory of the Greek world; but Burns, and Samuel Johnson, and
Mirabeau, he said interested him, and I suppose whoever else has
given himself with all his heart to a leading instinct, and has
not calculated too much. But I cannot think of sketching even
his opinions, or repeating his conversations here. I will
cheerfully do it when you visit me here in America. He talks
finely, seems to love the broad Scotch, and I loved him very much
at once. I am afraid he finds his entire solitude tedious, but I
could not help congratulating him upon his treasure in his wife,
and I hope he will not leave the moors; 't is so much better for
a man of letters to nurse himself in seclusion than to be filed
down to the common level by the compliances and imitations of
city society." *

-------------
* _Ralph Waldo Emerson. Recollections of his Visits to England_
By Alexander Ireland. London, 1882, p. 58.
------------

Twenty-three years later, in his "English Traits," Emerson once
more describes his visit, and tells of his impressions of
Carlyle.

"From Edinburgh I went to the Highlands. On my return I came
from Glasgow to Dumfries, and being intent on delivering a letter
which I had brought from Rome, inquired for Craigenputtock. It
was a farm in Nithsdale, in the parish of Dunscore, sixteen miles
distant. No public coach passed near it, so I took a private
carriage from the inn. I found the house amid desolate heathery
hills, where the lonely scholar nourished his mighty heart.
Carlyle was a man from his youth, an author who did not need to
hide from his readers, and as absolute a man of the world,
unknown and exiled on that hill-farm, as if holding on his own
terms what is best in London. He was tall and gaunt, with a
cliff-like brow, self-possessed and holding his extraordinary
powers of conversation in easy command; clinging to his northern
accent with evident relish; full of lively anecdote, and with a
streaming humor which floated everything he looked upon. His
talk, playfully exalting the most familiar objects, put the
companion at once into an acquaintance with his Lars and Lemurs,
and it was very pleasant to learn what was predestined to be a
pretty mythology. Few were the objects and lonely the man, 'not
a person to speak to within sixteen miles, except the minister of
Dunscore'; so that books inevitably made his topics.

"He had names of his own for all the matters familiar to his
discourse. Blackwood's was the 'sand magazine'; Fraser's nearer
approach to possibility of life was the 'mud magazine'; a piece
of road near by that marked some failed enterprise was 'the grave
of the last sixpence.' When too much praise of any genius
annoyed him, he professed hugely to admire the talent shown by
his pig. He had spent much time and contrivance in confining the
poor beast to one enclosure in his Pen; but pig, by great
strokes of judgment, had found out how to let a board down, and
had foiled him. For all that, he still thought man the most
plastic little fellow in the planet, and he liked Nero's death,
_Qualis artifex pereo!_ better than most history. He worships a
man that will manifest any truth to him. At one time he had
inquired and read a good deal about America. Landor's principle
was mere rebellion, and _that,_ he feared, was the American
principle. The best thing he knew of that country was, that in
it a man can have meat for his labor. He had read in Stewart's
book, that when he inquired in a New York hotel for the Boots, he
had been shown across the street, and had found Mungo in his own
house dining on roast turkey.

"We talked of books. Plato he does not read, and he disparaged
Socrates; and, when pressed, persisted in making Mirabeau a
hero. Gibbon he called the splendid bridge from the old world to
the new. His own reading had been multifarious. Tristram Shandy
was one of his first books after Robinson Crusoe and Robertson's
America, an early favorite. Rousseau's Confessions had
discovered to him that he was not a dunce; and it was now ten
years since he had learned German, by the advice of a man who
told him he would find in that language what he wanted.

"He took despairing or satirical views of literature at this
moment; recounted the incredible sums paid in one year by the
great booksellers for puffing. Hence it comes that no newspaper
is trusted now, no books are bought, and the booksellers are on
the eve of bankruptcy.

"He still returned to English pauperism, the crowded country, the
selfish abdication by public men of all that public persons
should perform. 'Government should direct poor men what to do.
Poor Irish folk come wandering over these moors; my dame makes
it a rule to give to every son of Adam bread to eat, and supplies
his wants to the next house. But here are thousands of acres
which might give them all meat, and nobody to bid these poor
Irish go to the moor and till it. They burned the stacks, and so
found a way to force the rich people to attend to them.'

"We went out to walk over long hills, and looked at Criffel, then
without his cap, and down into Wordsworth's country. There we
sat down and talked of the immortality of the soul. It was not
Carlyle's fault that we talked on that topic, for he has the
natural disinclination of every nimble spirit to bruise itself
against walls, and did not like to place himself where no step
can be taken. But he was honest and true, and cognizant of the
subtile links that bind ages together, and saw how every event
affects all the future. 'Christ died on the tree that built
Dunscore kirk yonder: that brought you and me together. Time
has only a relative existence.'

"He was already turning his eyes towards London with a scholar's
appreciation. London is the heart of the world, he said,
wonderful only from the mass of human beings. He liked the huge
machine. Each keeps its own round. The baker's boy brings
muffins to the window at a fixed hour every day, and that is all
the Londoner knows or wishes to know on the subject. But it
turned out good men. He named certain individuals, especially
one man of letters, his friend, the best mind he knew, whom
London had well served."

Such is the record of the beginnings of the friendship between
Carlyle and Emerson. What place this friendship held in the
lives of both, the following Correspondence shows.

---------

I. Emerson to Carlyle

Boston, Massachusetts, 14 May, 1884

My Dear Sir,--There are some purposes we delay long to execute
simply because we have them more at heart than others, and such
an one has been for many weeks, I may say months, my design of
writing you an epistle.

Some chance wind of Fame blew your name to me, perhaps two years
ago, as the author of papers which I had already distinguished
(as indeed it was very easy to do) from the mass of English
periodical criticism as by far the most original and profound
essays of the day,--the works of a man of Faith as well as
Intellect, sportive as well as learned, and who, belonging to the
despairing and deriding class of philosophers, was not ashamed to
hope and to speak sincerely. Like somebody in _Wilhelm Meister_,
I said: This person has come under obligations to me and to all
whom he has enlightened. He knows not how deeply I should grieve
at his fall, if, in that exposed England where genius always
hears the Devil's whisper, "All these kingdoms will I give thee,"
his virtue also should be an initial growth put off with age.
When therefore I found myself in Europe, I went to your house
only to say, "Faint not,--the word you utter is heard, though in
the ends of the earth and by humblest men; it works, prevails."
Drawn by strong regard to one of my teachers I went to see his
person, and as he might say his environment at Craigenputtock.
Yet it was to fulfil my duty, finish my mission, not with much
hope of gratifying him,--in the spirit of "If I love you, what is
that to you?" Well, it happened to me that I was delighted with
my visit, justified to myself in my respect, and many a time upon
the sea in my homeward voyage I remembered with joy the favored
condition of my lonely philosopher, his happiest wedlock, his
fortunate temper, his steadfast simplicity, his all means of
happiness;--not that I had the remotest hope that he should so
far depart from his theories as to expect happiness. On my
arrival at home I rehearsed to several attentive ears what I had
seen and heard, and they with joy received it.

In Liverpool I wrote to Mr. Fraser to send me Magazine, and I
have now received four numbers of the _Sartor Resartus,_ for
whose light thanks evermore. I am glad that one living scholar
is self-centred, and will be true to himself though none ever
were before; who, as Montaigne says, "puts his ear close by
himself, and holds his breath and listens." And none can be
offended with the self-subsistency of one so catholic and jocund.
And 't is good to have a new eye inspect our mouldy social forms,
our politics, and schools, and religion. I say _our,_ for it
cannot have escaped you that a lecture upon these topics written
for England may be read to America. Evermore thanks for the
brave stand you have made for Spiritualism in these writings.
But has literature any parallel to the oddity of the vehicle
chosen to convey this treasure? I delight in the contents; the
form, which my defective apprehension for a joke makes me not
appreciate, I leave to your merry discretion. And yet did ever
wise and philanthropic author use so defying a diction? As if
society were not sufficiently shy of truth without providing it
beforehand with an objection to the form. Can it be that this
humor proceeds from a despair of finding a contemporary audience,
and so the Prophet feels at liberty to utter his message in droll
sounds. Did you not tell me, Mr. Thomas Carlyle, sitting upon
one of your broad hills, that it was Jesus Christ built Dunscore
Kirk yonder? If you love such sequences, then admit, as you
will, that no poet is sent into the world before his time; that
all the departed thinkers and actors have paved your way; that
(at least when you surrender yourself) nations and ages do guide
your pen, yes, and common goose-quills as well as your diamond
graver. Believe then that harp and ear are formed by one
revolution of the wheel; that men are waiting to hear your
epical song; and so be pleased to skip those excursive involved
glees, and give us the simple air, without the volley of
variations. At least in some of your prefaces you should give us
the theory of your rhetoric. I comprehend not why you should
lavish in that spendthrift style of yours celestial truths.
Bacon and Plato have something too solid to say than that they
can afford to be humorists. You are dispensing that which is
rarest, namely, the simplest truths,--truths which lie next to
consciousness, and which only the Platos and Goethes perceive. I
look for the hour with impatience when the vehicle will be worthy
of the spirit,--when the word will be as simple, and so as
resistless, as the thought,--and, in short, when your words
will be one with things. I have no hope that you will find
suddenly a large audience. Says not the sarcasm, "Truth hath
the plague in his house"? Yet all men are _potentially_ (as
Mr. Coleridge would say) your audience, and if you will not
in very Mephistophelism repel and defy them, shall be actually;*
and whatever the great or the small may say about the charm of
diabolism, a true and majestic genius can afford to despise it.

------------
* This year, 1882, seventy thousand copies of a sixpenny edition
of _Sartor Resartus_ have been sold.
-------------

I venture to amuse you with this homiletic criticism because it
is the sense of uncritical truth seekers, to whom you are no more
than Hecuba, whose instincts assure them that there is Wisdom in
this grotesque Teutonic apocalyptic strain of yours, but that 't
is hence hindered in its effect. And though with all my heart I
would stand well with my Poet, yet if I offend I shall quietly
retreat into my Universal relations, wherefrom I affectionately
espy you as a man, myself as another.

And yet before I come to the end of my letter I may repent of my
temerity and unsay my charge. For are not all our circlets of
will as so many little eddies rounded in by the great Circle of
Necessity, and _could_ the Truth-speaker, perhaps now the best
Thinker of the Saxon race, have written otherwise? And must
not we say that Drunkenness is a virtue rather than that Cato
has erred?

I wish I could gratify you with any pleasing news of the
regeneration, education, prospects, of man in this continent.
But your philanthropy is so patient, so far-sighted, that present
evils give you less solicitude. In the last six years government
in the United States has been fast becoming a job, like great
charities. A most unfit person in the Presidency has been doing
the worst things; and the worse he grew, the more popular. Now
things seem to mend. Webster, a good man and as strong as if he
were a sinner, begins to find himself the centre of a great and
enlarging party and his eloquence incarnated and enacted by them;
yet men dare not hope that the majority shall be suddenly
unseated. I send herewith a volume of Webster's that you may see
his speech on Foot's Resolutions, a speech which the Americans
have never done praising. I have great doubts whether the book
reaches you, as I know not my agents. I shall put with it the
little book of my Swedenborgian druggist,* of whom I told you.
And if, which is hardly to be hoped, any good book should be
thrown out of our vortex of trade and politics, I shall not fail
to give it the same direction.

--------------
* _Observations on the Growth of the Mind,_ by Sampson Reed,
first published in 1825. A fifth edition of this thoughtful
little treatise was published in 1865. Mr. Reed was a graduate
of Harvard College in 1818; he died in 1880, at the age
of eighty.
---------------

I need not tell you, my dear sir, what pleasure a letter from you
would give me when you have a few moments to spare to so remote a
friend. If any word in my letter should provoke you to a reply,
I shall rejoice in my sauciness. I am spending the summer in the
country, but my address is Boston, care of Barnard, Adams, & Co.
Care of O. Rich, London. Please do make my affectionate respects
to Mrs. Carlyle, whose kindness I shall always gratefully
remember. I depend upon her intercession to insure your writing
to me. May God grant you both his best blessing.

Your friend,
R. Waldo Emerson

II. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Great Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London
12 August, 1834

My Dear Sir,--Some two weeks ago I received your kind gift from
Fraser. To say that it was welcome would be saying little: is
it not as a voice of affectionate remembrance, coming from beyond
the Ocean waters, first decisively announcing for me that a whole
New Continent _exists,_--that I too have part and lot there!
"Not till we can think that here and there one is thinking of us,
one is loving us, does this waste Earth become a peopled Garden."
Among the figures I can recollect as visiting our Nithsdale
hermitage,--all like _Apparitions_ now, bringing with them airs
from Heaven or else blasts from the other region,--there is
perhaps not one of a more undoubtedly supernal character than
yourself: so pure and still, with intents so charitable; and
then vanishing too so soon into the azure Inane, as an Apparition
should! Never has your Address in my Notebook met my eye but
with a friendly influence. Judge if I am glad to know that
there, in Infinite Space, you still hold by me.

I have read in both your books at leisure times, and now nearly
finished the smaller one. He is a faithful thinker, that
Swedenborgian Druggist of yours, with really deep ideas, who
makes me too pause and think, were it only to consider what
manner of man he must be, and what manner of thing, after all,
Swedenborgianism must be. "Through the smallest window look
well, and you can look out into the Infinite." Webster also I
can recognize a sufficient, effectual man, whom one must wish
well to, and prophesy well of. The sound of him is nowise
poetic-rhythmic; it is clear, one-toned, you might say metallic,
yet distinct, significant, not without melody. In his face,
above all, I discern that "indignation" which, if it do not make
"verses," makes _useful_ way in the world. The higher such a man
rises, the better pleased I shall be. And so here, looking
over the water, let me repeat once more what I believe is
already dimly the sentiment of all Englishmen, Cisoceanic and
Transoceanic, that we and you are not two countries, and cannot
for the life of us be; but only two _parishes_ of one country,
with such wholesome parish hospitalities, and dirty temporary
parish feuds, as we see; both of which brave parishes _Vivant!
vivant!_ And among the glories of _both_ be Yankee-doodle-doo,
and the Felling of the Western Forest, proudly remembered; and
for the rest, by way of parish constable, let each cheerfully
take such George Washington or George Guelph as it can get, and
bless Heaven! I am weary of hearing it said, "We love the
Americans," "We wish well," &c., &c. What in God's name should
we do else?

You thank me for _Teufelsdrockh;_ how much more ought I to thank
you for your hearty, genuine, though extravagant acknowledgment
of it! Blessed is the voice that amid dispiritment, stupidity,
and contradiction proclaims to us, _Euge!_ Nothing ever was more
ungenial than the soil this poor Teufelsdrockhish seed-corn has
been thrown on here; none cries, Good speed to it; the sorriest
nettle or hemlock seed, one would think, had been more welcome.
For indeed our British periodical critics, and especially
the public of _Fraser's_ Magazine (which I believe I have now
done with), exceed all speech; require not even contempt,
only oblivion. Poor Teufelsdrockh!--Creature of mischance,
miscalculation, and thousand-fold obstruction! Here nevertheless
he is, as you see; has struggled across the Stygian marshes, and
now, as a stitched pamphlet "for Friends," cannot be _burnt_ or
lost before his time. I send you one copy for your own behoof;
three others you yourself can perhaps find fit readers for: as
you spoke in the plural number, I thought there might be three;
more would rather surprise me. From the British side of the
water I have met simply one intelligent response,--clear, true,
though almost enthusiastic as your own. My British Friend too is
utterly a stranger, whose very name I know not, who did not
print, but only write, and to an unknown third party.* Shall I
say then, "In the mouth of two witnesses"? In any case, God be
thanked, I am done with it; can wash my hands of it, and send it
forth; sure that the Devil will get his full share of it,
and not a whit more, clutch as he may. But as for you, my
Transoceanic brothers, read this earnestly, for it _was_
earnestly meant and written, and contains no _voluntary_
falsehood of mine. For the rest, if you dislike it, say that I
wrote it four years ago, and could not now so write it, and on
the whole (as Fritz the Only said) "will do better another time."
With regard to style and so forth, what you call your "saucy"
objections are not only most intelligible to me, but welcome and
instructive. You say well that I take up that attitude because I
have no known public, am alone under the heavens, speaking into
friendly or unfriendly space; add only, that I will not defend
such attitude, that I call it questionable, tentative, and only
the best that I, in these mad times, could conveniently hit upon.
For you are to know, my view is that now at last we have lived to
see all manner of Poetics and Rhetorics and Sermonics, and one
may say generally all manner of _Pulpits_ for addressing mankind
from, as good as broken and abolished: alas, yes! if you have
any earnest meaning which demands to be not only listened to, but
_believed_ and _done,_ you cannot (at least I cannot) utter it
_there,_ but the sound sticks in my throat, as when a solemnity
were _felt_ to have become a mummery; and so one leaves the
pasteboard coulisses, and three unities, and Blair's Lectures,
quite behind; and feels only that there is _nothing sacred,_
then, but the _Speech of Man_ to believing Men! This, come what
will, was, is, and forever must be _sacred;_ and will one day,
doubtless, anew environ itself with fit modes; with solemnities
that are _not_ mummeries. Meanwhile, however, is it not
pitiable? For though Teufelsdrockh exclaims, "Pulpit! canst thou
not make a pulpit by simply _inverting the nearest tub?_" yet,
alas! he does not sufficiently reflect that it is still only a
tub, that the most inspired utterance will come from _it,_
inconceivable, misconceivable, to the million; questionable (not
of _ascertained_ significance) even to the few. Pity us
therefore; and with your just shake of the head join a
sympathetic, even a hopeful smile. Since I saw you I have been
trying, am still trying, other methods, and shall surely get
nearer the truth, as I honestly strive for it. Meanwhile, I know
no method of much consequence, except that of _believing,_ of
being _sincere:_ from Homer and the Bible down to the poorest
Burns's Song, I find no other Art that promises to be perennial.

---------
* In his Diary, July 26, 1834, Carlyle writes--"In the midst of
innumerable discouragements, all men indifferent or finding fault,
let me mention two small circumstances that are comfortable.
The first is a letter from some nameless Irishman in Cork
to another here, (Fraser read it to me without names,) actually
containing a _true_ and one of the friendliest possible recognitions
of me. One mortal, then, says I am _not_ utterly wrong.
Blessings on him for it! The second is a letter I got today
from Emerson, of Boston in America; sincere, not baseless,
of most exaggerated estimation. Precious is man to man."
Fifteen years later, in his _Reminiscences of My Irish
Journey,_ he enters, under date of July 16, 1849: "Near eleven
o'clock [at night] announces himself 'Father O'Shea'! (who I
thought had been _dead_); to my astonishment enter a little
gray-haired, intelligent-and-bred-looking man, with much
gesticulation, boundless loyal welcome, red with dinner and some
wine, engages that we are to meet tomorrow,--and again with
explosions of welcomes goes his way. This Father O'Shea, some
fifteen years ago, had been, with Emerson of America, one of the
_two_ sons of Adam who encouraged poor bookseller Fraser, and
didn't discourage him, to go on with Teufelsdrockh. I had often
remembered him since; had not long before _re_-inquired his
name, but understood somehow that he was dead--and now."
---------------

But now quitting theoretics, let me explain what you long to
know, how it is that I date from London. Yes, my friend, it is
even so: Craigenputtock now stands solitary in the wilderness,
with none but an old woman and foolish grouse-destroyers in it;
and we for the last ten weeks, after a fierce universal
disruption, are here with our household gods. Censure not; I
came to London for the best of all reasons,--to seek bread and
work. So it literally stands; and so do I literally stand with
the hugest, gloomiest Future before me, which in all sane moments
I good-humoredly defy. A strange element this, and I as good as
an Alien in it. I care not for Radicalism, for Toryism, for
Church, Tithes, or the "Confusion" of useful Knowledge. Much
as I can speak and hear, I am alone, alone. My brave Father,
now victorious from his toil, was wont to pray in evening
worship: "Might we say, We are not alone, for God is with us!"
Amen! Amen!

I brought a manuscript with me of another curious sort, entitled
_The Diamond Necklace._ Perhaps it will be printed soon as an
Article, or even as a separate Booklet,--a _queer_ production,
which you shall see. Finally, I am busy, constantly studying
with my whole might for a Book on the French Revolution. It is
part of my creed that the Only Poetry is History, could we tell
it right. This truth (if it prove one) I have not yet got to the
limitations of; and shall in no way except by _trying_ it in
practice. The story of the Necklace was the first attempt at
an experiment.

My sheet is nearly done; and I have still to complain of you for
telling me nothing of yourself except that you are in the
country. Believe that I want to know much and all. My wife too
remembers you with unmixed friendliness; bids me send you her
kindest wishes. Understand too that your old bed stands in a new
room here, and the old welcome at the door. Surely we shall see
you in London one day. Or who knows but Mahomet may go to the
mountain? It occasionally rises like a mad prophetic dream in
me, that I might end in the Western Woods!

From Germany I get letters, messages, and even visits; but now
no tidings, no influences, of moment. Goethe's Posthumous Works
are all published; and Radicalism (poor hungry, yet inevitable
Radicalism!) is the order of the day. The like, and even more,
from France. Gustave d'Eichthal (did you hear?) has gone over to
Greece, and become some kind of Manager under King Otho.*

-----------
* Gustave d'Eichthal, whose acquaintance Emerson had made at
Rome, and who had given him an introduction to Carlyle, was one
of a family of rich Jewish bankers at Paris. He was an ardent
follower of Saint-Simon, and an associate of Enfantin. After the
dispersion of the Saint-Simonians in 1832, he traveled much, and
continued to devote himself to the improvement of society.
----------

Continue to love me, you and my other friends; and as packets
sail so swiftly, let me know it frequently. All good be
with you!

Most faithfully,
T. Carlyle

Coleridge, as you doubtless hear, is gone. How great a Possibility,
how small a realized Result! They are delivering Orations about
him, and emitting other kinds of froth, _ut mos est._ What hurt
can it do?

III. Emerson to Carlyle *

Concord, Mass., 20 November, 1834

My Dear Sir,--Your letter, which I received last week, made a
bright light in a solitary and saddened place. I had quite
recently received the news of the death of a brother** in the
island of Porto Rico, whose loss to me will be a lifelong sorrow.
As he passes out of sight, come to me visible as well as
spiritual tokens of a fraternal friendliness which, by its own
law, transcends the tedious barriers of custom and nation; and
opens its way to the heart. This is a true consolation, and I
thanked my jealous [Greek] for the godsend so significantly
timed. It, for the moment, realizes the hope to which I have
clung with both hands, through each disappointment, that I might
converse with a man whose ear of faith was not stopped, and whose
argument I could not predict. May I use the word, "I thank my
God whenever I call you to remembrance."

----------
* This letter was printed in the _Athenaeum,_ London, June 24,
1882. It, as well as three others which appeared in the same
journal, is now reprinted, through the courtesy of its editor,
from the original.

** Edward Bliss Emerson, his next younger brother, "brother of
the brief but blazing star," of whom Emerson wrote _In Memoriam:_--

"There is no record left on earth,
Save in tablets of the heart,
Of the rich, inherent worth,
Of the grace that on him shone,
Of eloquent lips, of joyful wit;
He could not frame a word unfit,
An act unworthy to be done.

On his young promise Beauty smiled,
Drew his free homage unbeguiled,
And prosperous Age held out his hand,
And richly his large future planned,
And troops of friends enjoyed the tide,--
All, all was given, and only health denied."
----------

I receive with great pleasure the wonderful Professor now that
first the decent limbs of Osiris are collected.* We greet him
well to Cape Cod and Boston Bay. The rigid laws of matter
prohibit that the soul imprisoned within the strait edges of
these types should add one syllable thereto, or we had adjured
the Sage by every name of veneration to take possession by so
much as a Salve! of his Western World, but he remained inexorable
for any new communications.

-------------
* The four copies of _Sartor_ which Carlyle had sent were a
"stitched pamphlet," with a title-page bearing the words: "Sartor
Resartus: in Three Books. Reprinted for Friends, from Fraser's
Magazine. London, 1834."
-------------

I feel like congratulating you upon the cold welcome which you
say Teufelsdrockh* has met. As it is not earthly happy, it is
marked of a high sacred sort. I like it a great deal better than
ever, and before it was all published I had eaten nearly all my
words of objection. But do not think it shall lack a present
popularity. That it should not be known seems possible, for if a
memoir of Laplace had been thrown into that muck-heap of Fraser's
Magazine, who would be the wiser? But this has too much wit and
imagination not to strike a class who would not care for it as a
faithful mirror of this very Hour. But you know the proverb, "To
be fortunate, be not too wise." The great men of the day are on
a plane so low as to be thoroughly intelligible to the vulgar.
Nevertheless, as God maketh the world forevermore, whatever the
devils may seem to do, so the thoughts of the best minds always
become the last opinion of Society. Truth is ever born in a
manger, but is compensated by living till it has all souls for
its kingdom. Far, far better seems to me the unpopularity of
this Philosophical Poem (shall I call it?) than the adulation
that followed your eminent friend Goethe. With him I am becoming
better acquainted, but mine must be a qualified admiration. It
is a singular piece of good-nature in you to apotheosize him. I
cannot but regard it as his misfortune, with conspicuous bad
influence on his genius, that velvet life he led. What
incongruity for genius, whose fit ornaments and reliefs are
poverty and hatred, to repose fifty years on chairs of state and
what pity that his Duke did not cut off his head to save him from
the mean end (forgive) of retiring from the municipal incense "to
arrange tastefully his gifts and medals"! Then the Puritan in me
accepts no apology for bad morals in such as he. We can tolerate
vice in a splendid nature whilst that nature is battling with the
brute majority in defence of some human principle. The sympathy
his manhood and his misfortunes call out adopts even his faults;
but genius pampered, acknowledged, crowned, can only retain our
sympathy by turning the same force once expended against outward
enemies now against inward, and carrying forward and planting the
standard of Oromasdes so many leagues farther on into the envious
Dark. Failing this, it loses its nature and becomes talent,
according to the definition,--mere skill in attaining vulgar
ends. A certain wonderful friend of mine said that "a false
priest is the falsest of false things." But what makes the
priest? A cassock? O Diogenes! Or the power (and thence the
call) to teach man's duties as they flow from the Superhuman? Is
not he who perceives and proclaims the Superhumanities, he who
has once intelligently pronounced the words "Self-Renouncement,"
"Invisible Leader," "Heavenly Powers of Sorrow," and so on,
forever the liege of the same?

------------
* Emerson uniformly spells this name "Teufelsdroch."
------------

Then to write luxuriously is not the same thing as to live so,
but a new and worse offence. It implies an intellectual defect
also, the not perceiving that the present corrupt condition of
human nature (which condition this harlot muse helps to
perpetuate) is a temporary or superficial state. The good word
lasts forever: the impure word can only buoy itself in the gross
gas that now envelops us, and will sink altogether to ground as
that works itself clear in the everlasting effort of God.

May I not call it temporary? for when I ascend into the pure
region of truth (or under my undermost garment, as Epictetus and
Teufelsdrockh would say), I see that to abide inviolate, although
all men fall away from it; yea, though the whole generation of
Adam should be healed as a sore off the face of the creation.
So, my friend, live Socrates and Milton, those starch Puritans,
for evermore! Strange is it to me that you should not sympathize
(yet so you said) with Socrates, so ironical, so true, and who
"tramped in the mire with wooden shoes whenever they would force
him into the clouds." I seem to see him offering the hand to you
across the ages which some time you will grasp.

I am glad you like Sampson Reed, and that he has inspired some
curiosity respecting his Church. Swedenborgianism, if you should
be fortunate in your first meetings, has many points of
attraction for you: for instance, this article, "The poetry of
the Old Church is the reality of the New," which is to be
literally understood, for they esteem, in common with all the
Trismegisti, the Natural World as strictly the symbol or exponent
of the Spiritual, and part for part; the animals to be the
incarnations of certain affections; and scarce a popular
expression esteemed figurative, but they affirm to be the
simplest statement of fact. Then is their whole theory of social
relations--both in and out of the body--most philosophical, and,
though at variance with the popular theology, self-evident. It
is only when they come to their descriptive theism, if I may say
so, and then to their drollest heaven, and to some autocratic not
moral decrees of God, that the mythus loses me. In general, too,
they receive the fable instead of the moral of their Aesop. They
are to me, however, deeply interesting, as a sect which I think
must contribute more than all other sects to the new faith which
must arise out of all.

You express a desire to know something of myself. Account me "a
drop in the ocean seeking another drop," or God-ward, striving to
keep so true a sphericity as to receive the due ray from every
point of the concave heaven. Since my return home, I have been
left very much at leisure. It were long to tell all my
speculations on my profession and my doings thereon; but,
possessing my liberty, I am determined to keep it, at the risk of
uselessness (which risk God can very well abide), until such
duties offer themselves as I can with integrity discharge. One
thing I believe,--that Utterance is place enough: and should I
attain through any inward revelation to a more clear perception
of my assigned task, I shall embrace it with joy and praise. I
shall not esteem it a low place, for instance, if I could
strengthen your hands by true expressions of the hope and
pleasure which your writings communicate to me and to some of my
countrymen. Yet the best poem of the Poet is his own mind, and
more even than in any of the works I rejoice in the promise of
the workman. Now I am only reading and musing, and when I have
any news to tell of myself, you shall hear them.

Now as to the welcome hint that you might come to America, it
shall be to me a joyful hope. Come and found a new Academy that
shall be church and school and Parnassus, as a true Poet's house
should be. I dare not say that wit has better chance here than
in England of winning world-wages, but it can always live, and it
can scarce find competition. Indeed, indeed, you shall have the
continent to yourself were it only as Crusoe was king. If you
cared to read literary lectures, our people have vast curiosity,
and the apparatus is very easy to set agoing. Such 'pulpit' as
you pleased to erect would at least find no hindrance in the
building. A friend of mine and of yours remarked, when I
expressed the wish that you would come here, "that people were
not here, as in England, sacramented to organized schools of
opinion, but were a far more convertible audience." If at all
you can think of coming here, I would send you any and all
particulars of information with cheerfulest speed.

I have written a very long letter, yet have said nothing of much
that I would say upon chapters of the _Sartor._ I must keep
that, and the thoughts I had upon 'poetry in history',' for
another letter, or (might it be!) for a dialogue face to face.

Let me not fail of _The Diamond Necklace._ I found three greedy
receivers of Teufelsdrockh, who also radiate its light. For the
sake of your knowing what manner of men you move, I send you two
pieces writ by one of them, Frederic Henry Hedge, the article on
Swedenborg and that on Phrenology. And as you like Sampson Reed,
here are one or two more of his papers. Do read them. And since
you study French history do not fail to look at our Yankee
portrait of Lafayette. Present my best remembrances to Mrs.
Carlyle, whom that stern and blessed solitude has armed and
sublimed out of all reach of the littleness and unreason of
London. If I thought we could win her to the American shore, I
would send her the story of those godly women, the contemporaries
of John Knox's daughter, who came out hither to enjoy the worship
of God amidst wild men and wild beasts.

Your friend and servant,
R. Waldo Emerson

IV. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London
3 February, 1835

My Dear Sir,--I owe you a speedy answer as well as a grateful
one; for, in spite of the swift ships of the Americans, our
communings pass too slowly. Your letter, written in November,
did not reach me till a few days ago; your Books or Papers have
not yet come,--though the ever-punctual Rich, I can hope, will
now soon get them for me. He showed me his _way-bill_ or
invoice, and the consignment of these friendly effects "to
another gentleman," and undertook with an air of great fidelity
to bring all to a right bearing. On the whole, as the Atlantic
is so broad and deep, ought we not rather to esteem it a
beneficent miracle that messages can arrive at all; that a
little slip of paper will skim over all these weltering floods,
and other inextricable confusions, and come at last, in the hand
of the Twopenny Postman, safe to your lurking-place, like green
leaf in the bill of Noah's Dove? Let us be grateful for mercies;
let us use them while they are granted us. Time was when "they
that feared the Lord spake _often_ one to another." A friendly
thought is the purest gift that man can afford to man. "Speech"
also, they say, "is cheerfuler than light itself."

The date of your letter gives me unhappily no idea but that of
Space and Time. As you know my whereabout, will you throw a
little light on your own? I can imagine Boston, and have often
seen the musket volleys on Bunker Hill; but in this new spot
there is nothing for me save sky and earth, the chance of
retirement, peace, and winter seclusion. Alas! I can too well
fancy one other thing: the bereavement you allude to, the sorrow
that will so long be painful before it can become merely sad and
sacred. Brothers, especially in these days, are much to us: had
one no brother, one could hardly understand what it was to have a
Friend; they are the Friends whom Nature chose for us; Society
and Fortune, as things now go, are scarcely compatible with
Friendship, and contrive to get along, miserably enough, without
it. Yet sorrow not above measure for him that is gone. He is,
in very deed and truth, with God,--_where_ you and I both are.
What a thin film it is that divides the Living from the Dead! In
still nights, as Jean Paul says, "the limbs of my Buried Ones
touched cold on my soul, and drove away its blots, as dead hands
heal eruptions of the skin." Let us turn back into Life.

That you sit there bethinking yourself, and have yet taken no
course of activity, and can without inward or outward hurt so
sit, is on the whole rather pleasing news to me. It is a great
truth which you say, that Providence can well afford to have one
sit: another great truth which you feel without saying it is
that a course wherein clear faith cannot go with you may be worse
than none; if clear faith go never so slightly against it, then
it is certainly worse than none. To speak with perhaps ill-bred
candor, I like as well to fancy you _not_ preaching to Unitarians
a Gospel after their heart. I will say farther, that you are the
only man I ever met with of that persuasion whom I could
unobstructedly like. The others that I have seen were all a kind
of halfway-house characters, who, I thought, should, if they had
not wanted courage, have ended in unbelief; in "faint possible
Theism," which I like considerably worse than Atheism. Such, I
could not but feel, deserve the fate they find here; the bat
fate: to be killed among the rats as a bird, among the birds as
a rat.... Nay, who knows but it is doubts of the like kind in
your own mind that keep you for a time inactive even now? For
the rest, that you have liberty to choose by your own will
merely, is a great blessing: too rare for those that could use
it so well; nay, often it is difficult to use. But till _ill
health_ of body or of mind warns you that the moving, not the
sitting, position is essential, _sit_ still, contented in
conscience; understanding well that no man, that God only knows
_what_ we are working, and will show it one day; that such and
such a one, who filled the whole Earth with his hammering and
troweling, and would not let men pass for his rubbish, turns out
to have built of mere coagulated froth, and vanishes with his
edifice, traceless, silently, or amid hootings illimitable;
while again that other still man, by the word of his mouth, by
the very look of his face, was scattering influences, as _seeds_
are scattered, "to be found flourishing as a banyan grove after a
thousand years." I beg your pardon for all this preaching, if it
be superfluous impute it to no miserable motive.

Your objections to Goethe are very natural, and even bring you
nearer me: nevertheless, I am by no means sure that it were not
your wisdom, at this moment, to set about learning the German
Language, with a view towards studying _him_ mainly! I do not
assert this; but the truth of it would not surprise me. Believe
me, it is impossible you can be more a Puritan than I; nay, I
often feel as if I were far too much so: but John Knox himself,
could he have seen the peaceable impregnable _fidelity_ of that
man's mind, and how to him also Duty was _infinite,_--Knox would
have passed on, wondering not reproaching. But I will tell you
in a word why I like Goethe: his is the only _healthy_ mind,
of any extent, that I have discovered in Europe for long
generations; it was he that first convincingly proclaimed to me
(convincingly, for I saw it _done_): Behold, even in this
scandalous Sceptico-Epicurean generation, when all is gone but
hunger and cant, it is still possible that Man be a Man! For
which last Evangel, the confirmation and rehabilitation of all
other Evangels whatsoever, how can I be too grateful? On the
whole, I suspect you yet know only Goethe the Heathen (Ethnic);
but you will know Goethe the Christian by and by, and like that
one far better. Rich showed me a Compilation* in green cloth
boards that you had beckoned across the water: pray read the
fourth volume of that, and let a man of your clearness of feeling
say whether that was a Parasite or a Prophet.--And then as to
"misery" and the other dark ground on which you love to see
genius paint itself,--alas! consider whether misery is not _ill
health_ too; also whether good fortune is not worse to bear than
bad; and on the whole whether the glorious serene summer is not
greater than the wildest hurricane,--as Light, the Naturalists
say, is stronger a thousand times than Lightning. And so I
appeal to Philip sober;--and indeed have hardly said as much
about Goethe since I saw you, for nothing reigns here but
twilight delusion (falser for the time than midnight darkness) on
that subject, and I feel that the most suffer nothing thereby,
having properly nothing or little to do with such a matter but
with you, who are not "seeking recipes for happiness," but
something far higher, it is not so, and _therefore_ I have spoken
and appealed; and hope the new curiosity, if I have awakened
any, will do you no mischief.

------------
* Obviously Carlyle's _Specimens of German Romance,_ of which the
fourth volume was devoted to Goethe.
------------

But now as to myself; for you will grumble at a sheet of
speculation sent so far: I am here still, as Rob Roy was on
Glasgow Bridge, _biding tryste;_ busy extremely, with work that
will not profit me at all in some senses; suffering rather in
health and nerves; and still with nothing like dawn on any
quarter of my horizon. _The Diamond Necklace_ has not been
printed, but will be, were this _French Revolution_ out; which
latter, however, drags itself along in a way that would fill your
benevolent heart with pity. I am for three small volumes now,
and have one done. It is the dreadfulest labor (with these
nerves, this liver) I ever undertook; all is so inaccurate,
superficial, vague, in the numberless books I consult; and
without accuracy at least, what other good is possible? Add to
this that I have no hope about the thing, except only that I
_shall be done with it:_ I can reasonably expect nothing from
any considerable class here, but at _best_ to be scolded and
reproached; perhaps to be left standing "on my own basis,"
without note or comment of any kind, save from the Bookseller,
who will lose his printing. The hope I have however is sure: if
life is lent me, I shall be _done with_ the business; I will
write this "History of Sansculottism," the notablest phenomenon I
meet with since the time of the Crusades or earlier; after which
my part is played. As for the future, I heed it little when so
busy; but it often seems to me as if one thing were becoming
indisputable: that I must seek another craft than literature for
these years that may remain to me. Surely, I often say, if ever
man had a finger-of-Providence shown him, thou hast it; literature
will neither yield thee bread, nor a stomach to digest bread with:
quit it in God's name, shouldst thou take spade and mattock instead.
The truth is, I believe literature to be as good as dead and gone
in all parts of Europe at this moment, and nothing but hungry
Revolt and Radicalism appointed us for perhaps three generations;
I do not see how a man can honestly live by writing in another
dialect than that, in England at least; so that if you determine
on not living dishonestly, it will behove you to look several
things full in the face, and ascertain what is what with some
distinctness. I suffer also terribly from the solitary existence
I have all along had; it is becoming a kind of passion with me,
to feel myself among my brothers. And then, How? Alas! I
care not a doit for Radicalism, nay I feel it to be a wretched
necessity, unfit for me; Conservatism being not unfit only
but false for me: yet these two are the grand Categories
under which all English spiritual activity that so much as
thinks remuneration possible must range itself. I look
around accordingly on a most wonderful vortex of things; and
pray to God only, that as my day, is so my strength may be.
What will come out of it is wholly uncertain: for I have
possibilities too; the possibilities of London are far from
exhausted yet: I have a brave brother, who invites me to
come and be quiet with him in Rome; a brave friend (known to
you) who opens the door of a new Western world,--and so we will
stand considering and consulting, at least till the Book be over.
Are all these things interesting to you? I know they are.

As for America and Lecturing, it is a thing I do sometimes turn
over, but never yet with any seriousness. What your friend says
of the people being more persuadable, so far, as having no
Tithe-controversy, &c., &c. will go, I can most readily understand
it. But apart from that, I should rather fancy America mainly a
new Commercial England, with a fuller pantry,--little more or little
less. The same unquenchable, almost frightfully unresting spirit
of endeavor, directed (woe is me!) to the making of money, or
money's worth; namely, food finer and finer, and gigmanic
renown higher and higher: nay, must not your gigmanity be a
_purse_-gigmanity, some half-shade worse than a purse-and-pedigree
one? Or perhaps it is not a whit worse; only rougher, more
substantial; on the whole better? At all events ours is fast
becoming identical with it; for the pedigree ingredient is as
near as may be gone: _Gagnez de l'argent, et ne vous faites pas
pendre,_ this is very nearly the whole Law, first Table and
second. So that you see, when I set foot on American land, it
will be on no Utopia; but on a _conditional_ piece of ground
where some things are to be expected and other things not. I may
say, on the other hand, that Lecturing (or I would rather it were
_speaking_) is a thing I have always had some hankering after:
it seems to me I could really _swim_ in that element, were I once
thrown into it; that in fact it would develop several things in
me which struggle violently for development. The great want I
have towards such an enterprise is one you may guess at: want of
a _rubric,_ of a title to name my speech by. Could any one but
appoint me Lecturing Professor of Teufelsdrockh's science,--
"Things in general"! To discourse of Poets and Poetry in the
Hazlitt style, or talk stuff about the Spirit of the Age, were
most unedifying: one knows not what to call himself. However,
there is no doubt that were the child born it _might_ be
christened; wherefore I will really request you to take the
business into your consideration, and give me in the most
rigorous sober manner you can some scheme of it. How many
Discourses; what Towns; the probable Expenses, the probable net
Income, the Time, &c., &c.: all that you can suppose a man
wholly ignorant might want to know about it. America I should
like well enough to visit, much as I should another part of my
native country: it is, as you see, distinctly possible that such
a thing might be; we will keep it hanging, to solace ourselves
with it, till the time decide.

Have I involved you in double postage by this loquacity? or What
is your American rule? I did not intend it when I began; but
today my confusion of head is very great and words must be
multiplied with only a given quantity of meaning.

My wife, who is just gone out to spend the day with a certain
"celebrated Mrs. Austin," (called also the "celebrated Translatress
of Puckler-Muskau,") charged me very specially to send you
her love, her good wishes and thanks: I assure you there
is no hypocrisy in that. She votes often for taking the
Transatlantic scheme into contemplation; declares farther that
my Book and Books must and will indisputably prosper (at some
future era), and takes the world beside me--as a good wife and
daughter of John Knox should. Speaking of "celebrated" persons
here, let me mention that I have learned by stern experience, as
children do with fire, to keep in general quite out of the way of
celebrated persons, more especially celebrated women. This Mrs.
Austin, who is half ruined by celebrity (of a kind), is the only
woman I have seen not wholly ruined by it. Men, strong men, I
have seen die of it, or go mad by it. _Good_ fortune is far
worse than bad!

Will you write with all despatch, my dear sir; fancy me a
fellow-wayfarer, who cordially bids you God-speed, and would
fain keep in sight of you, within sound of you.

Yours with great sincerity,
T. Carlyle

V. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 12 March, 1838

My Dear Sir,--I am glad of the opportunity of Mr. Barnard's*
visit to say health and peace be with you. I esteem it the best
sign that has shone in my little section of space for many days,
that some thirty or more intelligent persons understand and
highly appreciate the _Sartor._ Dr. Channing sent to me for it
the other day, and I have since heard that he had read it with
great interest. As soon as I go into town I shall see him and
measure his love. I know his genius does not and cannot engage
your attention much. He possesses the mysterious endowment of
natural eloquence, whose effect, however intense, is limited, of
course, to personal communication. I can see myself that his
writings, without his voice, may be meagre and feeble. But
please love his catholicism, that at his age can relish the
_Sartor,_ born and inveterated as he is in old books. Moreover,
he lay awake all night, he told my friend last week, because he
had learned in the evening that some young men proposed to issue
a journal, to be called _The Transcendentalist,_ as the organ of
a spiritual philosophy. So much for our gossip of today.

---------
* Mr. Henry Barnard, of Hartford, Connecticut, to whom Emerson
had given a note of introduction to Carlyle.
---------

But my errand is yet to tell. Some friends here are very
desirous that Mr. Fraser should send out to a bookseller here
fifty or a hundred copies of the _Sartor._ So many we want very
much; they would be sold at once. If we knew that two or three
hundred would be taken up, we should reprint it now. But we
think it better to satisfy the known inquirers for the book
first, and when they have extended the demand for it, then to
reproduce it, a naturalized Yankee. The lovers of Teufelsdrockh
here are sufficiently enthusiastic. I am an icicle to them.
They think England must be blind and deaf if the Professor makes
no more impression there than yet appears. I, with the most
affectionate wishes for Thomas Carlyle's fame, am mainly bent on
securing the medicinal virtues of his book for my young
neighbors. The good people think he overpraises Goethe. There I
give him up to their wrath. But I bid them mark his unsleeping
moral sentiment; that every other moralist occasionally nods,
becomes complaisant and traditional; but this man is without
interval on the side of equity and humanity! I am grieved for
you, O wise friend, that you cannot put in your own contemptuous
disclaimer of such puritanical pleas as are set up for you; but
each creature and Levite must do after his kind.

Yet do not imagine that I will hurt you in this unseen domain of
yours by any Boswellism. Every suffrage you get here is fairly
your own. Nobody is coaxed to admire you, and you have won
friends whom I should be proud to show you, and honorable women
not a few. And cannot you renew and confirm your suggestion
touching your appearance in this continent? Ah, if I could give
your intimation the binding force of an oracular word!--in a few
months, please God, at most, I shall have wife, house, and home
wherewith and wherein to return your former hospitality. And if
I could draw my prophet and his prophetess to brighten and
immortalize my lodge, and make it the window through which for a
summer you should look out on a field which Columbus and Berkeley
and Lafayette did not scorn to sow, my sun should shine clearer
and life would promise something better than peace. There is a
part of ethics, or in Schleiermacher's distribution it might be
physics, which possesses all attraction for me; to wit, the
compensations of the Universe, the equality and the coexistence
of action and reaction, that all prayers are granted, that every
debt is paid. And the skill with which the great All maketh
clean work as it goes along, leaves no rag, consumes its smoke,--
will I hope make a chapter in your thesis.

I intimated above that we aspire to have a work on the First
Philosophy in Boston. I hope, or wish rather. Those that are
forward in it debate upon the name. I doubt not in the least its
reception if the material that should fill it existed. Through
the thickest understanding will the reason throw itself instantly
into relation with the truth that is its object, whenever that
appears. But how seldom is the pure loadstone produced! Faith
and love are apt to be spasmodic in the best minds: Men live on
the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which yet they never
enter, and with their hand on the door-latch they die outside.
Always excepting my wonderful Professor, who among the living has
thrown any memorable truths into circulation? So live and
rejoice and work, my friend, and God you aid, for the profit of
many more than your mortal eyes shall see. Especially seek with
recruited and never-tired vision to bring back yet higher and
truer report from your Mount of Communion of the Spirit that
dwells there and creates all. Have you received a letter from me
with a pamphlet sent in December? Fail not, I beg of you, to
remember me to Mrs. Carlyle.

Can you not have some _Sartors_ sent? Hilliard, Gray, & Co. are
the best publishers in Boston. Or Mr. Rich has connections with
Burdett in Boston.

Yours with respect and affection,
R. Waldo Emerson

VI. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 30 April, 1835

My Dear Sir,--I received your letter of the 3d of February on the
20th instant, and am sorry that hitherto we have not been able to
command a more mercantile promptitude in the transmission of
these light sheets. If desire of a letter before it arrived, or
gladness when it came, could speed its journey, I should have it
the day it was written. But, being come, it makes me sad and
glad by turns. I admire at the alleged state of your English
reading public without comprehending it, and with a hoping
scepticism touching the facts. I hear my Prophet deplore, as his
predecessors did, the deaf ear and the gross heart of his people,
and threaten to shut his lips; but, happily, this he cannot do,
any more than could they. The word of the Lord _will_ be spoken.
But I shall not much grieve that the English people and you are
not of the same mind if that apathy or antipathy can by any means
be the occasion of your visiting America. The hope of this is so
pleasant to me, that I have thought of little else for the week
past, and having conferred with some friends on the matter, I
shall try, in obedience to your request, to give you a statement
of our capabilities, without indulging my penchant for the
favorable side. Your picture of America is faithful enough: yet
Boston contains some genuine taste for literature, and a good
deal of traditional reverence for it. For a few years past, we
have had, every winter, several courses of lectures, scientific,
political, miscellaneous, and even some purely literary, which
were well attended. Some lectures on Shakespeare were crowded;
and even I found much indulgence in reading, last winter, some
Biographical Lectures, which were meant for theories or portraits
of Luther, Michelangelo, Milton, George Fox, Burke. These
courses are really given under the auspices of Societies, as
"Natural History Society," "Mechanics' Institutes," "Diffusion of
Useful Knowledge," &c., &c., and the fee to the lecturer is
inconsiderable, usually $20 for each lecture. But in a few
instances individuals have undertaken courses of lectures, and
have been well paid. Dr. Spurzheim* received probably $3,000 in
the few months that he lived here. Mr. Silliman, a Professor of
Yale College, has lately received something more than that for a
course of fifteen or sixteen lectures on Geology. Private
projects of this sort are, however, always attended with a degree
of uncertainty. The favor of my townsmen is often sudden and
spasmodic, and Mr. Silliman, who has had more success than ever
any before him, might not find a handful of hearers another
winter. But it is the opinion of many friends whose judgment I
value, that a person of so many claims upon the ear and
imagination of our fashionable populace as the "author of the
_Life of Schiller,_" "the reviewer of _Burns's Life,_" the live
"contributor to the _Edinburgh_ and _Foreign_ Reviews," nay, the
"worshipful Teufelsdrockh," the "personal friend of Goethe,"
would, for at least one season, batter down opposition, and
command all ears on whatever topic pleased him, and that, quite
independently of the merit of his lectures, merely for so many
names' sake.

-----------
* The memory of Dr. Spurzheim has faded, but his name is still
known to men of science on both sides of the Atlantic as that of
the most ardent and accomplished advocate of the doctrine of
Phrenology. He came to the United States in 1832 to advance the
cause he had at heart, but he had been only a short time in the
country when he died at Boston of a fever.
-------------

But the subject, you say, does not yet define itself. Whilst it
is "gathering to a god," we who wait will only say, that we know
enough here of Goethe and Schiller to have some interest in
German literature. A respectable German here, Dr. Follen, has
given lectures to a good class upon Schiller. I am quite sure
that Goethe's name would now stimulate the curiosity of scores of
persons. On English literature, a much larger class would have
some preparedness. But whatever topics you might choose, I need
not say you must leave under them scope for your narrative and
pictorial powers; yes, and space to let out all the length of
all the reins of your eloquence of moral sentiment. What "Lay
Sermons" might you not preach! or methinks "Lectures on Europe"
were a sea big enough for you to swim in. The only condition our
adolescent ear insists upon is, that the English as it is spoken
by the unlearned shall be the bridge between our teacher and
our tympanum.

_Income and Expenses._--All our lectures are usually delivered in
the same hall, built for the purpose. It will hold 1,200
persons; 900 are thought a large assembly. The expenses of
rent, lights, doorkeeper, &c. for this hall, would be $12 each
lecture. The price of $3 is the least that might be demanded for
a single ticket of admission to the course,--perhaps $4; $5 for
a ticket admitting a gentleman and lady. So let us suppose we
have 900 persons paying $3 each, or $2,700. If it should happen,
as did in Prof. Silliman's case, that many more than 900 tickets
were sold, it would be easy to give the course in the day and in
the evening, an expedient sometimes practised to divide an
audience, and because it is a great convenience to many to choose
their time. If the lectures succeed in Boston, their success is
insured at Salem, a town thirteen miles off, with a population of
15,000. They might, perhaps, be repeated at Cambridge, three
miles from Boston, and probably at Philadelphia, thirty-six
hours distant.

At New York anything literary has hitherto had no favor. The
lectures might be fifteen or sixteen in number, of about an hour
each. They might be delivered, one or two in each week. And if
they met with sudden success, it would be easy to carry on the
course simultaneously at Salem, and Cambridge, and in the city.
They must be delivered in the winter.

Another plan suggested in addition to this. A gentleman here is
giving a course of lectures on English literature to a private
class of ladies, at $10 to each subscriber. There is no doubt,
were you so disposed, you might turn to account any writings in
the bottom of your portfolio, by reading lectures to such a
class, or, still better, by speaking.

_Expense of Living._--You may travel in this country for $4 to
$4.50 a day. You may board in Boston in a "gigmanic" style for
$8 per week, including all domestic expenses. Eight dollars per
week is the board paid by the permanent residents at the Tremont
House,--probably the best hotel in North America. There, and at
the best hotels in New York, the lodger for a few days pays at
the rate of $1.50 per day. Twice eight dollars would provide a
gentleman and lady with board, chamber, and private parlor, at a
fashionable boardinghouse. In the country, of course, the
expenses are two thirds less. These are rates of expense where
economy is not studied. I think the Liverpool and New York
packets demand $150 of the passenger, and their accommodations
are perfect. (N.B.--I set down all sums in dollars. You may
commonly reckon a pound sterling worth $4.80.) "The man is
certain of success," say those I talk with, "for one winter, but
not afterwards." That supposes no extraordinary merit in the
lectures, and only regards you in your leonine aspect. However,
it was suggested that, if Mr. C. would undertake a Journal of
which we have talked much, but which we have never yet produced,
he would do us great service, and we feel some confidence that it
could be made to secure him a support. It is that project which
I mentioned to you in a letter by Mr. Barnard,--a book to be
called _The Transcendentalist,_ or _The Spiritual Inquirer,_ or
the like, and of which F.H. Hedge* was to be editor. Those
who are most interested in it designed to make gratuitous
contributions to its pages, until its success could be assured.
Hedge is just leaving our neighborhood to be settled as a
minister two hundred and fifty miles off, in Maine, and entreats
that you will edit the journal. He will write, and I please
myself with thinking I shall be able to write under such
auspices. Then you might (though I know not the laws respecting
literary property) collect some of your own writings and reprint
them here. I think the _Sartor_ would now be sure of a sale.
Your _Life of Schiller,_ and _Wilhelm Meister,_ have been long
reprinted here. At worst, if you wholly disliked us, and
preferred Old England to New, you can judge of the suggestion of
a knowing man, that you might see Niagara, get a new stock of
health, and pay all your expenses by printing in England a book
of travels in America.

----------
*Now the Rev. Dr. Hedge, late Professor of German and of
Ecclesiastical History in Harvard College.
------------

I wish you to know that we do not depend for your _eclat_ on your
being already known to rich men here. You are not. Nothing has
ever been published here designating you by name. But Dr.
Channing reads and respects you. That is a fact of importance to
our project. Several clergymen, Messrs. Frothingham, Ripley,
Francis, all of them scholars and Spiritualists, (some of them,
unluckily, called Unitarian,) love you dearly, and will work
heartily in your behalf. Mr. Frothing ham, a worthy and
accomplished man, more like Erasmus than Luther, said to me on
parting, the other day, "You cannot express in terms too
extravagant my desire that he should come." George Ripley,
having heard, through your letter to me, that nobody in England
had responded to the _Sartor,_ had secretly written you a most
reverential letter, which, by dint of coaxing, be read to me,
though he said there was but one step from the sublime to the
ridiculous. I prayed him, though I thought the letter did him no
justice, save to his heart, to send you it or another; and he
says he will. He is a very able young man, even if his letter
should not show it.* He said he could, and would, bring many
persons to hear you, and you should be sure of his utmost aid.
Dr. Bradford, a medical man, is of good courage. Mr. Loring,** a
lawyer, said,"--Invite Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle to spend a couple of
months at my house," (I assured him I was too selfish for that,)
"and if our people," he said, "cannot find out his worth, I will
subscribe, with, others, to make him whole of any expense he
shall incur in coming." Hedge promised more than he ought.
There are several persons beside, known to me, who feel a warm
interest in this thing. Mr. Furness, a popular and excellent
minister in Philadelphia, at whose house Harriet Martineau was
spending a few days, I learned the other day "was feeding Miss
Martineau with the _Sartor._" And here some of the best women I
know are warm friends of yours, and are much of Mrs. Carlyle's
opinion when she says, Your books shall prosper.

-----------
* Emerson's estimate of Mr. Ripley was justified as the years
went on. His _Life,_ by Mr. Octavius Frothingham,--like his
father, "a worthy and accomplished, man," but more like Luther
than Erasmus,--forms one of the most attractive volumes of the
series of _Lives of American Men of Letters._

** The late Ellis Gray Loring, a man of high character, well
esteemed in his profession, and widely respected.
----------

On the other hand, I make no doubt you shall be sure of some
opposition. Andrews Norton, one of our best heads, once a
theological professor, and a destroying critic, lives upon a rich
estate at Cambridge, and frigidly excludes the Diderot paper from
a _Select Journal_ edited by him, with the remark, "Another paper
of the Teufelsdrockh School." The University perhaps, and much
that is conservative in literature and religion, I apprehend,
will give you its cordial opposition, and what eccentricity can
be collected from the Obituary Notice on Goethe, or from the
_Sartor,_ shall be mustered to demolish you. Nor yet do I feel
quite certain of this. If we get a good tide with us, we shall
sweep away the whole inertia, which is the whole force of these
gentlemen, except Norton. That you do not like the Unitarians
will never hurt you at all, if possibly you do like the
Calvinists. If you have any friendly relations to your native
Church, fail not to bring a letter from a Scottish Calvinist to a
Calvinist here, and your fortune is made. But that were too good
to happen.

Since things are so, can you not, my dear sir, finish your new
work and cross the great water in September or October, and try
the experiment of a winter in America? I cannot but think that
if we do not make out a case strong enough to make you build your
house, at least you should pitch your tent among us. The country
is, as you say, worth visiting, and to give much pleasure to a
few persons will be some inducement to you. I am afraid to
press this matter. To me, as you can divine, it would be an
unspeakable comfort; and the more, that I hope before that time
so far to settle my own affairs as to have a wife and a house to
receive you. Tell Mrs. Carlyle, with my affectionate regards,
that some friends whom she does not yet know do hope with me to
have her company for the next winter at our house, and shall not
cease to hope it until you come.

I have many things to say upon the topics of your letter, but my
letter is already so immeasurably long, it must stop. Long as it
is, I regret I have not more facts. Dr. Channing is in New York,
or I think, despite your negligence of him, I should have visited
him on account of his interest in you. Could you see him you
would like him. I shall write you immediately on learning
anything new bearing on this business. I intended to have
despatched this letter a day or two sooner, that it might go by
the packet of the 1st of May from New York. Now it will go by
that of the 8th, and ought to reach you in thirty days. Send me
your thoughts upon it as soon as you can. I _jalouse_ of that
new book. I fear its success may mar my project.

Yours affectionately,
R. Waldo Emerson

VII. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London
13 May, 1835

Thanks, my kind friend, for the news you again send me. Good
news, good new friends; nothing that is not good comes to me
across these waters. As if the "Golden West" seen by Poets were
no longer a mere optical phenomenon, but growing a reality, and
coining itself into solid blessings! To me it seems very
strange; as indeed generally this whole Existence here below
more and more does.

We have seen your Barnard: a most modest, intelligent, compact,
hopeful-looking man, who will not revisit you without conquests
from his expedition hither. We expect to see much more of
him; to instruct him, to learn of him: especially about that
real-imaginary locality of "Concord," where a kindly-speaking
voice lives incarnated, there is much to learn.

That you will take to yourself a wife is the cheerfulest tidings
you could send us. It is in no wise meet for man to be alone;
and indeed the beneficent Heavens, in creating Eve, did
mercifully guard against that. May it prove blessed, this new
arrangement! I delight to prophesy for you peaceful days in it;
peaceful, not idle; filled rather with that best activity which
is the stillest. To the future, or perhaps at this hour actual
Mrs. Emerson, will you offer true wishes from two British
Friends; who have not seen her with their eyes, but whose
thoughts need not be strangers to the Home she will make for you.
Nay, you add the most chivalrous summons: which who knows but
one day we may actually stir ourselves to obey! It may hover for
the present among the gentlest of our day-dreams; mild-lustrous;
an impossible possibility. May all go well with you, my worthy
Countryman, Kinsman, and brother Man!

This so astonishing reception of Teufelsdrockh in your
New England circle seems to me not only astonishing, but
questionable; not, however, to be quarreled with. I may say:
If the New. England cup is dangerously sweet, there are here in
Old England whole antiseptic floods of good _hop_-decoction;
therein let it mingle; work wholesomely towards what clear
benefit it can. Your young ones too, as all exaggeration is
transient, and exaggerated love almost itself a blessing, will
get through it without damage. As for Fraser, however, the idea
of a new Edition is frightful to him; or rather ludicrous,
unimaginable. Of him no man has inquired for a _Sartor:_
in his whole wonderful world of Tory Pamphleteers, Conservative
Younger-brothers, Regent-Street Loungers, Crockford Gamblers, Irish
Jesuits, drunken Reporters, and miscellaneous unclean persons
(whom nitre and much soap will not wash clean), not a soul has
expressed the smallest wish that way. He shrieks at the idea.
Accordingly I realized these four copies from [him,] all he will
surrender; and can do no more. Take them with my blessing. I
beg you will present one to the honorablest of those "honorable
women"; say to her that her (unknown) image as she reads
shall be to me a bright faultless vision, textured out of
mere sunbeams; to be loved and worshiped; the best of all
Transatlantic women! Do at any rate, in a more business like
style, offer my respectful regards to Dr. Channing, whom
certainly I could not count on for a reader, or other than a
grieved condemnatory one; for I reckoned tolerance had its
limits. His own faithful, long-continued striving towards what
is Best, I knew and honored; that he will let me go my own way
thitherward, with a God-speed from him, is surely a new honor to
us both.

Finally, on behalf of the British world (which is not all
contained in Fraser's shop) I should tell you that various
persons, some of them in a dialect not to be doubted of, have
privately expressed their recognition of this poor Rhapsody,
the best the poor Clothes-Professor could produce in the
circumstances; nay, I have Scottish Presbyterian Elders who
read, and thank. So true is what you say about the aptitude of
all natural hearts for receiving what is from the heart spoken to
them. As face answereth to face! Brother, if thou wish me to
believe, do thou thyself believe first: this is as true as that
of the _flere_ and _dolendum;_ perhaps truer. Wherefore,
putting all things together, cannot I feel that I have washed my
hands of this business in a quite tolerable manner? Let a man be
thankful; and on the whole go along, while he has strength left
to go.

This Boston _Transcendentalist,_ whatever the fate or merit of it
prove to be, is surely an interesting symptom. There must be
things not dreamt of, over in that Transoceanic Parish! I shall
cordially wish well to this thing; and hail it as the sure
forerunner of things better. The Visible becomes the Bestial
when it rests not on the Invisible. Innumerable tumults of
Metaphysic must be struggled through (whole generations perishing
by the way), and at last Transcendentalism evolve itself (if I
construe aright), as the _Euthanasia_ of Metaphysic altogether.
May it be sure, may it be speedy! Thou shalt open thy _eyes,_ O
Son of Adam; thou shalt _look,_ and not forever jargon about
_laws_ of Optics and the making of spectacles! For myself, I
rejoice very much that I seem to be flinging aside innumerable
sets of spectacles (could I but _lay_ them aside,--with
gentleness!) and hope one day actually to see a thing or two.
Man _lives_ by Belief (as it was well written of old); by logic
he can only at best long to live. Oh, I am dreadfully, afflicted
with Logic here, and wish often (in my haste) that I had the
besom of destruction to lay to it for a little!

"Why? and WHEREFORE? God wot, simply THEREFORE! Ask not WHY;
't is SITH thou hast to care for."

Since I wrote last to you, (which seems some three months ago,)
there has a great mischance befallen me: the saddest, I think,
of the kind called Accidents I ever had to front. By dint of
continual endeavor for many weary weeks, I had got the first
volume of that miserable _French Revolution_ rather handsomely
finished: from amid infinite contradictions I felt as if my head
were fairly above water, and I could go on writing my poor Book,
defying the Devil and the World, with a certain degree of
assurance, and even of joy. A Friend borrowed this volume of
Manuscript,--a kind Friend but a careless one,--to write notes on
it, which he was well qualified to do. One evening about two
months ago he came in on us, "distraction (literally) in his
aspect"; the Manuscript, left carelessly out, had been torn up
as waste paper, and all but three or four tatters was clean gone!
I could not complain, or the poor man seemed as if he would have
shot himself: we had to gather ourselves together, and show a
smooth front to it; which happily, though difficult, was not
impossible to do. I began again at the beginning; to such a
wretched paralyzing torpedo of a task as my hand never found to
do: at which I have worn myself these two months to the hue of
saffron, to the humor of incipient desperation; and now, four
days ago, perceiving well that I was like a man swimming in an
element that grew ever rarer, till at last it became vacuum
(think of that!) I with a new effort of self-denial sealed up
all the paper fragments, and said to myself: In this mood thou
makest no way, writest _nothing_ that requires not to be erased
again; lay it by for one complete week! And so it lies, under
lock and key. I have digested the whole misery; I say, if thou
canst _never_ write this thing, why then never do write it:
God's Universe will go along _better_--without it. My Belief
in a special Providence grows yearly stronger, unsubduable,
impregnable: however, you see all the mad increase of entanglement
I have got to strive with, and will pity me in it. Bodily
exhaustion (and "Diana in the shape of bile")* I will at least
try to exclude from the controversy. By God's blessing, perhaps
the Book shall yet be written; but I find it will not do,
by sheer direct force; only by gentler side-methods. I have
much else to write too: I feel often as if with one year of
health and peace I could write something considerable;--the image
of which sails dim and great through my head. Which year of
health and peace, God, if He see meet, will give me yet; or
withhold from me, as shall be for the best.

---------
* This allusion to Diana as an obstruction was a favorite one
with Carlyle. "Sir Hudibras, according to Butler, was about to do
a dreadful homicide,--an all-important catastrophe,--and had
drawn his pistol with that full intent, and would decidedly have
done it, had not, says Butler, 'Diana in the shape of rust'
imperatively intervened. A miracle she has occasionally wrought
upon me in other shapes." So wrote Carlyle in a letter in 1874.
---------

I have dwelt and swum now for about a year in this World-Maelstrom
of London; with much pain, which however has given me many
thoughts, more than a counterbalance for that. Hitherto there
is no outlook, but confusion, darkness, innumerable things
against which a man must "set his face like a flint." Madness
rules the world, as it has generally done: one cannot,
unhappily, without loss, say to it, Rule then; and yet must say
it.--However, in two months more I expect my good Brother from
Italy (a brave fellow, who is a great comfort to me); we are
then for Scotland to gather a little health, to consider
ourselves a little. I must have this Book done before anything
else will prosper with me.

Your American Pamphlets got to hand only a few days ago; worthy
old Rich had them not originally; seemed since to have been
oblivious, out of Town, perhaps unwell. I called one day, and
unearthed them. Those papers you marked I have read. Genuine
endeavor; which may the Heavens forward!--In this poor Country
all is swallowed up in the barren Chaos of Politics: Ministries
tumbled out, Ministries tumbled in; all things (a fearful
substratum of "Ignorance and Hunger" weltering and heaving under
them) apparently in rapid progress towards--the melting-pot.
There will be news from England by and by: many things have
reached their term; Destiny "with lame foot" has overtaken them,
and there will be a reckoning. O blessed are you where,
what jargoning soever there be at Washington, the poor man
(_un_governed can govern himself) shoulders his age, and walks
into the Western Woods, sure of a nourishing Earth and an
overarching Sky! It is verily the Door of Hope to distracted
Europe; which otherwise I should see crumbling down into
blackness of darkness.--That too shall be for good.

I wish I had anything to send you besides these four poor
Pamphlets; but I fear there is nothing going. Our Ex-Chancellor
has been promulgating triticalities (significant as novelties,
when _he_ with his wig and lordhood utters them) against the
Aristocracy; whereat the upper circles are terribly scandalized.
In Literature, except a promised or obtained (but to me still
unknown) volume of Wordsworth, nothing nameworthy doing.--Did I
tell you that I _saw_ Wordsworth this winter? Twice, at
considerable length; with almost no disappointment. He is a
_natural_ man (which means whole immensities here and now);
flows like a natural well yielding mere wholesomeness,--though,
as it would not but seem to me, in _small_ quantity, and
astonishingly _diluted._ Franker utterance of mere garrulities
and even platitudes I never heard from any man; at least never,
whom I could _honor_ for uttering them. I am thankful for
Wordsworth; as in great darkness and perpetual _sky-rockets_ and
_coruscations,_ one were for the smallest clear-burning farthing
candle. Southey also I saw; a far _cleverer_ man in speech, yet
a considerably smaller man. Shovel-hatted; the shovel-hat is
_grown_ to him: one must take him as he is.

The second leaf is done; I must not venture on another. God
bless you, my worthy Friend; you and her who is to be yours! My
Wife bids me send heartiest wishes and regards from her too
across the Sea. Perhaps we shall all meet one another some day,
--if not Here, then Yonder!

Faithfully always,
T. Carlyle

VIII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 27 June, 1835

My Dear Friend,--Your very kind Letter has been in my hand these
four weeks,--the subject of much meditation, which has not yet
cleared itself into anything like a definite practical issue.
Indeed, the conditions of the case are still not wholly before
me: for if the American side of it, thanks to your perspicuous
minuteness, is now tolerably plain, the European side continues
dubious, too dim for a decision. So much in my own position here
is vague, not to be measured; then there is a Brother, coming
home to me from Italy, almost daily expected now; whose ulterior
resolutions cannot but be influential on mine; for we are
Brothers in the old good sense, and have one heart and one
interest and object, and even one purse; and Jack is a _good
man,_ for whom I daily thank Heaven, as for one of its principal
mercies. He is Traveling Physician to the Countess of Clare,
well entreated by her and hers; but, I think, weary of that
inane element of "the English Abroad," and as good as determined
to have done with it; to seek _work_ (he sees not well how), if
possible, with wages; but even almost _without,_ or with the
lowest endurable, if need be. Work and wages: the two prime
necessities of man! It is pity they should ever be disjoined;
yet of the two, if one _must,_ in this mad Earth, be dispensed
with, it is really wise to say at all hazards, Be it the wages
then. This Brother (if the Heavens have been kind to me) must be
in Paris one of these days; then here speedily; and "the House
must resolve itself into a Committee"--of ways and means. Add to
all this, that I myself have been and am one of the stupidest of
living men; in one of my vacant, interlunar conditions, unfit
for deciding on anything: were I to give you my actual _view_ of
this case, it were a view such as Satan had from the pavilion of
the Anarch old. Alas! it is all too like Chaos: confusion of
dense and rare: I also know what it is to drop _plumb,_
fluttering my pennons vain,--for a series of weeks.

One point only is clear: that you, my Friend, are very friendly
to me; that New England is as much my country and home as Old
England. Very singular and very pleasant it is to me to feel as
if I had a _house of my own_ in that far country: so many
leagues and geographical degrees of wild-weltering "unfruitful
brine"; and then the hospitable hearth and the smiles of
brethren awaiting one there! What with railways, steamships,
printing presses, it has surely become a most _monstrous_
"tissue," this life of ours; if evil and confusion in the one
Hemisphere, then good and order in the other, a man knows not
how: and so it rustles forth, immeasurable, from "that roaring
Loom of Time,"--miraculous ever as of old! To Ralph Waldo
Emerson, however, and those that love me as he, be thanks always,
and a sure place in the sanctuary of the mind. Long shall we
remember that Autumn Sunday that landed him (out of Infinite
Space) on the Craigenputtock wilderness, not to leave us as he
found us. My Wife says, whatever I decide on, I cannot thank you
too heartily;--which really is very sound doctrine. I write to
tell you so much; and that you shall hear from me again when
there is more to tell.

It does seem next to certain to me that I could preach a very
considerable quantity of things from that Boston Pulpit, such as
it is,--were I once fairly started. If so, what an unspeakable
relief were it too! Of the whole mountain of miseries one
grumbles at in this life, the central and parent one, as I often
say, is that you cannot utter yourself. The poor soul sits
struggling, impatient, longing vehemently out towards all corners
of the Universe, and cannot get its hest delivered, not even so
far as the voice might do it. Imprisoned, enchanted, like the
Arabian Prince with half his body marble: it is really bad work.
Then comes bodily sickness; to act and react, and double the
imbroglio. Till at last, I suppose, one does rise, like Eliphaz
the Temanite; states that his inner man is bursting (as if
filled with carbonic acid and new wine), that by the favor of
Heaven he will speak a word or two. Would it were come so far,--
if it be ever to come!

On the whole I think the odds are that I shall some time or other
get over to you; but that for this winter I ought not to go. My
London expedition is not decided hitherto; I have begun various
relations and arrangements, which it were questionable to cut
short so soon. That beggarly Book, were there nothing else,
hampers me every way. To fling it once for all into the fire
were perhaps the best; yet I grudge to do that. To finish it,
on the other hand, is denied me for the present, or even so much
as to work at it. What am I to do? When my Brother arrives, we
go all back to Scotland for some weeks: there, in seclusion,
with such calmness as I can find or create, the plan for the
winter must be settled. You shall hear from me then; let us
hope something more reasonable than I can write at present. For
about a month I have gone to and fro utterly _idle:_ understand
that, and I need explain no more. The wearied machine refused to
be urged any farther; after long spasmodic struggling comes
collapse. The burning of that wretched Manuscript has really
been a sore business for me. Nevertheless that too shall clear
itself, and prove a _favor_ of the Upper Powers: _tomorrow_ to
fresh fields and pastures new! This monstrous London has taught
me several things during the past year; for if its Wisdom be of
the most uninstructive ever heard of by that name of wisdom, its
Folly abounds with lessons,--which one ought to learn. I feel
(with my burnt manuscript) as if defeated in this campaign;
defeated, yet not altogether disgraced. As the great Fritz said,
when the battle had gone against him, "Another time we will
do better."

As to Literature, Politics, and the whole multiplex aspect of
existence here, expect me not to say one word. We are a singular
people, in a singular condition. Not many nights ago, in one of
those phenomenal assemblages named routs, whither we had gone to
see the countenance of O'Connell and Company (the Tail was a
Peacock's tail, with blonde muslin women and heroic Parliamentary
men), one of the company, a "distinguished female" (as we call
them), informed my Wife "O'Connell was the master-spirit of this
age." If so, then for what we have received let us be thankful,
--and enjoy it _without_ criticism.--It often painfully seems to
me as if much were coming fast to a crisis here; as if the
crown-wheel had given way, and the whole horologe were rushing
rapidly down, down, to its end! Wreckage is swift; rebuilding
is slow and distant. Happily another than we has charge of it.

My new American Friends have come and gone. Barnard went off
northward some fortnight ago, furnished with such guidance and
furtherance as I could give him. Professor Longfellow went about
the same time; to Sweden, then to Berlin and Germany: we saw
him twice or thrice, and his ladies, with great pleasure; as one
sees worthy souls from a far country, who cannot abide with you,
who throw you a kind greeting as they pass. I inquired
considerably about Concord, and a certain man there; one of the
fair pilgrims told me several comfortable things. By the bye,
how very good you are, in regard to this of Unitarianism! I
declare, I am ashamed of my intolerance:--and yet you have ceased
to be a Teacher of theirs, have you not? I mean to address you
this time by the secular title of Esquire; as if I liked you
better so. But truly, in black clothes or in white, by this
style or by that, the man himself can never be other than welcome
to me. You will further allow me to fancy that you are now
wedded; and offer our united congratulations and kindest good
wishes to that new fair Friend of ours, whom one day we shall
surely know more of,--if the Fates smile.

My sheet is ending, and I must not burden you with double postage
for such stuff as this. By dint of some inquiry I have learnt
the law of the American Letter-carrying; and I now mention it
for our mutual benefit. There are from New York to London three
packets monthly (on the 1st, on the 10th, on the 20th); the
masters of these carry Letters gratis for all men; and put the
same into the Post-Office; there are some pence charged on the
score of "Ship-letter" there, and after that, the regular postage
of the country, if the Letter has to go farther. I put this,
for example, into a place called North and South American
Coffee-house in the City here, and pay twopence for it, and it
flies. Doubtless there is some similar receiving-house with its
"leather bag" somewhere in New York, and fixed days (probably the
same as our days) for emptying, or rather for tying and despatching,
said leather bag: if you deal with the London Packets (so long as
I am here) in preference to the Liverpool ones, it will all be
well. As for the next Letter, (if you write as I hope you may
before hearing from me again,) pray direct it, "Care of John
Mill, Esq., India House, London"; and he will forward it
directly, should I even be still absent in the North.--Now will
you write? and pray write something about yourself. We both love
you here, and send you all good prayers. _Vale faveque!_

Yours ever,
T. Carlyle

IX. Emerson to Carlyle*

Concord, 7 October, 1835

My Dear Friend,--Please God I will never again sit six weeks of
this short human life over a letter of yours without answering it.

-----------
* The original of this letter is missing; what is printed here
is from the rough draft.
-----------

I received in August your letter of June, and just then hearing
that a lady, a little lady with a mighty heart, Mrs. Child,* whom
I scarcely know but do much respect, was about to visit England
(invited thither for work's sake by the African or Abolition
Society) and that she begged an introduction to you, I used
the occasion to say the godsend was come, and that I would
acknowledge it as soon as three then impending tasks were ended.
I have now learned that Mrs. Child was detained for weeks in New
York and did not sail. Only last night I received your letter
written in May, with the four copies of the _Sartor,_ which by a
strange oversight have been lying weeks, probably months, in the
Custom-House. On such provocation I can sit still no longer.

------------
* The excellent Mrs. Lydia Maria Child, whose romance of
_Philothea_ was published in this year, 1835.

"If her heart at high floods swamps her brain now and then,
'T is but richer for that when the tide ebbs agen."

says Lowell, in his _Fable for Critics._
-----------

The three tasks were, a literary address; a historical discourse
on the two-hundredth anniversary of our little town of Concord*
(my first adventure in print, which I shall send you); the
third, my marriage, now happily consummated. All three, from the
least to the greatest, trod so fast upon each other's heel as to
leave me, who am a slow and awkward workman, no interstice big
enough for a letter that should hope to convey any information.
Again I waited that the Discourse might go in his new jacket to
show how busy I had been, but the creeping country press has not
dressed it yet. Now congratulate me, my friend, as indeed you
have already done, that I live with my wife in my own house,
waiting on the good future. The house is not large, but
convenient and very elastic. The more hearts (specially great
hearts) it holds, the better it looks and feels. I have not had
so much leisure yet but that the fact of having ample space to
spread my books and blotted paper is still gratifying. So know
now that your rooms in America wait for you, and that my wife is
making ready a closet for Mrs. Carlyle.

----------
* "A Historical Discourse, delivered before the Citizens of
Concord, 12th September, 1835, on the Second Centennial
Anniversary of the Incorporation of the Town. By Ralph Waldo
Emerson. Published by Request. Concord: G.F. Bemis, Printer.
1835." 8vo, pp. 52.--A discourse worthy of the author and of the
town. It is reprinted in the eleventh volume of Emerson's Works,
Boston, 1883.
-----------

I could cry at the disaster that has befallen you in the loss of
the book. My brother Charles says the only thing the friend
could do on such an occasion was to shoot himself, and wishes to
know if he have done so. Such mischance might well quicken one's
curiosity to know what Oversight there is of us, and I greet you
well upon your faith and the resolution issuing out of it. You
have certainly found a right manly consolation, and can afford to
faint and rest a month or two on the laurels of such endeavor. I
trust ere this you have re-collected the entire creation out of
the secret cells where, under the smiles of every Muse, it first
took life. Believe, when you are weary, that you who stimulate
and rejoice virtuous young men do not write a line in vain. And
whatever betide us in the inexorable future, what is better than
to have awaked in many men the sweet sense of beauty, and to
double the courage of virtue. So do not, as you will not, let
the imps from all the fens of weariness and apathy have a minute
too much. To die of feeding the fires of others were sweet,
since it were not death but multiplication. And yet I hold to a
more orthodox immortality too.

This morning in happiest time I have a letter from George Ripley,
who tells me you have written him, and that you say pretty
confidently you will come next summer. _Io paean!_ He tells me
also that Alexander Everett (brother of Edward) has sent you the
friendly notice that has just appeared in the _North American
Review,_ with a letter.* All which I hope you have received. I
am delighted, for this man represents a clique to which I am a
stranger, and which I supposed might not love you. It must be
you shall succeed when Saul prophesies. Indeed, I have heard
that you may hear the _Sartor_ preached from some of our best
pulpits and lecture-rooms. Don't think I speak of myself, for I
cherish carefully a salutary horror at the German style, and hold
off my admiration as long as ever I can. But all my importance
is quite at an end. For now that Doctors of Divinity and the
solemn Review itself have broke silence to praise you, I have
quite lost my plume as your harbinger.

-----------
* Mr. A.H. Everett's paper on _Sartor Resartus_ was published in
the _North American Review_ for October, 1835.
-----------

I read with interest what you say of the political omens in
England. I could wish our country a better comprehension of its
felicity. But government has come to be a trade, and is managed
solely on commercial principles. A man plunges into politics to
make his fortune, and only cares that the world should last his
day. We have had in different parts of the country mobs and
moblike legislation, and even moblike judicature, which have
betrayed an almost godless state of society; so that I begin to
think even here it behoves every man to quit his dependency on
society as much as he can, as he would learn to go without
crutches that will be soon plucked away from him, and settle with
himself the principles he can stand upon, happen what may. There
is reading, and public lecturing too, in this country, that I
could recommend as medicine to any gentleman who finds the love
of life too strong in him.

If virtue and friendship have not yet become fables, do believe
we keep your face for the living type. I was very glad to hear
of the brother you describe, for I have one too, and know what it
is to have presence in two places. Charles Chauncy Emerson is a
lawyer now settled in this town, and, as I believe, no better
Lord Hamlet was ever. He is our Doctor on all questions of
taste, manners, or action. And one of the pure pleasures I
promise myself in the months to come is to make you two gentlemen
know each other.

X. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, Mass., 8 April, 1856

My Dear Friend,--I am concerned at not hearing from you. I have
written you two letters, one in October, one in November, I
believe, since I had any tidings of you.* Your last letter is
dated 27 June, 1835. I have counted all the chances of delay and
miscarriage, and still am anxious lest you are ill, or have
forgotten us. I have looked at the advertising sheet of the
booksellers, but it promised nothing of the _History._ I thought
I had made the happiest truce with sorrow in having the promise
of your coming,--I was to take possession of a new kingdom of
virtue and friendship. Let not the new wine mourn. Speak to me
out of the wide silence. Many friends inquire of me concerning
you, and you must write some word immediately on receipt of
this sheet.

------------
* One in August by Mrs. Child, apparently not delivered, and one,
the preceding, in October.
-----------

With it goes an American reprint of the _Sartor._ Five hundred
copies only make the edition, at one dollar a copy. About one
hundred and fifty copies are subscribed for. How it will be
received I know not. I am not very sanguine, for I often hear
and read somewhat concerning its repulsive style. Certainly, I
tell them, it is very odd. Yet I read a chapter lately with
great pleasure. I send you also, with Dr. Channing's regards and
good wishes, a copy of his little work, lately published, on our
great local question of Slavery.

You must have written me since July. I have reckoned upon
your projected visit the ensuing summer or autumn, and have
conjectured the starlike influences of a new spiritual element.
Especially Lectures. My own experiments for one or two winters,
and the readiness with which you embrace the work, have led me to
think much and to expect much from this mode of addressing men.
In New England the Lyceum, as we call it, is already a great
institution. Beside the more elaborate courses of lectures in
the cities, every country town has its weekly evening meeting,
called a Lyceum, and every professional man in the place is
called upon, in the course of the winter, to entertain his
fellow-citizens with a discourse on whatever topic. The topics
are miscellaneous as heart can wish. But in Boston, Lowell,
Salem, courses are given by individuals. I see not why this is
not the most flexible of all organs of opinion, from its
popularity and from its newness permitting you to say what you
think, without any shackles of prescription. The pulpit in our
age certainly gives forth an obstructed and uncertain sound, and
the faith of those in it, if men of genius, may differ so much
from that of those under it, as to embarrass the conscience of
the speaker, because so much is attributed to him from the fact
of standing there. In the Lyceum nothing is presupposed. The
orator is only responsible for what his lips articulate. Then
what scope it allows! You may handle every member and relation
of humanity. What could Homer, Socrates, or St. Paul say that
cannot be said here? The audience is of all classes, and its
character will be determined always by the name of the lecturer.
Why may you not give the reins to your wit, your pathos, your
philosophy, and become that good despot which the virtuous
orator is?

Another thing. I am persuaded that, if a man speak well, he
shall find this a well-rewarded work in New England. I have
written this year ten lectures; I had written as many last year.
And for reading both these and those at places whither I was
invited, I have received this last winter about three hundred and
fifty dollars. Had I, in lieu of receiving a lecturer's fee,
myself advertised that I would deliver these in certain places,
these receipts would have been greatly increased. I insert all
this because my prayers for you in this country are quite of a
commercial spirit. If you lose no dollar by us, I shall joyfully
trust your genius and virtue for your satisfaction on all
other points.

I cannot remember that there are any other mouthpieces that are
specially vital at this time except Criticism and Parliamentary
Debate. I think this of ours would possess in the hands of a
great genius great advantages over both. But what avail any
commendations of the form, until I know that the man is alive and
well? If you love them that love you, write me straightway of
your welfare. My wife desires to add to mine her friendliest
greetings to Mrs. Carlyle and to yourself.

Yours affectionately,
R. Waldo Emerson

I ought to say that Le-Baron Russell, a worthy young man
who studies Engineering, did cause the republication of
Teufelsdrockh.* I trust you shall yet see a better American
review of it than the _North American._

------------
* This first edition of _Sartor_ as an independent volume was
published by James Munroe and Company, Boston. Emerson, at Mr.
(now Dr.) Russell's request, wrote a Preface for the book. He
told Dr. Russell that his brother Charles was not pleased
with the Preface, thinking it "too commonplace, too much like
all prefaces."
-----------

XI. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London
29 April, 1836

My Dear Emerson,--Barnard is returning across the water, and must
not go back without a flying salutation for you. These many
weeks I have had your letter by me; these many weeks I have felt
always that it deserved and demanded a grateful answer; and,
alas! also that I could give it none. It is impossible for you
to figure what mood I am in. One sole thought, That Book! that
weary Book! occupies me continually: wreck and confusion of all
kinds go tumbling and falling around me, within me; but to wreck
and growth, to confusion and order, to the world at large, I turn
a deaf ear; and have life only for this one thing,--which also
in general I feel to be one of the pitifulest that ever man went
about possessed with. Have compassion for me! It is really very
miserable: but it will end. Some months more, and it is
_ended;_ and I am done with _French Revolution,_ and with
Revolution and Revolt in general; and look once more with
free eyes over this Earth, where are other things than mean
internecine work of that kind: things fitter for me, under the
bright Sun, on this green Mother's-bosom (though the Devil does
dwell in it)! For the present, really, it is like a Nessus'
shirt, burning you into madness, this wretched Enterprise; nay,
it is also like a kind of Panoply, rendering you invulnerable,
insensible, to all _other_ mischiefs.

I got the fatal First Volume finished (in the miserablest way,
after great efforts) in October last; my head was all in a
whirl; I fled to Scotland and my Mother for a month of rest.
Rest is nowhere for the Son of Adam: all looked so "spectral" to
me in my old-familiar Birthland; Hades itself could not have
seemed stranger; Annandale also was part of the kingdom of TIME.
Since November I have worked again as I could; a second volume
got wrapped up and sealed out of my sight within the last three
days. There is but a Third now: one pull more, and then! It
seems to me, I will fly into some obscurest cranny of the world,
and lie silent there for a twelvemonth. The mind is weary, the
body is very sick; a little black speck dances to and fro in the
left eye (part of the retina protesting against the liver, and
striking work): I cannot help it; it must flutter and dance
there, like a signal of distress, unanswered till I be done. My
familiar friends tell me farther that the Book is all wrong,
style cramp, &c., &c.: my friends, I answer, you are very right;
but this also, Heaven be my witness, I cannot help.--In such sort
do I live here; all this I had to write you, if I wrote at all.

For the rest I cannot say that this huge blind monster of a City
is without some sort of charm for me. It leaves one alone, to go
his own road unmolested. Deep in your soul you take up your
protest against it, defy it, and even despise it; but need not
divide yourself from it for that. Worthy individuals are glad to
hear your thought, if it have any sincerity; they do not
exasperate themselves or you about it; they have not even time
for such a thing. Nay, in stupidity itself on a scale of this
magnitude, there is an impressiveness, almost a sublimity; one
thinks how, in the words of Schiller, "the very Gods fight
against it in vain"; how it lies on its unfathomable foundations
there, inert yet peptic; nay, eupeptic; and is a _Fact_ in the
world, let theory object as it will. Brown-stout, in quantities
that would float a seventy-four, goes down the throats of men;
and the roaring flood of life pours on;--over which Philosophy
and Theory are but a poor shriek of remonstrance, which oftenest
were wiser, perhaps, to hold its peace. I grow daily to honor
Facts more and more, and Theory less and less. A Fact, it seems
to me, is a great thing: a Sentence printed if not by God, then
at least by the Devil;--neither Jeremy Bentham nor Lytton Bulwer
had a hand in _that._

There are two or three of the best souls here I have known for
long: I feel less alone with them; and yet one is alone,--a
stranger and a pilgrim. These friends expect mainly that the
Church of England is not dead but asleep; that the leather
coaches, with their gilt panels, can be peopled again with a
living Aristocracy, instead of the simulacra of such. I must
altogether hold my peace to this, as I do to much. Coleridge is
the Father of all these. _Ay de mi!_

But to look across the "divine salt-sea." A letter reached me,
some two months ago, from Mobile, Alabama; the writer, a kind
friend of mine, signs himself James Freeman Clarke.* I have
mislaid, not lost his Letter; and do not at present know his
permanent address (for he seemed to be only on a visit at
Mobile); but you, doubtless, do know it. Will you therefore
take or even find an opportunity to tell this good Friend that it
is not the wreckage of the Liverpool ship he wrote by, nor
insensibility on my part, that prevents his hearing direct from
me; that I see him, and love him in this Letter; and hope we
shall meet one day under the Sun, shall live under it, at any
rate, with many a kind thought towards one another.

----------
* Now the Rev. Dr. Clarke, of Boston.
----------

The _North American Review_ you spoke of never came (I mean that
copy of it with the Note in it); but another copy became rather
public here, to the amusement of some. I read the article
myself: surely this Reviewer, who does not want in [sense]*
otherwise, is an original: either a _thrice_-plied quiz
(_Sartor's_ "Editor" a twice-plied one); or else opening on you
a grandeur of still Dulness, rarely to be met with on earth.

-------------
* The words supplied here were lost under the seal of the letter.
-------------

My friend! I must end here. Forgive me till I get done with
this Book. Can you have the generosity to write, _without_ an
answer? Well, if you can_not,_ I will answer. Do not forget me.
My love and my Wife's to your good Lady, to your Brother, and all
friends. Tell me what you do; what your world does. As for my
world, take this (which I rendered from the German Voss, a tough
old-Teutonic fellow) for the best I can say of it:--

"As journeys this Earth, her eye on a Sun, through the
heavenly spaces,
And, radiant in azure, or Sunless, swallowed in tempests,
Falters not, alters not; journeying equal, sunlit or
stormgirt
So thou, Son of Earth, who hast Force,
Goal, and Time, go still onwards."

Adieu, my dear friend! Believe me ever Yours,
Thomas Carlyle

XII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, Massachusetts, 17 September, 1836

My Dear Friend,--I hope you do not measure my love by the
tardiness of my messages. I have few pleasures like that of
receiving your kind and eloquent letters. I should be most
impatient of the long interval between one and another, but that
they savor always of Eternity, and promise me a friendship and
friendly inspiration not reckoned or ended by days or years.
Your last letter, dated in April, found me a mourner, as did your
first. I have lost out of this world my brother Charles,* of
whom I have spoken to you,--the friend and companion of many
years, the inmate of my house, a man of a beautiful genius, born
to speak well, and whose conversation for these last years has
treated every grave question of humanity, and has been my daily
bread. I have put so much dependence on his gifts that we made
but one man together; for I needed never to do what he could do
by noble nature much better than I. He was to have been married
in this month, and at the time of his sickness and sudden
death I was adding apartments to my house for his permanent
accommodation. I wish that you could have known him. At
twenty-seven years the best life is only preparation. He built
his foundation so large that it needed the full age of man to make
evident the plan and proportions of his character. He postponed
always a particular to a final and absolute success, so that his
life was a silent appeal to the great and generous. But some
time I shall see you and speak of him.

---------
* Charles Chauncy Emerson,--died May 9, 1836,--whose memory still
survives fresh and beautiful in the hearts of the few who remain
who knew him in life. A few papers of his published in the
_Dial_ show to others what he was and what he might have become.
-----------

We want but two or three friends, but these we cannot do without,
and they serve us in every thought we think. I find now I must
hold faster the remaining jewels of my social belt. And of you I
think much and anxiously since Mrs. Channing, amidst her delight
at what she calls the happiest hour of her absence, in her
acquaintance with you and your family, expresses much uneasiness
respecting your untempered devotion to study. I am the more
disturbed by her fears, because your letters avow a self-devotion
to your work, and I know there is no gentle dulness in your
temperament to counteract the mischief. I fear Nature has not
inlaid fat earth enough into your texture to keep the ethereal
blade from whetting it through. I write to implore you to be
careful of your health. You are the property of all whom you
rejoice in art and soul, and you must not deal with your body as
your own. O my friend, if you would come here and let me nurse
you and pasture you in my nook of this long continent, I will
thank God and you therefor morning and evening, and doubt not to
give you, in a quarter of a year, sound eyes, round cheeks, and
joyful spirits. My wife has been lately an invalid, but she
loves you thoroughly, and hardly stores a barrel of flour or lays
her new carpet without some hopeful reference to Mrs. Carlyle.
And in good earnest, why cannot you come here forthwith, and
deliver in lectures to the solid men of Boston the _History of
the French Revolution_ before it is published,--or at least
whilst it is publishing in England, and before it is published
here. There is no doubt of the perfect success of such a course
now that the _five hundred copies of the Sartor are all sold,_
and read with great delight by many persons.

This I suggest if you too must feel the vulgar necessity of
_doing;_ but if you will be governed by your friend, you shall
come into the meadows, and rest and talk with your friend in my
country pasture. If you will come here like a noble brother, you
shall have your solid day undisturbed, except at the hours of
eating and walking; and as I will abstain from you myself,
so I will defend you from others. I entreat Mrs. Carlyle,
with my affectionate remembrances, to second me in this
proposition, and not suffer the wayward man to think that in
these space-destroying days a prayer from Boston, Massachusetts,
is any less worthy of serious and prompt granting than one
from Edinburgh or Oxford.

I send you a little book I have just now published, as
an entering wedge, I hope, for something more worthy and
significant.* This is only a naming of topics on which I would
gladly speak and gladlier hear. I am mortified to learn the ill
fate of my former packet containing the _Sartor_ and Dr.
Channing's work. My mercantile friend is vexed, for he says
accurate orders were given to send it as a packet, not as a
letter. I shall endeavor before despatching this sheet to obtain
another copy of our American edition.

-----------
* This was _Nature,_ the first clear manifesto of Emerson's
genius.
-----------

I wish I could come to you instead of sending this sheet of
paper. I think I should persuade you to get into a ship this
Autumn, quit all study for a time, and follow the setting sun. I
have many, many things to learn of you. How melancholy to think
how much we need confession!...* Yet the great truths are always
at hand, and all the tragedy of individual life is separated how
thinly from that universal nature which obliterates all ranks,
all evils, all individualities. How little of you is in your
_will!_ Above your will how intimately are you related to all of
us! In God we meet. Therein we _are,_ thence we descend upon
Time and these infinitesimal facts of Christendom, and Trade, and
England Old and New. Wake the soul now drunk with a sleep, and
we overleap at a bound the obstructions, the griefs, the
mistakes, of years, and the air we breathe is so vital that the
Past serves to contribute nothing to the result.

-----------
** Some words appear to be lost here.
-----------

I read Goethe, and now lately the posthumous volumes, with a
great interest. A friend of mine who studies his life with care
would gladly know what records there are of his first ten years
after his settlement at Weimar, and what Books there are in
Germany about him beside what Mrs. Austin has collected and
Heine. Can you tell me?

Write me of your health, or else come.

Yours ever,
R.W. Emerson.

P.S.--I learn that an acquaintance is going to England, so send
the packet by him.

XIII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 5 November, 1836

My Dear Friend,--You are very good to write to me in my silence,
in the mood you must be in. My silence you may well judge is not
forgetfulness; it is a forced silence; which this kind Letter
enforces into words. I write the day after your letter comes,
lest the morrow bring forth something new to hinder me.

What a bereavement, my Friend, is this that has overtaken you!
Such a Brother, with such a Life opening around him, like a
blooming garden where he was to labor and gather, all vanished
suddenly like frostwork, and hidden from your eye! It is a loss,
a sore loss; which God had appointed you. I do not tell you not
to mourn: I mourn with you, and could wish all mourners the
spirit you have in this sorrow. Oh, I know it well! Often
enough in this noisy Inanity of a vision where _we_ still linger,
I say to myself, Perhaps thy Buried Ones are not far from thee,
are with thee; they are in Eternity, which is a Now and HERE!
And yet Nature will have her right; Memory would feel desecrated
if she could forget. Many times in the crowded din of the
Living, some sight, some feature of a face, will recall to you
the Loved Face; and in these turmoiling streets you see the
little silent Churchyard, the green grave that lies there so
silent, inexpressibly _wae._ O, perhaps we _shall_ all meet
YONDER, and the tears be wiped from all eyes! One thing is no
Perhaps: surely we _shall_ all meet, if it be the will of the
Maker of us. If it be not His will,--then is it not better so?
Silence,--since in these days we have no speech! Eye hath not
seen, nor ear heard, in any day.

You inquire so earnestly about my welfare; hold open still the
hospitable door for me. Truly Concord, which I have sought out
on the Map, seems worthy of its name: no dissonance comes to me
from that side; but grief itself has acquired a harmony: in joy
or grief a voice says to me, Behold there is one that loves thee;
in thy loneliness, in thy darkness, see how a hospitable candle
shines from far over seas, how a friendly heart watches! It is
very good, and precious for me.

As for my health, be under no apprehension. I am always sick; I
am sicker and worse in body and mind, a little, for the present;
but it has no deep significance: it is _weariness_ merely; and
now, by the bounty of Heaven, I am as it were within sight
of land. In two months more, this unblessed Book will be
_finished;_ at Newyearday we begin printing: before the end of
March, the thing is out; and I am a free man! Few happinesses I
have ever known will equal that, as it seems to me. And yet I
ought not to call the poor Book unblessed: no, it has girdled me
round like a panoply these two years; kept me invulnerable,
indifferent, to innumerable things. The poorest man in London
has perhaps been one of the freest: the roaring press of gigs
and gigmen, with their gold blazonry and fierce gig-wheels, have
little incommoded him; they going their way, he going his.--As
for the results of the Book, I can rationally promise myself, on
the economical, pecuniary, or otherwise worldly side, simply
_zero._ It is a Book contradicting all rules of Formalism, that
have not a Reality within them, which so few have;--testifying,
the more quietly the worse, internecine war with Quacks high and
low. My good Brother, who was with me out of Italy in summer,
declared himself shocked, and almost terror-struck: "Jack," I
answered, "innumerable men give their lives cheerfully to defend
Falsehoods and Half-Falsehoods; why should not one writer give
his life cheerfully to say, in plain Scotch-English, in the
hearing of God and man, To me they seem false and half-false? At
all events, thou seest, I cannot help it. It is the nature of
the beast." So that, on the whole, I suppose there is no more
unpromotable, unappointable man now living in England than I.
Literature also, the miscellaneous place of refuge, seems done
here, unless you will take the Devil's wages for it; which one
does not incline to do. A _disjectum membrum;_ cut off from
relations with men? Verily so; and now forty years of age; and
extremely dyspeptical: a hopeless-looking man. Yet full of what
I call desperate-hope! One does verily stand on the Earth, a
Star-dome encompassing one; seemingly accoutred and enlisted and
sent to battle, with rations good, indifferent, or bad,--what can
one do but in the name of Odin, Tuisco, Hertha, Horsa, and
all Saxon and Hebrew Gods, fight it out?--This surely is very
idle talk.

As to the Book, I do say seriously that it is a wild, savage,
ruleless, very bad Book; which even you will not be able to
like; much less any other man. Yet it contains strange things;
sincerities drawn out of the heart of a man very strangely
situated; reverent of nothing but what is reverable in all ages
and places: so we will print it, and be done with it;--and try a
new turn next time. What I am to do, were the thing done, you
see therefore, is most uncertain. How gladly would I run to
Concord! And if I were there, be sure the do-nothing arrangement
is the only conceivable one for me. That my sick existence
subside again, this is the first condition; that quiet vision be
restored me. It is frightful what an impatience I have got for
many kinds of fellow-creatures. Their jargon really hurts me
like the shrieking of inarticulate creatures that ought to
articulate. There is no resource but to say: Brother, thou
surely art not hateful; thou art lovable, at lowest pitiable;--
alas! in my case, thou art dreadfully wearisome, unedifying: go
thy ways, with my blessing. There are hardly three people among
these two millions, whom I care much to exchange words with, in
the humor I have. Nevertheless, at bottom, it is not my purpose
to quit London finally till I have as it were _seen it out._ In
the very hugeness of the monstrous City, contradiction cancelling
contradiction, one finds a sort of composure for one's self that
is not to be met with elsewhere perhaps in the world: people
tolerate you, were it only that they have not time to trouble
themselves with you. Some individuals even love me here; there
are one or two whom I have even learned to love,--though, for the
present, cross circumstances have snatched them out of my orbit
again mostly. Wherefore, if you ask me, What I am to do?--the
answer is clear so far, "Rest myself awhile"; and all farther is
as dark as Chaos. Now for resting, taking that by itself, my
Brother, who has gone back to Rome with some thoughts of settling
as a Physician there, presses me to come thither, and rest in
Rome. On the other hand, a certain John Sterling (the best man I
have found in these regions) has been driven to Bordeaux lately
for his health; he will have it that I must come to him, and
walk through the South of France to Dauphine, Avignon, and over
the Alps next spring!* Thirdly, my Mother will have me return to
Annandale, and lie quiet in her little habitation;--which I
incline to think were the wisest course of all. And lastly from
over the Atlantic comes my good Emerson's voice. We will settle
nothing, except that all shall remain unsettled. _Die Zukunft
decket Schmerzen and Glucke._

------------
* In his _Life of Sterling,_ Carlyle prints a letter from
Sterling to himself, dated Bordeaux, October 26, 1836, in which
Sterling urges him to come "in the first fine days of spring."
It must have reached him a few days before he wrote this letter
to Emerson.
---------

I ought to say, however, that about New-year's-day I will send
you an Article on _Mirabeau,_ which they have printed here (for a
thing called the _London Review_), and some kind of Note to
escort it. I think Pamphlets travel as Letters in New England,
provided you leave the ends of them open: if I be mistaken, pray
instruct Messrs. Barnard to _refuse_ the thing, for it has small
value. _The Diamond Necklace_ is to be printed also, in
_Fraser;_ inconceivable hawking that poor Paper has had; till
now Fraser takes it--for L50: not being able to get it for
nothing. The _Mirabeau_ was written at the passionate request of
John Mill; and likewise for needful lucre. I think it is the
first shilling of money I have earned by my craft these four
years: where the money I have lived on has come from while I sat
here scribbling gratis, amazes me to think; yet surely it has
come (for I am still here), and Heaven only to thank for it,
which is a great fact. As for Mill's _London Review_ (for he is
quasi-editor), I do not recommend it to you. Hide-bound
Radicalism; a to me well-nigh insupportable thing! Open it not:
a breath as of Sahara and the Infinite Sterile comes from every
page of it. A young Radical Baronet* has laid out L3,000 on
getting the world instructed in that manner: it is very curious
to see.--Alas! the bottom of the sheet! Take my hurried but
kindest thanks for the prospect of your second Teufelsdrockh:
the _first_ too is now in my possession; Brother John went to
the Post-Office, and worked it out for a ten shillings. It is
a beautiful little Book; and a Preface to it such as no kindest
friend could have improved. Thank my kind Editor** very heartily
from me.

---------
* Sir William Molesworth. In his _Autobiography_ Mill gives an
interesting account of the founding of this _Review,_ and his
quasi-editorial relations to it. "In the beginning," he says,
"it did not, as a whole, by any means represent my opinion."

** Dr. Le-Baron Russell
---------

My wife was in Scotland in summer, driven thither by ill health;
she is stronger since her return, though not yet strong; she
sends over to Concord her kindest wishes. If I fly to the Alps
or the Ocean, her Mother and she must keep one another company,
we think, till there be better news of me. You are to thank Dr.
Channing also for his valued gift. I read the Discourse, and
other friends of his read it, with great estimation; but the
_end_ of that black question lies beyond my ken. I suppose, as
usual, Might and Right will have to make themselves synonymous in
some way. CANST and SHALT, if they are _very_ well understood,
mean the same thing under this Sun of ours. Adieu, my dear
Emerson. _Gehab' Dich wohl!_ Many affectionate regards to the
Lady Wife: it is far within the verge of Probabilities that I
shall see her face, and eat of her bread, one day. But she must
not get sick! It is a dreadful thing, sickness; really a thing
which I begin frequently to think _criminal_--at least in myself.
Nay, in myself it really is criminal; wherefore I determine to
be well one day.

Good be with you and Yours.
T. Carlyle

As to Goethe and your Friend: I know not anything out of
Goethe's own works (which have many notices in them) that treats
specially of those ten years. Doubtless your Friend knows
Jordens's _Lexicon_ (which dates all the writings, for one
thing), the _Conversations-Lexicon Supplement,_ and such like.
There is an essay by one Schubarth which has reputation; but it
is critical and ethical mainly. The Letters to Zelter, and the
Letters to Schiller, will do nothing for those years, but
are essential to see. Perhaps in some late number of the
_Zeitgenossen_ there may be something? Blackguard Heine is worth
very little; Mentzel is duller, decenter, not much wiser. A
very curious Book is Eckermann's _Conversations with Goethe,_
just published. No room more!*

-----------
* Concerning this letter Emerson wrote in his Diary: "January 7,
1837. Received day before yesterday a letter from Thomas
Carlyle, dated 5 November;--as ever, a cordial influence. Strong
he is, upright, noble, and sweet, and makes good how much of our
human nature. Quite in consonance with my delight in his
eloquent letters I read in Bacon this afternoon this sentence (of
Letters): 'And such as are written from wise men are of all the
words of men, in my judgment, the best; for they are more
natural than orations, public speeches, and more advised than
conferences or present speeches.'"
-------------

XIV. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London, 13 February, 1837

My Dear Emerson,--You had promise of a letter to be despatched
you about New-year's-day; which promise I was myself in a
condition to fulfil at the time set, but delayed it, owing to
delays of printers and certain "Articles" that were to go with
it. Six weeks have not yet entirely brought up these laggard
animals: however, I will delay no longer for them. Nay, it
seems the Articles, were they never so ready, cannot go with the
Letter; but must fare round by Liverpool or Portsmouth, in a
separate conveyance. We will leave them to the bounty of Time.

Your little Book and the Copy of _Teufelsdrockh_ came safely;
soon after I had written. The _Teufelsdrockh_ I instantaneously
despatched to Hamburg, to a Scottish merchant there, to whom
there is an allusion in the Book; who used to be my _Speditor_
(one of the politest extant though totally a stranger) in my
missions and packages to and from Weimar.* The other, former
Copy, more specially yours, had already been, as I think I told
you, delivered out of durance; and got itself placed in the
bookshelf, as _the_ Teufelsdrockh. George Ripley tells me you
are printing another edition; much good may it do you! There is
now also a kind of whisper and whimper rising _here_ about
printing one. I said to myself once, when Bookseller Fraser
shrieked so loud at a certain message you sent him: "Perhaps
after all they will print this poor rag of a thing into a Book,
after I am dead it may be,--if so seem good to them. _Either_
way!" As it is, we leave the poor orphan to its destiny, all the
more cheerfully. Ripley says farther he has sent me a critique
of it by a better hand than the _North American:_ I expect it,
but have not got it Yet.** The _North American_ seems to say
that he too sent me one. It never came to hand, nor any hint of
it,--except I think once before through you. It was not at all
an unfriendly review; but had an opacity, of matter-of-fact in
it that filled one with amazement. Since the Irish Bishop who
said there were some things in _Gulliver_ on which he for one
would keep his belief _suspended,_ nothing equal to it, on that
side, has come athwart me. However, he _has_ made out that
Teufelsdrockh is, in all human probability, a fictitious
character; which is always something, for an Inquirer into
Truth.--Will you, finally, thank Friend Ripley in my name, till I
have time to write to him and thank him.

-----------
* The allusion referred to is the following: "By the kindness of
a Scottish Hamburg merchant, whose name, known to the whole
mercantile world, he must not mention; but whose honorable
courtesy, now and before spontaneously manifested to him, a mere
literary stranger, he cannot soon forget,--the bulky Weissnichtwo
packet, with all its Custom-house seals, foreign hieroglyphs, and
miscellaneous tokens of travel, arrived here in perfect safety,
and free of cost."--_Sartor Resartus,_ Book I. ch. xi.

** An article by the Rev. N.L. Frothingham in the _Christian
Examiner._
----------

Your little azure-colored Nature gave me true satisfaction. I
read it, and then lent it about to all my acquaintance that had a
sense for such things; from whom a similar verdict always came
back. You say it is the first chapter of something greater. I
call it rather the Foundation and Ground-plan on which you may
build whatsoever of great and true has been given you to build.
It is the true Apocalypse, this when the "Open Secret" becomes
revealed to a man. I rejoice much in the glad serenity of soul
with which you look out on this wondrous Dwelling-place of yours
and mine--with an ear for the _Ewigen Melodien,_ which pipe in
the winds round us, and utter themselves forth in all sounds and
sights and things: not to be written down by gamut-machinery;
but which all right writing is a kind of attempt to write down.
You will see what the years will bring you. It is not one of
your smallest qualities in my mind, that you can wait so quietly
and let the years do their best. He that cannot keep himself
quiet is of a morbid nature; and the thing he yields us will be
like him in that, whatever else it be.

Miss Martineau (for I have seen her since I wrote) tells me you
"are the only man in America" who has quietly set himself down on
a competency to follow his own path, and do the work his own will
prescribes for him. Pity that you were the only one! But be
one, nevertheless; be the first, and there will come a second
and a third. It is a poor country where all men are _sold_ to
Mammon, and can make nothing but Railways and Bursts of
Parliamentary Eloquence! And yet your New England here too has
the upper hand of our Old England, of our Old Europe: we too are
sold to Mammon, soul, body, and spirit; but (mark that, I pray
you, with double pity) Mammon will not _pay_ us,--we, are "Two
Million three hundred thousand in Ireland that have not potatoes
enough"! I declare, in History I find nothing more tragical. I
find also that it will alter; that for me as one it has altered.
Me Mammon will _pay_ or not as he finds convenient; buy me he
will not.--In fine, I say, sit still at Concord, with such spirit
as you are of; under the blessed skyey influences, with an open
sense, with the great Book of Existence open round you: we shall
see whether you too get not something blessed to read us from it.

The Paper is declining fast, and all is yet speculation. Along
with these two "Articles" (to be sent by Liverpool; there are
two of them, _Diamond Necklace_ and _Mirabeau_), you will very
probably get some stray Proofsheet--of the unutterable _French
Revolution!_ It is actually at Press; two Printers working at
separate Volumes of it,--though still too slow. In not many
weeks, my hands will be washed of it! You, I hope, can have
little conception of the feeling with which I wrote the last word
of it, one night in early January, when the clock was striking
ten, and our frugal Scotch supper coming in! I did not cry; nor
I did not pray but could have done both. No such _spell_ shall
get itself fixed on me for some while to come! A beggarly
Distortion; that will please no mortal, not even myself; of
which I know not whether the fire were not after all the due
place! And yet I ought not to say so: there is a great blessing
in a man's doing what he utterly can, in the case he is in.
Perhaps great quantities of dross are burnt out of me by this
calcination I have had; perhaps I shall be far quieter and
healthier of mind and body than I have ever been since boyhood.
The world, though no man had ever less empire in it, seems to me
a thing lying _under_ my feet; a mean imbroglio, which I never
more shall fear, or court, or disturb myself with: welcome and
welcome to go wholly _its own way;_ I wholly clear for going
mine. Through the summer months I am, somewhere or other, to
rest myself, in the deepest possible sleep. The residue is vague
as the wind,--unheeded as the wind. Some way it will turn out
that a poor, well-meaning Son of Adam has bread growing for him
too, better or worse: _any_ way,--or even _no_ way, if that be
it,--I shall be content. There is a scheme here among Friends
for my Lecturing in a thing they call Royal Institution; but it
will not do there, I think. The instant two or three are
gathered together under any terms, who want to learn something I
can teach them,--then we will, most readily, as Burns says,
"loose our tinkler jaw"; but not I think till then; were the
Institution even Imperial.

America has faded considerably into the background of late:
indeed, to say truth, whenever I think of myself in America, it
is as in the Backwoods, with a rifle in my hand, God's sky over
my head, and this accursed Lazar-house of quacks and blockheads,
'and sin and misery (now near a head) lying all behind me
forevermore. A thing, you see, which is and can be at bottom but
a daydream! To rest through the summer: that is my only fixed
wisdom; a resolution taken; only the place where uncertain.--
What a pity this poor sheet is done! I had innumerable things to
tell you about people whom I have seen, about books,--Miss
Harriet Martineau, Mrs. Butler, Southey, Influenza, Parliament,
Literature and the Life of Man,--the whole of which must lie over
till next time. Write to me; do not forget me. My Wife, who is
sitting by me, in very poor health (this long while), sends
"kindest remembrances," "compliments" she expressly does not
send. Good be with you always, my dear Friend!

--T. Carlyle

We send our felicitation to the Mother and little Boy; which
latter you had better tell us the name of.

XV. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, Mass., 31 March, 1837

My Dear Friend,--Last night, I said I would write to you
forthwith. This morning I received your letter of February 13th,
and _with it_ the _Diamond Necklace,_ the _Mirabeau,_ and the
olive leaf of a proof-sheet. I write out the sum of my debt as
the best acknowledgment I can make. I had already received,
about New-Year's-Day, the preceding letter. It came in the midst
of my washbowl-storm of a course of Lectures on the Philosophy of
History. For all these gifts and pledges,--thanks. Over the
finished _History,_ joy and evergreen laurels. I embrace you
with all my heart. I solace myself with the noble nature God has
given you, and in you to me, and to all. I had read the _Diamond
Necklace_ three weeks ago at the Boston Athenaeum, and the
_Mirabeau_ I had just read when my copy came. But the proof-sheet
was virgin gold. The _Mirabeau_ I forebode is to establish your
kingdom in England. That is genuine thunder, which nobody that
wears ears can affect to mistake for the rumbling of cart-wheels.
I please myself with thinking that my Angelo has blocked
a Colossus which may stand in the public square to defy all
competitors. To be sure, that is its least merit,--that nobody
can do the like,--yet is it a gag to Cerberus. Its better merit
is that it inspires self-trust, by teaching the immense resources
that are in human nature; so I sent it to be read by a brave man
who is poor and decried. The doctrine is indeed true and grand
which you preach as by cannonade, that God made a man, and it
were as well to stand by and see what is in him, and, if he act
ever from his impulses, believe that he has his own checks, and,
however extravagant, will keep his orbit, and return from far; a
faith that draws confirmation from the sempiternal ignorance and
stationariness of society, and the sempiternal growth of all
the individuals.

The _Diamond Necklace_ I read with joy, whilst I read with my own
eyes. When I read with English or New-English eyes, my joy is
marred by the roaring of the opposition. I doubt not the exact
story is there told as it fell out, and told for the first time;
but the eye of your readers, as you will easily guess, will be
bewildered by the multitude of brilliant-colored hieroglyphics
whereby the meaning is conveyed. And for the Gig,--the Gig,--it
is fairly worn out, and such a cloud-compeller must mock that
particular symbol no more.

I thought as I read this piece that your strange genius was the
instant fruit of your London. It is the aroma of Babylon. Such
as the great metropolis, such is this style: so vast, enormous,
related to all the world, and so endless in details. I think you
see as pictures every street, church, parliament-house, barrack,
baker's shop, mutton-stall, forge, wharf, and ship, and whatever
stands, creeps, rolls, or swims thereabouts, and make all your
own. Hence your encyclopediacal allusion to all knowables, and
the virtues and vices of your panoramic pages. Well, it is your
own; and it is English; and every word stands for somewhat;
and it cheers and fortifies me. And what more can a man ask of
his writing fellow-man? Why, all things; inasmuch as a good
mind creates wants at every stroke.

The proof-sheet rhymes well with _Mirabeau,_ and has abated my
fears from your own and your brother's account of the new book.
I greet it well. Auspicious Babe, be born! The first good of
the book is that it makes you free, and as I anxiously hope makes
your body sound. A possible good is that it will cause me to see
your face. But I seemed to read in _Mirabeau_ what you intimate
in your letter, that you will not come westward. Old England is
to find you out, and then the New will have no charm. For me it
will be the worst; for you, not. A man, a few men, cannot be to
you (with your ministering eyes) that which you should travel far
to find. Moreover, I observe that America looks, to those who
come hither, as unromantic and unexciting as the Dutch canals. I
see plainly that our Society, for the most part, is as bigoted to
the _respectabilities_ of religion and education as yours; that
there is no more appetite for a revelation here than elsewhere;
and the educated class are, of course, less fair-minded than
others. Yet, in the moments when my eyes are open, I see that
here are rich materials for the philosopher and poet, and, what
is more to your purpose as an artist, that we have had in these
parts no one philosopher or poet to put a sickle to the prairie
wheat. I have really never believed that you would do us that
crowning grace of coming hither, yet if God should be kinder to
us than our belief, I meant and mean to hold you fast in my
little meadows on the Musketaquid (now Concord) River, and show
you (as in this country we can anywhere) an America in miniature
in the April or November town meeting. Therein should you
conveniently study and master the whole of our hemispherical
politics reduced to a nutshell, and have a new version of
Oxenstiern's little wit; and yet be consoled by seeing that here
the farmers patient as their bulls of head-boards--provided for
them in relation to distant national objects, by kind editors of
newspapers--do yet their will, and a good will, in their own
parish. If a wise man would pass by New York, and be content to
sit still in this village a few months, he should get a thorough
native knowledge which no foreigner has yet acquired. So I leave
you with God, and if any oracle in the great Delphos should say
"Go," why fly to us instantly. Come and spend a year with me,
and see if I cannot respect your retirements.

I must love you for your interest in me and my way of life, and
the more that we only look for good-nature in the creative class.
They pay the tag of grandeur, and, attracted irresistibly to
make, their living is usually weak and hapless. But you are so
companionable--God has made you Man as well as Poet--that I
lament the three thousand miles of mountainous water. Burns
might have added a better verse to his poem, importing that one
might write Iliads or Hamlets, and yet come short of Truth by
infinity, as every written word must; but "the man's the gowd
for a' that." And I heartily thank the Lady for her good-will.
Please God she may be already well. We all grieve to know of her
ill health. People who have seen her never stop with _Mr._
Carlyle, but count him thrice blest in her. My wife believes in
nothing for her but the American voyage. I shall never cease to
expect you both until you come.

My boy is five months old, he is called Waldo,--a lovely wonder
that made the Universe look friendlier to me.

My Wife, one of your best lovers, sends her affectionate regards
to Mrs. Carlyle, and says that she takes exception in your
letters only to that sentence that she would go to Scotland if
you came here. My Wife beseeches her to come and possess her
new-dressed chamber. Do not cease to write whenever you can
spare me an hour. A man named Bronson Alcott is great, and one
of the jewels we have to show you. Good bye.

--R.W. Emerson

The second edition of _Sartor_ is out and sells well. I
learned the other day that twenty-five copies of it were ordered
for England. It was very amiable of you, that word about it
in _Mirabeau._*

----------
* This refers to Carlyle's introducing, in his paper on
_Mirabeau,_ a citation from _Sartor,_ with the words, "We quote
from a New England Book."
----------

XVI. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London, 1 June, 1857

My Dear Friend,--A word must go to Concord in answer to your last
kind word. It reached me, that word of yours, on the morning of
a most unspeakable day; the day when I, half dead with fret,
agitation, and exasperation, was to address extempore an audience
of London quality people on the subject of German Literature!
The heart's wish of me was that I might be left in deepest
oblivion, wrapped in blankets and silence, not speaking, not
spoken to, for a twelvemonth to come. My Printers had only let
me go, out of their Treadmill, the day before. However, all that
is over now; and I am still here alive to write to you, and hope
for better days.

Almost a month ago there went a copy of a Book called _French
Revolution,_ with your address on it, over to Red-Lion Square,
and thence, as old Rich declared, himself now _emeritus,_ back to
one Kennet (I think) near Covent Garden; who professes to
correspond with Hilliard and Company, Boston, and undertook the
service. The Book is not gone yet, I understand; but Kennet
engages that it shall leave Liverpool infallibly on the 5th of
June. I wish you a happy reading of it, therefore: it is the
only copy of my sending that has crossed the water. Ill printed
(there are many errors, one or two gross ones), ill written, ill
thought! But in fine it _is_ off my hands: that is a fact worth
all others. As to its reception here or elsewhere, I anticipate
nothing or little. Gabble, gabble, the astonishment of the dull
public brain is likely to be considerable, and its ejaculations
unedifying. We will let it go its way. Beat this thing, I say
always, under thy dull hoofs, O dull Public! trample it and
tumble it into all sinks and kennels; if thou canst kill it,
kill it in God's name: if thou canst not kill it, why then thou
wilt not.

By the by, speaking of dull Publics, I ought to say that I have
seen a review of myself in the _Christian Examiner_ (I think that
is it) of Boston; the author of which, if you know him, I desire
you to thank on my part. For if a dull million is good, then
withal a seeing unit or two is also good. This man images back a
beautiful idealized Clothes-Philosopher, very satisfactory to
look upon; in whose beatified features I did verily detect more
similitude to what I myself meant to be, than in any or all the
other criticisms I have yet seen written of me. That a man see
himself reflected from the soul of his brother-man in this
brotherly improved way: there surely is one of the most
legitimate joys of existence. Friend Ripley took the trouble to
send me this Review, in which I detected an Article of his own;
there came also some Discourses of his much to be approved of; a
Newspaper passage-of-fence with a Philistine of yours; and a set
of Essays on Progress-of-the-species and such like by a man whom
I grieved to see confusing himself with that. Progress of the
species is a thing I can get no good of at all. These Books,
which Miss Martineau has borrowed from me, did not arrive till
three weeks ago or less. I pray you to thank Ripley for them
very kindly; which at present I still have not time to do. He
seems to me a good man, with good aims; with considerable
natural health of mind, wherein all goodness is likely to grow
better, all clearness to grow clearer. Miss Martineau laments
that he does not fling himself, or not with the due impetuosity,
into the Black Controversy; a thing lamentable in the extreme,
when one considers what a world this is, and how perfect it would
be could Mungo once get his stupid case rectified, and eat his
squash as a stupid _Apprentice_ instead of stupid _Slave!_

Miss Martineau's Book on America is out, here and with you. I
have read it for the good Authoress's sake, whom I love much.
She is one of the strangest phenomena to me. A genuine little
Poetess, buckramed, swathed like a mummy into Socinian and
Political-Economy formulas; and yet verily alive in the inside
of that! "God has given a Prophet to every People in its own
speech," say the Arabs. Even the English Unitarians were one day
to have their Poet, and the best that could be said for them too
was to be said. I admire this good lady's integrity, sincerity;
her quick, sharp discernment to the depth it goes: her love
also is great; nay, in fact it is too great: the host of
illustrious obscure mortals whom she produces on you, of
Preachers, Pamphleteers, Antislavers, Able Editors, and other
Atlases bearing (unknown to us) the world on their shoulder, is
absolutely more than enough. What they say to her Book here I do
not well know. I fancy the general reception will be good, and
even brilliant. I saw Mrs. Butler* last night, "in an ocean of
blonde and broadcloth," one of those oceans common at present.
Ach Gott! They are not of Persons, these soirdes, but of
Cloth Figures.

----------
* Mrs Fanny Kemble Butler.
----------

I mean to retreat into Scotland very soon, to repose myself as I
intended. My Wife continues here with her Mother; here at least
till the weather grow too hot, or a journey to join me seem
otherwise advisable for her. She is gathering strength, but
continues still weak enough. I rest myself "on the sunny side of
hedges" in native Annandale, one of the obscurest regions; no
man shall speak to me, I will speak to no man; but have
dialogues yonder with the old dumb crags, of the most
unfathomable sort. Once rested, I think of returning to London
for another season. Several things are beginning which I ought
to see end before taking up my staff again. In this enormous
Chaos the very multitude of conflicting perversions produces
something more like a _calm_ than you can elsewhere meet with.
Men let you alone, which is an immense thing: they do it even
because they have no time to meddle with you. London, or else
the Backwoods of America, or Craigenputtock! We shall see.

I still beg the comfort of hearing from you. I am sick of soul
and body, but not incurable; the loving word of a Waldo Emerson
is as balm to me, medicinal now more than ever. My Wife
earnestly joins me in love to the Concord Household. May a
blessing be in it, on one and all! I do nowise give up the idea
of sojourning there one time yet. On the contrary, it seems
almost certain that I shall. Good be with you.

Yours always,
T. Carlyle*

-----------
* Emerson wrote in his Diary, July 27, 1837: "A letter today
from Carlyle rejoiced me. Pleasant would life be with such
companions. But if you cannot have them on good mutual terms you
cannot have them. If not the Deity but our wilfulness hews and
shapes the new relations, their sweetness escapes, as
strawberries lose their flavor by cultivation."
----------

XVII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 13 September, 1837

My Dear Friend,--Such a gift as the _French Revolution_ demanded
a speedier acknowledgment. But you mountaineers that can scale
Andes before breakfast for an airing have no measures for the
performance of lowlanders and valetudinarians. I am ashamed to
think, and will not tell, what little things have kept me silent.

The _French Revolution_ did not reach me until three weeks ago,
having had at least two long pauses by the way, as I find, since
landing. Between many visits received, and some literary
haranguing done, I have read two volumes and half the third and I
think you a very good giant; disporting yourself with an
original and vast ambition of fun: pleasure and peace not being
strong enough for you, you choose to suck pain also, and teach
fever and famine to dance and sing. I think you have written a
wonderful book, which will last a very long time. I see that you
have created a history, which the world will own to be such. You
have recognized the existence of other persons than officers, and
of other relations than civism. You have broken away from all
books, and written a mind. It is a brave experiment, and the
success is great. We have men in your story and not names
merely; always men, though I may doubt sometimes whether I have
the historic men. We have great facts--and selected facts--truly
set down. We have always the co-presence of Humanity along with
the imperfect damaged individuals. The soul's right of wonder is
still left to us; and we have righteous praise and doom awarded,
assuredly without cant. Yes, comfort yourself on that
particular, O ungodliest divine man! thou cantest never. Finally
we have not--a dull word. Never was there a style so rapid as
yours,--which no reader can outrun; and so it is for the most
intelligent. I suppose nothing will astonish more than the
audacious wit and cheerfulness which no tragedy and no magnitude
of events can overpower or daunt. Henry VIII loved a Man, and I
see with joy my bard always equal to the crisis he represents.
And so I thank you for your labor, and feel that your
contemporaries ought to say, All hail, Brother! live forever:
not only in the great Soul which thou largely inhalest, but also
as a named, person in this thy definite deed.

I will tell you more of the book when I have once got it at focal
distance,--if that can ever be, and muster my objections when I
am sure of their ground. I insist, of course, that it might be
more simple, less Gothically efflorescent. You will say no rules
for the illumination of windows can apply to the Aurora borealis.
However, I find refreshment when every now and then a special
fact slips into the narrative couched in sharp and businesslike
terms. This character-drawing in the book is certainly
admirable; the lines are ploughed furrows; but there was cake
and ale before, though thou be virtuous. Clarendon surely drew
sharp outlines for me in Falkland, Hampden, and the rest, without
defiance or sky-vaulting. I wish I could talk with you face to
face for one day, and know what your uttermost frankness would
say concerning the book. I feel assured of its good reception in
this country. I learned last Saturday that in all eleven hundred
and sixty-six copies of _Sartor_ have been sold. I have told the
publisher of that book that he must not print the _History_ until
some space has been given to people to import British copies. I
have ordered Hilliard, Gray, & Co. to import twenty copies as an
experiment. At the present very high rate of exchange, which
makes a shilling worth thirty cents, they think, with freight and
duties, the book would be too costly here for sale, but we
confide in a speedy fall of Exchange; then my books shall come.
I am ashamed that you should educate our young men, and that we
should pirate your books. One day we will have a better law, or
perhaps you will make our law yours.

I had your letter long before your book. Very good work you have
done in your lifetime, and very generously you adorn and cheer
this pilgrimage of mine by your love. I find my highest prayer
granted in calling a just and wise man my friend. Your profuse
benefaction of genius in so few years makes me feel very poor and
useless. I see that I must go on trust to you and to all the
brave for some longer time, hoping yet to prove one day my truth
and love. There are in this country so few scholars, that the
services of each studious person are needed to do what he can
for the circulation of thoughts, to the end of making some
counterweight to the money force, and to give such food as he may
to the nigh starving youth. So I religiously read lectures every
winter, and at other times whenever summoned. Last year, "the
Philosophy of History," twelve lectures; and now I meditate a
course on what I call "Ethics." I peddle out all the wit I can
gather from Time or from Nature, and am pained at heart to see
how thankfully that little is received.

Write to me, good friend, tell me if you went to Scotland,--what
you do, and will do,--tell me that your wife is strong and well
again as when I saw her at Craigenputtock. I desire to be
affectionately remembered to her. Tell me when you will come
hither. I called together a little club a week ago, who spent a
day with me,--counting fifteen souls,--each one of whom warmly
loves you. So if the _French Revolution_ does not convert the
"dull public" of your native Nineveh, I see not but you must
shake their dust from your shoes and cross the Atlantic to a New
England. Yours in love and honor.

--R. Waldo Emerson

May I trouble you with a commission when you are in the City?
You mention being at the shop of Rich in Red-Lion Square. Will
you say to him that he sent me some books two or three years ago
without any account of prices annexed? I wrote him once myself,
once through S. Burdett, bookseller, and since through C.P.
Curtis, Esq., who professes to be his attorney in Boston,--three
times,--to ask for this account. No answer has ever come. I
wish he would send me the account, that I may settle it. If he
persist in his self-denying contumacy, I think you may
immortalize him as a bookseller of the gods.

I shall send you an Oration presently, delivered before a
literary society here, which is now being printed.* Gladly I
hear of the Carlylet--so they say--in the new Westminster.

---------
* This was Emerson's famous Oration before the Phi Beta Kappa
Society, at Cambridge, August 31, 1837, on "The American
Scholar." In his admirable essay on Thoreau,--an essay which
might serve as introduction and comment to the letters of Carlyle
and Emerson during these years,--Lowell speaks of the impression
made by this remarkable discourse. It "was an event without any
former parallel in our literary annals, a scene to be always
treasured in the memory for its picturesqueness and its
inspiration. What crowded and breathless aisles, what windows
clustering with eager heads, what enthusiasm of approval, what
grim silence of foregone dissent! It was our Yankee version of a
lecture by Abelard, our Harvard parallel to the last public
appearances of Schelling."--_My Study Windows,_ p. 197
---------

XVIII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 2 November, 1837

My Dear Friend,--Mr. Charles Sumner, a lawyer of high standing
for his age, and editor or one editor of a journal called _The
Jurist,_ and withal a lover of your writings, tells me he is
going to Paris and thence to London, and sets out in a few days.
I cannot, of course, resist his request for a letter to you, nor
let pass the occasion of a greeting. Health, Joy, and Peace be
with you! I hope you sit still yet, and do not hastily meditate
new labors. Phidias need not be always tinkering. Sit still
like an Egyptian. Somebody told me the other day that your
friends here might have made a sum for the author by publishing
_Sartor_ themselves, instead of leaving it with a bookseller.
Instantly I wondered why I had never such a thought before, and
went straight to Boston, and have made a bargain with a
bookseller to print the _French Revolution._ It is to be printed
in two volumes of the size of our American _Sartor,_ one thousand
copies, the estimate making the cost of the book say (in dollars
and cents) $1.18 a copy, and the price $2.50. The bookseller
contracts with me to sell the book at a commission of twenty
percent on that selling price, allowing me however to take at
cost as many copies as I can find subscribers for. There is yet,
I believe, no other copy in the country than mine: so I gave him
the first volume, and the printing is begun. I shall take
care that your friends here shall know my contract with the
bookseller, and so shall give me their names. Then, if so good a
book can have a tolerable sale, (almost contrary to the nature of
a good book, I know,) I shall sustain with great glee the new
relation of being your banker and attorney. They have had the
wit in the London _Examiner,_ I find, to praise at last; and I
mean that our public shall have the entire benefit of that page.
The _Westminster_ they can read themselves. The printers think
they can get the book out by Christmas. So it must be long
before I can tell you what cheer. Meantime do you tell me, I
entreat you, what speed it has had at home. The best, I hope,
with the wise and good withal.

I have nothing to tell you and no thoughts. I have promised a
course of Lectures for December, and am far from knowing what I
am to say; but the way to make sure of fighting into the new
continent is to burn your ships. The "tender ears," as George
Fox said, of young men are always an effectual call to me
ignorant to speak. I find myself so much more and freer on the
platform of the lecture-room than in the pulpit, that I shall not
much more use the last; and do now only in a little country
chapel at the request of simple men to whom I sustain no other
relation than that of preacher. But I preach in the Lecture-Room
and then it tells, for there is no prescription. You may laugh,
weep, reason, sing, sneer, or pray, according to your genius. It
is the new pulpit, and very much in vogue with my northern
countrymen. This winter, in Boston, we shall have more than
ever: two or three every night of the week. When will you come
and redeem your pledge? The day before yesterday my little boy
was a year old,--no, the day before that,--and I cannot tell you
what delight and what study I find in this little bud of God,
which I heartily desire you also should see. Good, wise, kind
friend, I shall see you one day. Let me hear, when you can
write, that Mrs. Carlyle is well again.

--R. Waldo Emerson

XIX. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 8 December, 1837

My Dear Emerson,--How long it is since you last heard of me I do
not very accurately know; but it is too long. A very long,
ugly, inert, and unproductive chapter of my own history seems to
have passed since then. Whenever I delay writing, be sure
matters go not well with me; and do you in that case write to
me, were it again and over again,--unweariable in pity.

I did go to Scotland, for almost three months; leaving my Wife
here with her Mother. The poor Wife had fallen so weak that she
gave me real terror in the spring-time, and made the Doctor look
very grave indeed: she continued too weak for traveling: I was
worn out as I had never in my life been. So, on the longest day
of June, I got back to my Mother's cottage; threw myself down, I
may say, into what we may call the "frightfulest _magnetic
sleep,_" and lay there avoiding the intercourse of men. Most
wearisome had their gabble become; almost unearthly. But indeed
all was unearthly in that humor. The gushing of my native
brooks, the _sough_ of the old solitary woods, the great roar of
old native Solway (billowing fresh out of your Atlantic, drawn by
the Moon): all this was a kind of unearthly music to me; I
cannot tell you how unearthly. It did not bring me to rest; yet
_towards_ rest I do think at all events, the time had come when I
behoved to quit it again. I have been here since September
evidently another little "chapter" or paragraph, _not_ altogether
inert, is getting forward. But I must not speak of these things.
How can I speak of them on a miserable scrap of blue paper?
Looking into your kind-eyes with my eyes, I could speak: not
here. Pity me, my friend, my brother; yet hope well of me: if
I can (in all senses) _rightly hold my peace,_ I think much will
yet be well with me. SILENCE is the great thing I worship at
present; almost the sole tenant of my Pantheon. Let a man know
rightly how to hold his peace. I love to repeat to myself,
"Silence is of Eternity." Ah me, I think how I could rejoice to
quit these jarring discords and jargonings of Babel, and go far,
far away! I do believe, if I had the smallest competence of
money to get "food and warmth" with, I would shake the mud of
London from my feet, and go and bury myself in some green place,
and never print any syllable more. Perhaps it is better as
it is.

But quitting this, we will actually speak (under favor of
"Silence") one very small thing; a pleasant piece of news.
There is a man here called John Sterling (_Reverend_ John of the
Church of England too), whom I love better than anybody I have
met with, since a certain sky-messenger alighted to me at
Craigenputtock, and vanished in the Blue again. This Sterling
has written; but what is far better, he has lived, he is alive.
Across several unsuitable wrappages, of Church-of-Englandism and
others, my heart loves the man. He is one, and the best, of a
small class extant here, who, nigh drowning in a black wreck of
Infidelity (lighted up by some glare of Radicalism only, now
growing _dim_ too) and about to perish, saved themselves into a
Coleridgian Shovel-hattedness, or determination to _preach,_ to
preach peace, were it only the spent _echo_ of a peace once
preached. He is still only about thirty; young; and I think
will shed the shovel-hat yet perhaps. Do you ever read
_Blackwood?_ This John Sterling is the "New Contributor" whom
Wilson makes such a rout about, in the November and prior month
"Crystals from a Cavern," &c., which it is well worth your while
to see. Well, and what then, cry you?--Why then, this John
Sterling has fallen overhead in love with a certain Waldo
Emerson; that is all. He saw the little Book _Nature_ lying
here; and, across a whole _silva silvarum_ of prejudices,
discerned what was in it; took it to his heart,--and indeed into
his pocket; and has carried it off to Madeira with him; whither
unhappily (though now with good hope and expectation) the Doctors
have ordered him. This is the small piece of pleasant news, that
two sky-messengers (such they were both of them to me) have met
and recognized each other; and by God's blessing there shall one
day be a trio of us: call you that nothing?

And so now by a direct transition I am got to the _Oration._ My
friend! you know not what you have done for me there. It was
long decades of years that I had heard nothing but the infinite
jangling and jabbering, and inarticulate twittering and
screeching, and my soul had sunk down sorrowful, and said there
is no articulate speaking then any more, and thou art solitary
among stranger-creatures? and lo, out of the West comes a clear
utterance, clearly recognizable as a _man's_ voice, and I _have_
a kinsman and brother: God be thanked for it! I could have
_wept_ to read that speech; the clear high melody of it went
tingling through my heart;--I said to my wife, "There, woman!"
She read; and returned, and charges me to return for answer,
"that there had been nothing met with like it since Schiller went
silent." My brave Emerson! And all this has been lying silent,
quite tranquil in him, these seven years, and the "vociferous
platitude" dinning his ears on all sides, and he quietly
answering no word; and a whole world of Thought has silently
built itself in these calm depths, and, the day being come, says
quite softly, as if it were a common thing, "Yes, I _am_ here
too." Miss Martineau tells me, "Some say it is inspired, some
say it is mad." Exactly so; no say could be suitabler. But for
you, my dear friend, I say and pray heartily: May God grant you
strength; for you have a _fearful_ work to do! Fearful I call
it; and yet it is great, and the greatest. O for God's sake
_keep yourself still quiet!_ Do not hasten to write; you cannot
be too slow about it. Give no ear to any man's praise or
censure; know that that is _not_ it: on the one side is as
Heaven if you have strength to keep silent, and climb unseen;
yet on the other side, yawning always at one's right-hand and
one's left, is the frightfulest Abyss and Pandemonium! See
Fenimore Cooper;--poor Cooper, he is _down in it;_ and had a
climbing faculty too. Be steady, be quiet, be in no haste; and
God speed you well! My space is done.

And so adieu, for this time. You must write soon again. My copy
of the _Oration_ has never come: how is this? I could dispose
of a dozen well.--They say I am to lecture again in Spring, _Ay
de mi!_ The "Book" is babbled about sufficiently in several
dialects: Fraser wants to print my scattered Reviews and Articles;
a pregnant sign. Teufelsdrockh to precede. The man "screamed" once
at the name of it in a very musical manner. He shall not print a
line; unless he give me money for it, more or less. I have had
enough of printing for one while,--thrown into "magnetic sleep"
by it! Farewell my brother.

--T. Carlyle

O. Rich, it seems, is in Spain. His representative assured me,
some weeks since, that the Account was now sent. There is an
Article on Sir W. Scott: shocking; invitissima Minerva!*

----------
*Carlyle's article on Scott published in the _London and
Westminster Review,_ No. 12. Reprinted in his _Critical and
Miscellaneous Essays._
----------

Miss Martineau charges me to send kind remembrances to you and
your Lady: her words were kinder than I have room for here.--Can
you not, in defect or delay of Letter, send me a Massachusetts
Newspaper? I think it costs little or almost nothing now; and I
shall know your hand.

XX. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 9 February, 1838

My Dear Friend,--It is ten days now--ten cold days--that your
last letter has kept my heart warm, and I have not been able to
write before. I have just finished--Wednesday evening--a course
of lectures which I ambitiously baptized "Human Culture," and
read once a week to the curious in Boston. I could write nothing
else the while, for weariness of the week's stated scribbling.
Now I am free as a wood-bird, and can take up the pen without
fretting or fear. Your letter should, and nearly did, make me
jump for joy,--fine things about our poor speech at Cambridge,--
fine things from CARLYLE. Scarcely could we maintain a decorous
gravity on the occasion. And then news of a friend, who is also
Carlyle's friend. What has life better to offer than such
tidings? You may suppose I went directly and got me _Blackwood,_
and read the prose and the verse of John Sterling, and saw that
my man had a head and a heart, and spent an hour or two very
happily in spelling his biography out of his own hand;--a species
of palmistry in which I have a perfect reliance. I found many
incidents grave and gay and beautiful, and have determined to
love him very much. In this romancing of the gentle affections
we are children evermore. We forget the age of life, the
barriers so thin yet so adamantean of space and circumstance;
and I have had the rarest poems self-singing in my head of brave
men that work and conspire in a perfect intelligence across seas
and conditions--and meet at last. I heartily pray that the Sea
and its vineyards may cheer with warm medicinal breath a Voyager
so kind and noble.

For the _Oration,_ I am so elated with your goodwill that I begin
to fear your heart has betrayed your head this time, and so the
praise is not good on Parnassus but only in friendship. I sent
it diffidently (I did send it through bookselling Munroe) to you,
and was not a little surprised by your generous commendations.
Yet here it interested young men a good deal for an academical
performance, and an edition of five hundred was disposed of in a
month. A new edition is now printing, and I will send you some
copies presently to give to anybody who you think will read.

I have a little budget of news myself. I hope you had my letter
--sent by young Sumner--saying that we meant to print the _French
Revolution_ here for the Author's benefit. It was published on
the 25th of December. It is published at my risk, the
booksellers agreeing to let me have at cost all the copies I can
get subscriptions for. All the rest they are to sell and to have
twenty percent on the retail price for their commission. The
selling price of the book is $2.50; the cost of a copy, $1.26;
the bookseller's commission, 50 cts.; so that T.C. only gains 74
cts. on each copy they sell. But we have two hundred
subscribers, and on each copy they buy you have $1.26, except in
cases where the distant residence of subscribers makes a cost of
freight. You ought to have three or four quarters of a dollar
more on each copy, but we put the lowest price on the book in
terror of the Philistines, and to secure its accessibleness to
the economical Public. We printed one thousand copies: of
these, five hundred are already sold, in six weeks; and Brown
the bookseller talks, as I think, much too modestly, of getting
rid of the whole edition in one year. I say six months. The
printing, &c. is to be paid and a settlement made in six months
from the day of publication; and I hope the settlement will be
the final one. And I confide in sending you seven hundred
dollars at least, as a certificate that you have so many readers
in the West. Yet, I own, I shake a little at the thought of the
bookseller's account. Whenever I have seen that species of
document, it was strange how the hopefulest ideal dwindled away
to a dwarfish actual. But you may be assured I shall on this
occasion summon to the bargain all the Yankee in my constitution,
and multiply and divide like a lion.

The book has the best success with the best. Young men say it is
the only history they have ever read. The middle-aged and the
old shake their heads, and cannot make anything of it. In short,
it has the success of a book which, as people have not fashioned,
has to fashion the people. It will take some time to win all,
but it wins and will win. I sent a notice of it to the
_Christian Examiner,_ but the editor sent it all back to me
except the first and last paragraphs; those he printed. And the
editor of the _North American_ declined giving a place to a paper
from another friend of yours. But we shall see. I am glad you
are to print your _Miscellanies;_ but--forgive our Transatlantic
effrontery--we are beforehand of you, and we are already
selecting a couple of volumes from the same, and shall print them
on the same plan as the _History,_ and hope so to turn a penny
for our friend again. I surely should not do this thing without
consulting you as to the selection but that I had no choice. If
I waited, the bookseller would have done it himself, and carried
off the profit. I sent you (to Kennet) a copy of the _French
Revolution._ I regret exceedingly the printer's blunder about
the numbering the Books in the volumes, but he had warranted me
in a literal, punctual reprint of the copy without its leaving
his office, and I trusted him. I am told there are many errors.
I am going to see for myself. I have filled my paper, and not
yet said a word of how many things. You tell me how ill was Mrs.
C., and you do not tell me that she is well again. But I see
plainly that I must take speedily another sheet. I love
you always.

--R.W. Emerson

XXI. Emerson to Carlyle

Boston, 12 March, 1838

My Dear Friend,--Here in a bookseller's shop I have secured a
stool and corner to say a swift benison. Mr. Bancroft told me
that the presence of English Lord Gosford in town would give me a
safe conveyance of pamphlets to you, so I send some _Orations_ of
which you said so kind and cheering words. Give them to any one
who will read them. I have written names in three. You have, I
hope, got the letter sent nearly a month ago, giving account of
our reprint of the _French Revolution,_ and have received a copy
of the same. I learn from the bookseller today that six hundred
and fifty copies are sold, and the book continues to sell. So I
hope that our settlement at the end of six months will be final,
or nearly so.

I had nearly closed my agreement the other day with a publisher
for the emission of _Carlyle's Miscellanies,_ when just in the
last hour comes word from E.G. Loring that he has an authentic
catalogue from the Bard himself. Now I have that, and could wish
Loring had communicated his plan to me at first, or that I had
bad wit enough to have undertaken this matter long ago and
conferred with you. I designed nothing for you or your friends;
but merely a lucrative book for our daily market that would have
yielded a pecuniary compensation to you, such as we are all bound
to make, and have bought our Socrates a cloak. Loring
contemplated something quite different,--a "Complete Works,"
etc.,--and now clamors for the same thing, and I do not know but
I shall have to gratify him and others at the risk of injury to
this my vulgar hope of dollars,--that innate idea of the American
mind. This I shall settle in a few days. No copyright can be
secured here for an English book unless it contain original
matter: But my moments are going, and I can only promise to
write you quickly, at home and at leisure, for I have just been
reading the _History_ again with many, many thoughts, and I
revere, wonder at, and love you.

--R. Waldo Emerson

XXII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 16 March, 1838

My Dear Emerson,--Your letter through Sumner was sent by him from
Paris about a month ago; the man himself has not yet made his
appearance, or been heard of in these parts: he shall be very
welcome to me, arrive when he will. The February letter came
yesterday, by direct conveyance from Dartmouth. I answer it
today rather than tomorrow; I may not for long have a day freer
than this. _Fronte capillata, post est occasio calva:_ true
either in Latin or English!

You send me good news, as usual. You have been very brisk and
helpful in this business of the _Revolution_ Book, and I give you
many thanks and commendations. It will be a very brave day when
cash actually reaches me, no matter what the _number_ of the
coins, whether seven or seven hundred, out of Yankee-land; and
strange enough, what is not unlikely, if it be the _first_ cash I
realize for that piece of work,--Angle-land continuing still
_in_solvent to me! Well, it is a wide Motherland we have here,
or are getting to have, from Bass's Straits all round to Columbia
River, already almost circling the Globe: it must be hard with a
man if somewhere or other he find not some one or other to take
his part, and stand by him a little! Blessings on you, my
brother: nay, your work is already twice blessed.--I believe
after all, with the aid of my Scotch thrift, I shall not be
absolutely thrown into the streets here, or reduced to borrow,
and become the slave of somebody, for a morsel of bread. Thank
God, no! Nay, of late I begin entirely to despise that whole
matter, so as I never hitherto despised it: "Thou beggarliest
Spectre of Beggary that hast chased me ever since I was man, come
on then, in the Devil's name, let us see what is in thee! Will
the Soul of a man, with Eternity within a few years of it, quail
before _thee?_" Better, however, is my good pious Mother's
version of it: "They cannot take God's Providence from thee;
thou hast never wanted yet."*

----------
* In his Diary, May 9, 1838, Emerson wrote: "A letter this
morning from T. Carlyle. How should he be so poor? It is the
most creditable poverty I know of."
----------

But to go on with business; and the republication of books in
that Transoceanic England, New and improved Edition of England.
In January last, if I recollect right, Miss Martineau, in the
name of a certain Mr. Loring, applied to me for a correct List of
all my fugitive Papers; the said Mr. Loring meaning to publish
them for my behoof. This List she, though not without
solicitation, for I had small hope in it, did at last obtain, and
send, coupled with a request from me that you should be consulted
in the matter. Now it appears you had of yourself previously
determined on something of the same sort, and probably are far on
with the printing of your Two select volumes. I confess myself
greatly better pleased with it on that footing than on another.
Who Mr. Loring may be I know not, with any certainty, at first
hand; but who Waldo Emerson is I do know; and more than one god
from the machine is not necessary. I pray you, thank Mr. Loring
for his goodness towards me (his intents are evidently charitable
and not wicked); but consider yourself as in nowise bound at all
by that blotted Paper he has, but do the best you can for me,
consulting with him or not taking any counsel just as you see to
be fittest on the spot. And so Heaven prosper you, both in your
"aroused Yankee" state, and in all others;--and let us for the
present consider that we have enough about Books and Guineas. I
must add, however, that Fraser and I have yet made no bargain.
We found, on computing, that there would be five good
volumes, including _Teufelsdrockh._ For an edition of Seven
hundred and Fifty I demanded L50 a volume, and Fraser refused:
the poor man then fell dangerously ill, and there could not be a
word farther said on the subject; till very lately, when it
again became possible, but has not yet been put in practice. All
the world cries out, Why _do you_ publish with Fraser? "Because
my soul is sick of Booksellers, and of trade, and deception, and
'need and greed' altogether; and this poor Fraser, not worse
than the rest of them, has in some sort grown less hideous to me
by custom." I fancy, however, either Fraser will publish these
things before long; or some Samaritan here will take me to some
bolder brother of the trade that will. Great Samuel Johnson
assisted at the beginning of Bibliopoly; small Thomas Carlyle
assists at the ending of it: both are sorrowful seasons for a
man. For the rest, people here continue to receive that
_Revolution_ very much as you say they do _there:_ I am right
well quit of it; and the elderly gentlemen on both sides of the
water may take comfort, they will not soon have to suffer the
like again. But really England is wonderfully changed within
these ten years; the old gentlemen all shrunk into nooks, some
of them even voting with the young.--The American ill-printed Two
and-a-half-dollars Copy shall, for Emerson's sake, be welcomest
to me of all. Kennet will send it when it comes.

The _Oration_ did arrive, with my name on it, one snowy night in
January. It is off to Madeira; probably there now. I can
dispose of a score of copies to good advantage. Friend Sterling
has done the best of all his things in the current _Blackwood,_--
"Crystals from a Cavern,"--which see. He writes kind things of
you from Madeira, in expectation of the Speech. I will gratify
him with your message; he is to be here in May; better, we
hope, and in the way towards safety. Miss Martineau has given
you a luminous section in her new Book about America; you are
one of the American "Originals,"--the good Harriet!

And now I have but one thing to add and to repeat: Be quiet, be
quiet! The fire that is in one's own stomach is enough, without
foreign bellows to blow it ever and anon. My whole heart
shudders at the thrice-wretched self-combustion into which I see
all manner of poor paper-lanterns go up, the wind of "popularity"
puffing at them, and nothing left erelong but ashes and sooty
wreck. It is sad, most sad. I shun all such persons and
circles, as much as possible; and pray the gods to make me a
brick layer's hodbearer rather. O the "cabriolets, neatflies,"
and blue twaddlers of both sexes therein, that drive many a poor
Mrs. Rigmarole to the Devil!*--As for me, I continue doing as
nearly nothing as I can manage. I decline all invitations of
society that are declinable: a London rout is one of the maddest
things under the moon; a London dinner makes me sicker for a
week, and I say often, It is better to be even dull than to be
witty, better to be silent than to speak.

--------
* This sentence is a variation on one at the beginning of the
article on Scott.
--------

Curious: your Course of Lectures "on Human Culture" seems to be
on the very subject I am to discourse upon here in May coming;
but I am to call it "on the History of Literature," and _speak_
it, not write it. While you read this, I shall be in the
agonies! Ah me! often when I think of the matter, how my one
sole wish is to be left to hold my tongue, and by what bayonets
of Necessity clapt to my back I am driven into that Lecture-room,
and in what mood, and ordered to speak or die, I feel as if my
only utterance should be a flood of tears and blubbering! But
that, clearly, will not do. Then again I think it is perhaps
better so; who knows? At all events, we will try what is in
this Lecturing in London. If something, well; if nothing, why
also well. But I do want to get out of these coils for a tune.
My Brother is to be home again in May; if he go back to Italy,
if our Lecturing proved productive, why might we not all set off
thitherward for the winter coming? There is a dream to that
effect. It would suit my wife, too: she was alarmingly weak
this time twelvemonth; and I can only yet tell you that she is
stronger, not strong: she has not ventured out except at midday,
and rarely then, since Autumn last; she sits here patiently
waiting Summer, and charges me to send you her love.--America
also always lies in the background: I do believe, if I live
long, I shall get to Concord one day. Your wife must love me.
If the little Boy be a well-behaved fellow, he shall ride on my
back yet: if not, tell him I will have nothing to do with him,
the riotous little imp that he is. And so God bless you always,
my dear friend! Your affectionate,

--T. Carlyle

XXIII. Emerson to Carlyle*

Concord, 10 May, 1888

My Dear Friend,--Yesterday I had your letter of March. It
quickens my purpose (always all but ripe) to write to you. If it
had come earlier I should have been confirmed in my original
purpose of publishing _Select Miscellanies of T.C._ As it is, we
are far on in the printing of the first two volumes (to make 900
pages) of the papers as they stand in your list. And now I find
we shall only get as far as the seventeenth or eighteenth
article. I regret it, because this book will not embrace those
papers I chiefly desire to provide people with, and it may be
some time, in these years of bankruptcy and famine, before we
shall think it prudent to publish two volumes more. But Loring
is a good man, and thinks that many desire to see the sources of
Nile. I, for my part, fancy that to meet the taste of the
readers we should publish _from the last_ backwards, beginning
with the paper on Scott, which has had the best reception ever
known. Carlyleism is becoming so fashionable that the most
austere Seniors are glad to qualify their reprobation by
applauding this review. I have agreed with the bookseller
publishing the _Miscellanies_ that he is to guarantee to you one
dollar on every copy he sells; and you are to have the total
profit on every copy subscribed for. The retail price [is] to be
$2.50. The cost of the work is not yet precisely ascertained.
The work will probably appear in six or seven weeks. We print
one thousand copies. So whenever it is sold you shall have one
thousand dollars.

----------
* Printed in the _Athenaeum,_ July 8, 1882.
----------

The _French Revolution_ continues to find friends and purchasers.
It has gone to New Orleans, to Nashville, to Vicksburg. I have
not been in Boston lately, but have determined that nearly or
quite eight hundred copies should be gone. On the 1st of July I
shall make up accounts with the booksellers, and I hope to make
you the most favorable returns. I shall use the advice of
Barnard, Adams, & Co. in regard to remittances.

When you publish your next book I think you must send it out to
me in sheets, and let us print it here contemporaneously with the
English edition. The _eclat_ of so new a book would help the
sale very much.

But a better device would be, that you should embark in the
"Victoria" steamer, and come in a fortnight to New York, and in
twenty-four hours more to Concord. Your study arm-chair,
fireplace, and bed, long vacant, auguring expect you. Then you
shall revise your proofs and dictate wit and learning to the New
World. Think of it in good earnest. In aid of your friendliest
purpose, I will set down some of the facts. I occupy, or
_improve,_ as we Yankees say, two acres only of God's earth; on
which is my house, my kitchen-garden, my orchard of thirty young
trees, my empty barn. My house is now a very good one for
comfort, and abounding in room. Besides my house, I have, I
believe, $22,000, whose income in ordinary years is six percent.
I have no other tithe or glebe except the income of my winter
lectures, which was last winter $800. Well, with this income,
here at home, I am a rich man. I stay at home and go
abroad at my own instance. I have food, warmth, leisure, books,
friends. Go away from home, I am rich no longer. I never have a
dollar to spend on a fancy. As no wise man, I suppose, ever was
rich in the sense of _freedom to spend,_ because of the
inundation of claims, so neither am I, who am not wise. But at
home, I am rich,--rich enough for ten brothers. My wife Lidian
is an incarnation of Christianity,--I call her Asia,--and keeps
my philosophy from Antinomianism; my mother, whitest, mildest,
most conservative of ladies, whose only exception to her
universal preference for old things is her son; my boy, a piece
of love and sunshine, well worth my watching from morning to
night;--these, and three domestic women, who cook and sew and run
for us, make all my household. Here I sit and read and write,
with very little system, and, as far as regards composition, with
the most fragmentary result: paragraphs incompressible, each
sentence an infinitely repellent particle.

In summer, with the aid of a neighbor, I manage my garden; and a
week ago I set out on the west side of my house forty young pine
trees to protect me or my son from the wind of January. The
ornament of the place is the occasional presence of some ten or
twelve persons, good and wise, who visit us in the course of the
year.--But my story is too long already. God grant that you will
come and bring that blessed wife, whose protracted illness we
heartily grieve to learn, and whom a voyage and my wife's and my
mother's nursing would in less than a twelvemonth restore to
blooming health. My wife sends to her this message: "Come, and
I will be to you a sister." What have you to do with Italy?
Your genius tendeth to the New, to the West. Come and live with
me a year, and if you do not like New England well enough to
stay, one of these years (when the _History_ has passed its ten
editions, and been translated into as many languages) I will come
and dwell with you.

I gladly hear what you say of Sterling. I am foolish enough to
be delighted with being an object of kindness to a man I have
never seen, and who has not seen me. I have not yet got the
_Blackwood_ for March, which I long to see, but the other three
papers I have read with great satisfaction. They lie here on my
table. But he must get well.

As to Miss Martineau, I know not well what to say. Meaning to do
me a signal kindness (and a kindness quite out of all measure of
justice) she does me a great annoyance,--to take away from me my
privacy and thrust me before my time (if ever there be a time)
into the arena of the gladiators to be stared at. I was ashamed
to read, and am ashamed to remember. Yet, as you see her, I
would not be wanting in gratitude to a gifted and generous lady
who so liberally transfigures our demerits. So you shall tell
her, if you please, that I read all her book with pleasure but
that part, and if ever I shall travel West or South, I think she
has furnished me with the eyes. Farewell, dear wise man. I
think your poverty honorable above the common brightness of that
thorn-crown of the great. It earns you the love of men and the
praise of a thousand years. Yet I hope the angelical Beldame,
all-helping, all-hated, has given you her last lessons, and,
finding you so striding a proficient, will dismiss you to a
hundred editions and the adoration of the booksellers.

--R.W. Emerson

I have never heard from Rich, who, you wrote, had sent his
account to me. Let him direct to me at Concord.

A young engineer in Cambridge, by name McKean,* volunteers his
services in correcting the proofs of the _Miscellanies,_--and he
has your errata,--for the love of the reading. Shall we have
anthracite coal or wood in your chamber? My old mother is glad
you are coming.

-----------
* The late Mr. Henry S. McKean, a son of Professor McKean, and a
graduate of Harvard College in 1828.
-----------

XXIV. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 15 June, 1838

My Dear Emerson,--Our correspondence has fallen into a raveled
state; which would doubtless clear itself could I afford to wait
for your next Letter, probably tumbling over the Atlantic brine
about this very moment: but I cannot afford to wait; I must
write straightway. Your answer to this will bring matters round
again. I have had two irregular Notes of your writing, or
perhaps three; two dated March, one by Mr. Bancroft's Parcel,--
bringing Twelve _Orations_ withal; then some ten days later,
just in this very time, another Note by Mr. Sumner, whom I have
not yet succeeded in seeing, though I have attempted it, and hope
soon to do it. The Letter he forwarded me from Paris was
acknowledged already, I think. And now if the Atlantic will but
float me in safe that other promised Letter!

I got your American _French Revolution_ a good while ago. It
seems to me a very pretty Book indeed, wonderfully so for the
money; neither does it seem what we can call _incorrectly_
printed so far as I have seen; compared with the last _Sartor_
it is correctness itself. Many thanks to you, my Friend, and
much good may it do us all! Should there be any more reprinting,
I will request you to rectify at least the three following
errors, copied out of the English text indeed; nay, mark them in
your own New-English copy, whether there be reprinting or not:
Vol. I. p. 81, last paragraph, _for_ September _read_ August;
Vol. II. p. 344, first line, _for_ book of prayer _read_ look of
prayer; p. 357, _for_ blank _read_ black (2d paragraph, "all
black "). And so _basta._ And let us be well content about this
F.R. on both sides of the water, yours as well as mine.

"Too many cooks"! the Proverb says: it is pity if this new
apparition of a Mr. Loring should spoil the broth. But I
calculate you will adjust it well and smoothly between you, some
way or other. How you shall adjust it, or have adjusted it, is
what I am practically anxious now to learn. For you are to
understand that our English Edition has come to depend partly on
yours. After long higgling with the foolish Fraser, I have
quitted him, quite quietly, and given "Saunders and Ottley,
Conduit Street," the privilege of printing a small edition of
_Teufelsdrockh_ (Five Hundred copies), with a prospect of the
"Miscellaneous Writings" soon following. Saunders and Ottley are
at least more reputable persons, they are useful to me also in
the business of Lecturing. _Teufelsdrockh_ is at Press, to be
out very soon; I will send you a correct copy, the only
one in America I fancy. The enterprise here too is on the
"half-profits" plan, which I compute generally to mean equal
partition of the oyster-shells and a net result of zero. But the
thing will be economically useful to me otherwise; as a
publication of the "Miscellaneous" also would be; which latter,
however, I confess myself extremely unwilling to undertake the
trouble of for _nothing._ To me they are grown or fast growing
_obsolete,_ these Miscellanies, for most part; if money lie not
in them, what does lie for me? Now it strikes me you will infallibly
edit these things, at least as well as I, and are doing it at any
rate; your printing too would seem to be cheaper than ours: I
said to Saunders and Ottley, Why not have two hundred or three
hundred of this American Edition struck off with "London:
Saunders and Ottley, Conduit Street," on the title-page, and sent
over hither in sheets at what price they have cost my friends
yonder? Saunders of course threw cold water on this project, but
was obliged to admit that there would be some profit in it, and
that for me it would be far easier. The grand profit for me is
that people would understand better what I mean, and come better
about me if I lectured again, which seems the only way of getting
any wages at all for me here at present. Pray meditate my
project, if it be not already too late, hear what your Booksellers
say about it, and understand that I will not in any case set to
printing till I hear from you in answer to this.

How my sheet is filling with dull talk about mere economics! I
must still add that the _Lecturing_ I talked of, last time, is
verily over now; and well over. The superfine people listened
to the rough utterance with patience, with favor, increasing to
the last. I sent you a Newspaper once, to indicate that it was
in progress. I know not yet what the money result is; but I
suppose it will enable us to exist here thriftily another year;
not without hope of at worst doing the like again when the time
comes. It is a great novelty in my lot; felt as a very
considerable blessing; and really it has arrived, if it have
arrived, in _due_ time, for I had begun to get quite impatient of
the other method. Poverty and Youth may do; Poverty and Age go
badly together.--For the rest, I feel fretted to fiddle-strings;
my head and heart all heated, sick,--ah me! The question as ever
is: Rest. But then where? My Brother invites us to come to
Rome for the winter; my poor sick Wife might perhaps profit by
it; as for me, Natty Leatherstocking's lodge in the Western
Wood, I think, were welcomer still. I have a great mind, too, to
run off and see my Mother, by the new railways. What we shall
do, whether not stay quietly here, must remain uncertain for a
week or two. Write you always hither, till you hear otherwise.

The _Orations_ were right welcome; my _Madeira_ one, returned
thence with Sterling, was circulating over the West of England.
Sterling and Harriet stretched out the right hand with wreathed
smiles. I have read, a second or third time. Robert Southey has
got a copy, for his own behoof and that of _Lake_land: if he
keep his word as to _me,_ he may do as much for you, or more.
Copies are at Cambridge; among the Oxonians too; I have with
stingy discretion distributed all my copies but two. Old Rogers,
a grim old Dilettante, full of sardonic sense, was heard saying,
"It is German Poetry given out in American Prose." Friend
Emerson ought to be content;--and has now above all things, as I
said, to _be in no haste._ Slow fire does make sweet malt: how
true, how true! Also his next work ought to be a _concrete_
thing; not _theory_ any longer, but _deed._ Let him "live it,"
as he says; that is the way to come to "painting of it."
Geometry and the art of Design being once well over, take the
brush, and _andar con Dios!_

Mrs. Child has sent me a Book, _Philothea,_ and a most
magnanimous epistle. I have answered as I could. The Book is
beautiful, but of a _hectic_ beauty; to me not pleasant, even
fatal looking. Such things grow not in the ground, on Mother
Earth's honest bosom, but in hothouses,--Sentimental-Calvinist
fire traceable underneath! Bancroft also is of the hothouse
partly: I have a Note to send him by Sumner; do you thank him
meanwhile, and say nothing about _hothouses!_ But, on the whole,
men ought in New England, too to "swallow their formulas";*
there is no freedom till then: yet hitherto I find only one man
there who seems fairly on the way towards that, or arrived at
that. Good speed to _him._ I had to send my Wife's love: she
is not dangerously ill; but always feeble, and has to _struggle_
to keep erect; the summer always improves her, and this summer
too. Adieu, dear Friend; may Good always be with you and yours.

--T. Carlyle

-----------
* This was the saying of the old Marquis de Mirabeau concerning
his son, _Il a hume toutes les formules,_ and is used as a text
by Carlyle in his article on Mirabeau. "Of inexpressible
advantage is it that a man have 'an eye instead of a pair of
spectacles merely'; that, seeing through the formulas of things
and even 'making away' with many a formula, he see into the thing
itself, and so know it and be master of it!"
----------

XXV. Emerson to Carlyle

Boston, 30 July, 1888

My Dear Sir,--I am in town today to get what money the booksellers
will relinquish from their faithful gripe, and have succeeded now
in obtaining a first instalment, however small. I enclose to you
a bill of exchange for fifty pounds sterling, which costs here
exactly $242.22, the rate of exchange being nine percent. I
shall not today trouble you with any account, for my letter
must be quickly ready to go by the steam-packet. An exact
account has been rendered to me, which, though its present
balance in our favor is less than I expected, yet, as far as I
understand it, agrees well with all that has been promised: at
least the balance in our favor when the edition is sold, which
the booksellers assure me will assuredly be done within a year
from the publication, must be seven hundred and sixty dollars,
and what more Heaven and the subscribers may grant. I shall
follow this letter and bill by a duplicate of the bill in the
next packet.

The _Miscellanies_ is published in two volumes, a copy of which
goes to you immediately. Munroe tells me that two hundred and
fifty copies of it are already sold. Writing in a bookshop, my
dear friend, I have no power to say aught than that I am heartily
and always,

Yours,
R. Waldo Emerson

XXVI. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 6 August, 1838

My Dear Friend,--The swift ships are slow when they carry our
letters. Your letter dated the 15th of June arrived here last
Friday, the 3d of August. That day I was in Boston, and I have
only now got the information necessary to answer it. You have
probably already learned from my letter sent by the "Royal
William" (enclosing a bill of exchange for L50), that our first
two volumes of the _Miscellanies_ are published. I have sent you
a copy. The edition consists of one thousand copies. Of these
five hundred are bound, five hundred remain in sheets. The
title-pages, of course, are all printed alike; but the
publishers assure me that new title-pages can be struck off at a
trifling expense, with the imprint of Saunders and Ottley. The
cost of a copy in sheets or "folded" (if that means somewhat
more?) is eighty-nine cents; and bound is $1.15. The retail
price is $2.50 a copy; and the author's profit, $1; and the
bookseller's, 35 cents per copy; according to my understanding
of the written contract.

Here I believe you have all the material facts. I think there is
no doubt that the book will sell very well here. But if, for the
reasons you suggest, you wish any part of it, you can have it as
soon as ships can bring your will.

When you see your copy, you will perceive that we have printed
half the matter. I should presently begin to print the
remainder, inclusive of the Article on Lockhart's Scott, in two
more volumes; but now I think I shall wait until I hear from
you. Of those books we will print a larger edition, say twelve
hundred and fifty or fifteen hundred, if you want a part of it in
London. For I feel confident now that our public here is one
thousand strong. Write me therefore _by the steam packet_
your wishes.

I am sure you will like our edition. It has been most carefully
corrected by two young gentlemen who successively volunteered
their services, (the second when the first was called away,) and
who, residing in Cambridge, where the book was printed, could
easilier oversee it. They are Henry S. McBean, an engineer, and
Charles Stearns Wheeler, a Divinity student,--working both for
love of you. To one other gentleman I have brought you in debt,
--Rev. Convers Francis* (brother of Mrs. Child), who supplied from
his library all the numbers of the _Foreign Review_ from which we
printed the work. We could not have done without his books, and
he is a noble-hearted man, who rejoices in you. I have sent to
all three copies of the work as from you, and I shall be glad if
you will remember to sanction this expressly in your next letter.

----------
* This worthy man and lover of good books was, from 1842 till his
death in 1863, Professor in the Divinity School of Harvard
University.
----------

Thanks for the letter: thanks for your friendliest seeking of
friends for the poor _Oration._ Poor little pamphlet, to have
gone so far and so high! I am ashamed. I shall however send you
a couple more of the thin gentry presently, maugre all your hopes
and cautions. I have written and read a kind of sermon to the
Senior Class of our Cambridge Theological School a fortnight ago;
and an address to the Literary Societies of Dartmouth College;*
for though I hate American pleniloquence, I cannot easily say No
to young men who bid me speak also. And both these are now in
press. The first I hear is very offensive. I will now try to
hold my tongue until next winter. But I am asked continually
when you will come to Boston. Your lectures are boldly and
joyfully expected by brave young men. So do not forget us: and
if ever the scale-beam trembles, I beseech you, let the love of
me decide for America. I will not dare to tease you on a matter
of so many relations, and so important, and especially as I have
written out, I believe, my requests in a letter sent two or three
months ago,--but I must see you somewhere, somehow, may it please
God! I grieve to hear no better news of your wife. I hoped she
was sound and strong ere this, and can only hope still. My wife
and I send her our hearty love.

Yours affectionately,
R.W. Emerson

-----------
* The Address at the Cambridge Divinity School was delivered on
the 15th of July, and that at Dartmouth College on the 24th of
the same month. The title of the latter was "Literary Ethics."
Both are reprinted in Emerson's _Miscellanies._ These remarkable
discourses excited deep interest and wide attention. They
established Emerson's position as the leader of what was known as
the Transcendental movement. They were the expressions of his
inmost convictions and his matured thought. The Address at the
Divinity School gave rise to a storm of controversy which did not
disturb the serenity of its author. "It was," said Theodore
Parker, "the noblest, the most inspiring strain I ever listened
to." To others it seemed "neither good divinity nor good sense."
The Address at Dartmouth College set forth the high ideals of
intellectual life with an eloquence made irresistible by the
character of the speaker. From this time Emerson's influence
upon thought in America was acknowledged.
----------

XXVII. Carlyle to Emerson

Scotsbrig, Ecclefechan, (Annandale, Scotland)
25 September, 1838

My Dear Emerson,--There cannot any right answer be written you
here and now; yet I must write such answer as I can. You said,
"by steamship"; and it strikes me with a kind of remorse, on
this my first day of leisure and composure, that I have delayed
so long. For you must know, this is my Mother's house,--a place
to me unutterable as Hades and the Land of Spectres were;
likewise that my Brother is just home from Italy, and on the wing
thitherward or somewhither swiftly again; in a word, that all is
confusion and flutter with me here,--fit only for _silence!_ My
Wife sent me off hitherward, very sickly and unhappy, out of the
London dust, several weeks ago; I lingered in Fifeshire, I was
in Edinburgh, in Roxburghshire; have some calls to Cumberland,
which I believe I must refuse; and prepare to creep homeward
again, refreshed in health, but with a head and heart all
seething and tumbling (as the wont is, in such cases), and averse
to pens beyond all earthly implements. But my Brother is off
for Dumfries this morning; you before all others deserve an
hour of my solitude. I will abide by business; one must write
about that.

Your Bill and duplicate of a Bill for L50, with the two Letters
that accompanied them, you are to know then, did duly arrive at
Chelsea; and the larger Letter (of the 6th of August) was
forwarded to me hither some two weeks ago. I had also, long
before that, one of the friendliest of Letters from you, with a
clear and most inviting description of the Concord Household, its
inmates and appurtenances; and the announcement, evidently
authentic, that an apartment and heart's welcome was ready there
for my Wife and me; that we were to come quickly, and stay for a
twelvemonth. Surely no man has such friends as I. We ought to
say, May the Heavens give us thankful hearts! For, in truth,
there are blessings which do, like sun-gleams in wild weather,
make this rough life beautiful with rainbows here and there.
Indicating, I suppose, that there is a Sun, and general Heart of
Goodness, behind all that;--for which, as I say again, let us be
thankful evermore.

My Wife says she received your American Bill of so many pounds
sterling for the Revolution Book, with a "pathetic feeling" which
brought "tears" to her eyes. From beyond the waters there is a
hand held out; beyond the waters too live brothers. I would
only the Book were an Epic, a _Dante,_ or undying thing, that New
England might boast in after times of this feat of hers; and put
stupid, poundless, and penniless Old England to the blush about
it! But after all, that is no matter; the feebler the well-
meant Book is, the more "pathetic" is the whole transaction: and
so we will go on, fuller than ever of "desperate hope" (if you
know what that is), with a feeling one would not give and could
not get for several money-bags; and say or think, Long live true
friends and Emersons, and (in Scotch phrase) "May ne'er waur be
amang us!"--I will buy something permanent, I think, out of this
L50, and call it either _Ebenezer_ or _Yankee-doodle-doo._ May
good be repaid you manifold, my kind Brother! may good be ever
with you, my kind Friends all!

But now as to this edition of the _Miscellanies_ (poor things), I
really think my Wife is wisest, who says I ought to leave you
altogether to your own resources with it, America having an art
of making money out of my Books which England is unfortunately
altogether without. Besides, till I once see the Two Volumes now
under way, and can let a Bookseller see them, there could no
bargain be made on the subject. We will let it rest there,
therefore. Go on with your second Two Volumes, as if there were
no England extant, according to your own good judgment. When I
get to London, I will consult some of the blockheads with the
Book in my hand: if we do want Two Hundred copies, you can give
us them with a trifling loss. It is possible they may make some
better proposal about an Edition here: that depends on the fate
of _Sartor_ here, at present trying itself; which I have not in
the least ascertained. For the present, thank as is meet all
friends in your world that have interested themselves for me.
Alas! I have nothing to give them but thanks. Henry McKean,
Charles Wheeler, Convers Francis; these Names shall, if it
please Heaven, become Persons for me, one day. Well!--But I will
say nothing more. That too is of the things on which all Words
are poor to Silence. Good to the Good and Kind!

A Letter from me must have crossed that _descriptive_ Concord
one, on the Ocean, I think. Our correspondence is now standing
on its feet. I will write to you again, whether I hear from you
or not, so soon as my hand finds its cunning again in London,--so
soon as I can see there what is to be done or said. All goes
decidedly better, I think. My Wife was and is much healthier
than last year, than in any late year. I myself get visibly
quieter my preternatural _Meditations in Hades,_ apropos of this
Annandale of mine, are calm compared with those of last year. By
another Course of Lectures I have a fair prospect of living for
another season; nay, people call it a "new profession" I have
devised for myself, and say I may live by it as many years as I
like. This too is partly the fruit of my poor Book; one should
not say that it was worth nothing to me even in money. Last year
I fancied my Audience mainly the readers of it; drawn round me,
in spite of many things, by force of it. Let us be content. I
have Jesuits, Swedenborgians, old Quakeresses, _omne cum Proteus,_
--God help me, no man ever had so confused a public!--I
salute you, my dear Friend, and your hospitable circle. May
blessings be on your kind household, on your kind hearts!

--T. Carlyle

A copy of the English _Teufelsdrockh_ has lain with your name on
it these two months in Chelsea; waiting an opportunity. It is
worth nothing to you: a dingy, ill-managed edition; but correct
or nearly correct as to printing; it is right that such should
be in your hands in case of need. The New England Pamphlets will
be greedily expected. More than one inquires of me, Has that
Emerson of yours written nothing else? And I have lent them the
little Book _Nature,_ till it is nearly thumbed to pieces.
Sterling is gone to Italy for the winter since I left town;
swift as a flash! I cannot teach him the great art of _sitting
still;_ his fine qualities are really like to waste for want
of that.

I read your paragraph to Miss Martineau; she received it, as she
was bound, with a good grace. But I doubt, I doubt, O Ralph
Waldo Emerson, thou hast not been sufficiently ecstatic about
her,--thou graceless exception, confirmatory of a rule! In truth
there _are_ bores, of the first and of all lower magnitudes.
Patience and shuffle the cards.

XXVIII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 17 October, 1838

My Dear Friend,--I am quite uneasy that I do not hear from you.
On the 21st of July I wrote to you and enclosed a remittance of
L50 by a Bill of Exchange on Baring Brothers, drawn by Chandler,
Howard, & Co., which was sent in the steamer "Royal William." On
the 2d of August I received your letter of inquiry respecting our
edition of the _Miscellanies,_ and wrote a few days later in
reply, that we could send you out two or three hundred copies of
our first two volumes, in sheets, at eighty-nine cents per copy
of two volumes, and the small additional price of the new title-
page. I said also that I would wait until I heard from you
before commencing the printing of the last two volumes of the
_Miscellanies,_ and, if you desired it, would print any number of
copies with a title-page for London. This letter went in a
steamer--he "Great Western" probably--about the 10th or 12th of
August. (Perhaps I misremember the names [of the steamers], and
the first should be last.) I have heard nothing from you since.
I trust my letters have not miscarried. (A third was sent also
by another channel inclosing a duplicate of the Bill of
Exchange.) With more fervency, I trust that all goes well in the
house of my friend,--and I suppose that you are absent on some
salutary errand of repairs and recreation. _Use, I pray you,
your earliest_ hour in certifying me of the facts.

One word more in regard to business. I believe I expressed some
surprise, in the July letter, that the booksellers should have no
greater balance for us at this settlement. I have since studied
the account better, and see that we shall not be disappointed in
the year of obtaining at least the sum first promised,--seven
hundred and sixty dollars; but the whole expense of the edition
is paid out of the copies first sold, and our profits depend on
the last sales. The edition is almost gone, and you shall have
an account at the end of the year.

In a letter within a twelvemonth I have urged you to pay us a
visit in America, and in Concord. I have believed that you would
come one day, and do believe it. But if, on your part, you have
been generous and affectionate enough to your friends here--or
curious enough concerning our society--to wish to come, I think
you must postpone, for the present, the satisfaction of your
friendship and your curiosity. At this moment I would not have
you here, on any account. The publication of my _Address to the
Divinity College_ (copies of which I sent you) has been the
occasion of an outcry in all our leading local newspapers against
my "infidelity," "pantheism," and "atheism." The writers warn
all and sundry against me, and against whatever is supposed
to be related to my connection of opinion, &c.; against
Transcendentalism, Goethe, and _Carlyle._ I am heartily sorry to
see this last aspect of the storm in our washbowl. For, as
Carlyle is nowise guilty, and has unpopularities of his own, I do
not wish to embroil him in my parish differences. You were
getting to be a great favorite with us all here, and are daily a
greater with the American public, but just now, _in Boston,_
where I am known as your editor, I fear you lose by the
association. Now it is indispensable to your right influence
here, that you should never come before our people as one of a
clique, but as a detached, that is, universally associated
man; so I am happy, as I could not have thought, that you
have not yielded yourself to my entreaties. Let us wait a
little until this foolish clamor be overblown. My position
is fortunately such as to put me quite out of the reach of any
real inconvenience from the panic-strikers or the panic-struck;
and, indeed, so far as this uneasiness is a necessary result of
mere inaction of mind, it seems very clear to me that, if I live,
my neighbors must look for a great many more shocks, and perhaps
harder to bear.

The article on German Religious Writers in the last _Foreign
Quarterly Review_ suits our meridian as well as yours; as is
plainly signified by the circumstance that our newspapers copy
into their columns the opening tirade and _no more._ Who wrote
that paper? And who wrote the paper on Montaigne in the
_Westminster?_ I read with great satisfaction the Poems and
Thoughts of Archaeus in _Blackwood._ "The Sexton's Daughter" is
a beautiful poem: and I recognize in them all _the_ Soul, with
joy and love. Tell me of the author's health and welfare; or,
will not he love me so much as to write me a letter with his own
hand? And tell me of yourself, what task of love and wisdom the
Muses impose; and what happiness the good God sends to you and
yours. I hope your wife has not forgotten me.

Yours affectionately,
R.W. Emerson

The _Miscellanies,_ Vols. I. and II., are a popular book. About
five hundred copies have been sold. The second article on Jean
Paul works with might on the inner man of young men. I hate to
write you letters on business and facts like this. There are so
few Friends that I think some time I shall meet you nearer, for
I love you more than is fit to say. W.H. Channing has written
a critique on you, which I suppose he has sent you, in the
_Boston Review._

XXIX. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London
7 November, 1838

My Dear Friend,--It is all right; all your Letters with their
inclosures have arrived in due succession: the last, inquiring
after the fate of the others, came this morning. I was in
Scotland, as you partly conjecture; I wrote to you already
(though not without blamable delay), from my Mother's house in
Annandale, a confused scrawl, which I hope has already got to
hand, and quieted your kind anxieties. I am as well as usual in
health, my Wife better than usual; nothing is amiss, except my
negligence and indolence, which has put you to this superfluous
solicitude on my account. However, I have an additional Letter
by it; you must pardon me, you must not grudge me that
undeserved pleasure, the reward of evil-doing. I may well say,
you are a blessing to me on this Earth; no Letter comes from you
with other than good tidings,--or can come while you live there
to love me.

The Bill was thrust duly into Baring's brass slit "for
acceptance," on my return hither some three weeks ago; and will,
no doubt, were the days of grace run, come out in the shape of
Fifty Pounds Sterling; a very curious product indeed. Do you
know what I think of doing with it? _Dyspepsia,_ my constant
attendant in London, is incapable of help in my case by any
medicine or appliance except one only, Riding on horseback. With
a good horse to whirl me over the world for two hours daily, I
used to keep myself supportably well. Here, the maintenance of a
Horse far transcends my means; yet it seems hard I should not
for a little while be in a kind of approximate health in this
Babylon where I have my bread to seek it is like swimming with a
millstone round your neck,--ah me! In brief, I am about half
resolved to buy myself a sharp little nag with Twenty of these
Transatlantic Pounds, and ride him till the other Thirty be
eaten: I will call the creature "Yankee," and kind thoughts of
those far away shall be with me every time I mount him. Will not
that do? My Wife says it is the best plan I have had for years,
and strongly urges it on. My kind friends!

As to those copies of the Carlyle Miscellanies, I unfortunately
still can say nothing, except what was said in the former
(Scotch) letter, that you must proceed in the business with an
eye to America and not to us. My Booksellers, Saunders and
Ottley, have no money for me, no definite offer in money to make
for those Two Hundred copies, of which you seem likely to make
money if we simply leave them alone. I have asked these
Booksellers, I have asked Fraser too: What will you _give me in
ready money_ for Two Hundred and Fifty copies of that work, sell
it afterwards as you can? They answer always, We must see it
first. Now the copy long ago sent me has never come to hand; I
have asked for it of Kennet, but without success; I have nothing
for it but to wait the winds and chances. Meanwhile Saunders and
Ottley want forsooth a _Sketches of German Literature_ in three
volumes: then a _Miscellanies_ in three volumes: that is their
plan of publishing an English edition; and the outlook they hold
out for me is certain trouble in this matter, and recompense
entirely uncertain. I think on the whole it is extremely likely
I shall apply to you for Two Hundred and Fifty copies (that is
their favorite number) of these four volumes, (nay, if it be of
any moment, you can bind me down to it _now,_ and take it for
sure,) but I cannot yet send you the title-page; no bookseller
purchasing till "we see it first." But after all, will it suit
America to print an _unequal_ number of your two pairs of
volumes? Do not the two together make one work? On the whole,
consider that I shall in all likelihood want Two Hundred and
Fifty copies, and consider it certain if that will serve the
enterprise: we must leave it here today. I will stir in it
now, however, and take no rest till in one way or other you do
get a title-page from me, or some definite deliverance on the
matter. O Athenians, what a trouble I _give,_ having _got_
your applauses!

Kennet the Bookseller gave me yesterday (on my way to "the City"
with that Brother of mine, the Italian Doctor who is here at
present and a great lover of yours) ten copies of your Dartmouth
Oration: we read it over dinner in a chop-house in Bucklersbury,
amid the clatter of some fifty stand of knives and forks; and a
second time more leisurely at Chelsea here. A right brave
Speech; announcing, in its own way, with emphasis of full
conviction, to all whom it may concern, that great forgotten
truth, _Man is still man._ May it awaken a pulsation under the
ribs of Death! I believe the time is come for such a Gospel.
They must speak it out who have it,--with what audience there may
be. I have given away two copies this morning; I will take care
of the rest. Go on, and speed.--And now where is the heterodox
Divinity one, which awakens such "tempest in a washbowl," brings
Goethe, Transcendentalism, and Carlyle into question, and on the
whole evinces "what [difference] New England also makes between
_Pan_-theism and _Pot_-theism"? I long to see that; I expect to
congratulate you on that too. Meanwhile we will let the washbowl
storm itself out; and Emerson at Concord shall recognize it for
a washbowl storming, and hold on his way. As to my share in it,
grieve not for half an instant. Pantheism, Pottheism, Mydoxy,
Thydoxy, are nothing at all to me; a weariness the whole jargon,
which I avoid speaking of, decline listening to: _Live,_ for
God's sake, with what Faith thou couldst get; leave off
_speaking_ about Faith! Thou knowest it not. Be _silent,_ do
not speak.--As to you, my friend, you are even to go on, giving
still harder shocks if need be; and should I come into censure
by means of you, there or here, think that I am proud of my
company; that, as the boy Hazlitt said after hearing Coleridge,
"I will go with that man"; or, as our wild Burns has it,

"Wi' sic as he, where'er he be,
May I be saved or damned!"

Oime! what a foolish goose of a world this is! If it were not
[for] here and there an articulate-speaking man, one would be
all-too lonely.

This is nothing at all like the letter I meant to write you; but
I will write again, I trust, in few days, and the first paragraph
shall, if possible, hold all the business. I have much to tell
you, which perhaps is as well not written. O that I did see you
face to face! But the time shall come, if Heaven will. Why not
you come over, since I cannot? There is a room here, there is
welcome here, and two friends always. It must be done one way or
the other. I will take, care of your messages to Sterling. He
is in Florence; he was the Author of _Montaigne._* The _Foreign
Quarterly_ Reviewer of _Strauss_ I take to be one Blackie, an
Advocate in Edinburgh, a frothy, semi-confused disciple of mine
and other men's; I guess this, but I have not read the Article:
the man Blackie is from Aberdeen, has been roaming over Europe,
and carries more sail than ballast. Brother John, spoken of
above, is knocking at the door even now; he is for Italy again,
we expect, in few days, on a better appointment: know that you
have a third friend in him under this roof,--a man who quarrels
with me all day in a small way, and loves me with the whole soul
of him. My Wife demanded to have "room for one line." What she
is to write I know not, except it be what she has said, holding
up the pamphlet, "Is it not a noble thing? None of them all but
he," &c., &c. I will write again without delay when the stray
volumes arrive; before that if they linger. Commend me to all
the kind household of Concord: Wife, Mother, and Son.

Ever yours,
T. Carlyle

---------
* See _ante,_ p. 184. Sterling's essay on Montaigne was his
first contribution, in 1837, to the _London and Westminster
Review._ It is reprinted in "Essays and Tales, by John Sterling,
collected and edited, with a Memoir of his Life, by Julius
Charles Hare," London, 1848, Vol. I. p. 129.
----------

_"Forgotten you?"_ O, no indeed! If there were nothing else to
remember you by, I should never forget the Visitor, who years ago
in the Desert descended on us, out of the clouds as it were, and
made one day there look like enchantment for us, and left me
weeping that it was only _one_ day. When I think of America, it
is of you,--neither Harriet Martineau nor any one else succeeds
in giving me a more extended idea of it. When I wish to see
America it is still you, and those that are yours. I read all
that you write with an interest which I feel in no other writing
but my Husband's,--or it were nearer the truth to say there is no
other writing of living men but yours and his that I _can_ read.
God Bless you and Weib and Kind. Surely I shall some day see you
all.

Your affectionate
Jane Carlyle

XXX. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 15 November, 1835

Dear Emerson,--Hardly above a week ago, I wrote you in immediate
answer to some friendly inquiries produced by negligence of mine:
the Letter is probably tumbling on the salt waves at this hour,
in the belly of the "Great Western"; or perhaps it may be still
on firm land waiting, in which case this will go along with it.
I had written before out of Scotland a Letter of mere
acknowledgment and postponement; you must have received that
before now, I imagine. Our small piece of business is now become
articulate, and I will despatch it in a paragraph. Pity my
stupidity that I did not put the thing on this footing long ago!
It never struck me till the other day that though no copy of our
_Miscellanies_ would turn up for inspection here, and no
Bookseller would bargain for a thing unseen, I myself might
bargain, and leave their hesitations resting on their own
basis. In fine, I have rejected all their schemes of printing
_Miscellaneous Works_ here, printing _Sketches of German
Literature,_ or printing anything whatever on the "half-profits
system," which is like toilsomely scattering seed into the sea:
and I settled yesterday with Fraser to give him the American
sheets, and let them sell _themselves,_ on clear principles, or
remain unsold if they like. I find it infinitely the best plan,
and to all appearance the profitablest as to money that could
have been devised for me.

What you have to do therefore is to get Two Hundred and Fifty
copies (_in sheets_) of the whole Four Volumes, so soon as the
second two are printed, and have them, with the proper title-
page, sent off hither to Fraser's address; the sooner the
better. The American title-page, instead of "Boston," &c. at the
bottom, will require to bear, in three lines "London: / James
Fraser, 215 Regent Street, / 1839." Fraser is anxious that you
should not spell him with a z; your man can look on the Magazine
and beware. I suppose also you should print _labels_ for the
backs of the four volumes, to be used by the _half_-binder; they
do the books in that way here now: but if it occasion any
difficulty, never mind this; it was not spoken of to Fraser, and
is my own conjecture merely; the thing can be managed in various
other ways. Two Hundred and Fifty copies, then, of the entire
book: there is nothing else to be attended to that you do not
understand as well as I. Fraser will announce it in his
Magazine: the eager, select public will wait. Probably, there
is no chance before the middle of March or so? Do not hurry
yourselves, or at all change your rate for _us:_ but so soon as
the work is ready in the course of Nature, the earliest
conveyance to the Port of London will bring a little cargo which
one will welcome with a strange feeling! I declare myself
delighted with the plan; an altogether romantic kind of plan, of
romance and reality: fancy me riding on _Yankee_ withal, at the
time, and considering what a curious world this is, that bakes
bread for one beyond the great Ocean-stream, and how a poor man
is not left after all to be trodden into the gutters, though the
fight went sore against him, and he saw no backing anywhere.
_Allah akbar!_ God is great; no saying truer than that.--And so
now, by the blessing of Heaven, we will talk no more of business
this day.

My employments, my outlooks, condition, and history here, were a
long chapter; on which I could like so well to talk with you
face to face; but as for writing of them, it is a mere mockery.
In these four years, so full of pain and toil, I seem to have
lived four decades. By degrees, the creature gets accustomed to
its element; the salamander learns to live in fire, and be
of the same temperature with it. Ah me! I feel as if grown
old innumerable things are become weary, flat, stale, and
unprofitable. And yet perhaps I am not old, only wearied, and
there is a stroke or two of work in me yet. For the rest, the
fret and agitation of this Babylon wears me down: it is the most
unspeakable life; of sunbeams and miry clay; a contradiction
which no head can reconcile. Pain and poverty are not wholesome;
but praise and flattery along with them are poison: God deliver
us from that; it carries madness in the very breath of it! On
the whole, I say to myself, what thing is there so good as
_rest?_ A sad case it is and a frequent one in my circle, to be
entirely cherubic, _all_ face and wings. "Mes enfans," said a
French gentleman to the cherubs in the Picture, "Mes enfans,
asseyez-vous?"--"Monseigneur," answer they, "il n'y a pas de
quoi!" I rejoice rather in my laziness; proving that I _can_
sit.--But, after all, ought I not to be thankful? I positively
can, in some sort, exist here for the while; a thing I had been
for many years ambitious of to no purpose. I shall have to
lecture again in spring, Heaven knows on what; it will be a
wretched fever for me; but once through it there will be board
wages for another year. The wild Ishmael can hunt in _this_
desert too, it would seem. I say, I will be thankful; and wait
quietly what farther is to come, or whether anything farther.
But indeed, to speak candidly, I do feel sometimes as if another
Book were growing in me,--though I almost tremble to think of it.
Not for this winter, O no! I will write an Article merely, or
some such thing, and read trash if better be not. This, I do
believe, is my horoscope for the next season: an Article on
something about New-Year's-day (the Westminster Editor, a good-
natured, admiring swan-goose from the North Country, will not let
me rest); then Lectures; then--what? I am for some practical
subject too; none of your pictures in the air, or _aesthetisches
Zeug_ (as Mullner's wife called it, Mullner of the _Midnight
Blade_): nay, I cannot get up the steam on any such best; it is
extremely irksome as well as fruitless at present. In the next
_Westminster Review,_ therefore, if you see a small scrub of a
paper signed "S.P." on one Varnhagen a German, say that it is by
"Simon Pure," or by "Scissars and Paste," or even by "Soaped
Pig"--whom no man shall _catch!_ Truly it is a secret which you
must not mention: I was driven to it by the Swan-goose above
mentioned, not Mill but another. Let this suffice for my
winter's history: may the summer be more productive.

As for Concord and New England, alas! my Friend, I should but
deface your Idyllion with an ugly contradiction, did I come in
such mood as mine is. I am older in years than you; but in
humor I am older by centuries. What a hope is in that ever young
heart, cheerful, healthful as the morning! And as for me, you
have no conception what a crabbed, sulky piece of sorrow and
dyspepsia I am grown; and growing, if I do not draw bridle. Let
me gather heart a little! I have not forgotten Concord or the
West; no, it lies always beautiful in the blue of the horizon,
afar off and yet attainable; it is a great possession to me;
should it even never be attained. But I have got to consider
lately that it is you who are coming hither first. That is the
right way, is it not? New England is becoming more than ever
part of Old England; why, you are nearer to us now than
Yorkshire was a hundred years ago; this is literally a fact:
you can come _without_ making your will. It is one of my
calculations that all Englishmen from all zones and hemispheres
will, for a good while yet, resort occasionally to the Mother-
Babel, and see a thing or two there. Come if you dare; I said
there was a room, house-room and heart-room, constantly waiting
you here, and you shall see blockheads by the million.
_Pickwick_ himself shall be visible; innocent young Dickens
reserved for a questionable fate. The great Wordsworth shall
talk till you yourself pronounce him to be a bore. Southey's
complexion is still healthy mahogany-brown, with a fleece of
white hair, and eyes that seem running at full gallop. Leigh
Hunt, "man of genius in the shape of a Cockney," is my near
neighbor, full of quips and cranks, with good humor and no common
sense. Old Rogers with his pale head, white, bare, and cold as
snow, will work on you with those large blue eyes, cruel,
sorrowful, and that sardonic shelf-chin:--This is the Man, O
Rogers, that wrote the German Poetry in American Prose; consider
him well!--But whither am I running? My sheet is done! My
Brother John returns again almost immediately to Italy. He has
got appointed Traveling Doctor to a certain Duke of Buccleuch,
the chief of our Scotch Dukes: an excellent position for him as
far as externals go. His departure will leave me lonelier; but
I must reckon it for the best: especially I must begin working.
Harriet Martineau is coming hither this evening; with beautiful
enthusiasm for the Blacks and others. She is writing a Novel.
The first American book proved generally rather wearisome, the
second not so; we have since been taught (not I) "How to
observe." Suppose you and I promulgate a treatise next, "How to
see"? The old plan was, to have a pair of _eyes _first of all,
and then to open them: and endeavor with your whole strength to
_look._ The good Harriet! But "God," as the Arabs say, "has
given to every people a Prophet (or Poet) in its own speech":
and behold now Unitarian mechanical Formalism was to have its
Poetess too; and stragglings of genius were to spring up even
through that like grass through a Macadam highway!--Adieu, my
Friend, I wait still for your heterodox Speech; and love
you always.

--T. Carlyle

An English _Sartor_ goes off to you this day; through Kennet, to
C.C. Little and J. Brown of Boston; the likeliest conveyance.
It is correctly printed, and that is all. Its fate here (the
fate of the publication, I mean) remains unknown; "unknown
and unimportant."

XXXI. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 2 December, 1838

My Dear Emerson,--Almost the very day after my last Letter went
off, the long-expected two volumes of _Miscellanies_ arrived.
The heterodox pamphlet has never yet come to hand. I am now to
write you again about that _Miscellany_ concern the fourth
letter, I do believe; but it is confirmatory of the foregoing
three, and will be the last, we may hope.

Fraser is charmed with the look of your two volumes; declares
them unsurpassable by art of his; and wishes (what is the main
part of this message) that you would send his cargo in the
_bound_ state, bound and lettered as these are, with the sole
difference that the leaves be _not_ cut, or shaved on the sides,
our English fashion being to have them _rough._ He is impatient
that the Book were here; desires further that it be sent to the
Port of London rather than another Port, and that it be packed in
_boxes_ "to keep the covers of the volumes safe,"--all which I
doubt not the Packers and the Shippers of New England have
dexterity enough to manage for the best, without desire of his.
If you have printed off nothing yet, I will desire for my own
behoof that Two hundred and _Sixty_ be the number sent; I find I
shall need some ten to give away: if your first sheet is printed
off, let the number stand as it was. It would be an improvement
if you could print our title-pages on paper a little stronger;
that would stand ink, I mean: the fly leaves in the same, if you
have such paper convenient; if not, not. Farther as to the
matter of the title-page, it seems to me your Printer might
give a bolder and a broader type to the words "Critical and
Miscellaneous," and add after "Essays" with a colon (:), the
line "Collected and Republished," with a colon also; then the
"By," &c. "In Four Volumes, Vol. I.," &c. I mean that we want,
in general, a little more ink and decisiveness: show your man
the title-page of the English _French Revolution,_ or look at it
your self, and you will know. R.W.E.'s "Advertisement," friendly
and good, as all his dealings are to me ward, will of course be
suppressed in the English copies. I see not that with propriety
I can say anything by way of substitute: silence and the New
England _imprint_ will tell the story as eloquently as there
is need.

For the rest you must tell Mr. Loring, and all men who had a hand
in it along with you, that I am altogether right well pleased
with this edition, and find it far beyond my expectation. To my
two young Friends, Henry S. McKean (be so good as write these
names more indisputably for me) and Charles Stearns Wheeler, in
particular, I will beg you to express emphatically my gratitude;
they have stood by me with right faithfulness, and made the
correctest printing; a _great_ service had I known that there
were such eyes and heads acting in behalf of me there, I would
have scraped out the Editorial blotches too (notes of admiration,
dashes, "We think"s, &c., &c., common in Jeffrey's time in the
_Edinburgh Review_) and London misprints; which are almost the
only deformities that remain now. It is _extremely_ correct
printing wherever I have looked, and many things are silently
amended; it is the most fundamental service of all. I have not
the other _Articles_ by me at present; I think they are of
themselves a little more correct; at all events there are
nothing but _misprints_ to deal with;--the Editors, by this time,
had got bound up to let me alone. In the _Life of Scott,_ fourth
page of it (p. 296 of our edition), there is a sentence to be
deleted. "It will tell us, say they, little new and nothing
pleasing to know": out with this, for it is nonsense, and was
marked for erasure in the manuscript, I dare say. I know with
certainty no more at present.

Fraser is to sell the Four Volumes at Two Guineas here. On
studying accurately your program of the American mercantile
method, I stood amazed to contrast it with our English one. The
Bookseller here admits that he could, by diligent bargaining, get
up such a book for something like the same cost or a _little_
more; but the "laws of the trade" deduct from the very front of
the selling price--how much think you--_forty percent_ and odd,
when your man has only _fifteen;_ for the mere act of vending!
To cover all, they charge that enormous price. (A man, while I
stood consulting with Fraser, came in and asked for Carlyle's
_Revolution;_ they showed it him, he asked the price; and
exclaimed, "Guinea and a half! I can get it from America for
nine shillings!" and indignantly went his way; not without
reason.) There are "laws of the trade" which ought to be
_repealed;_ which I will take the liberty of contravening to all
lengths by all opportunities--if I had but the power! But if
this joint-stock American plan prosper, it will answer rarely.
Fraser's first _French Revolution,_ for instance, will be done,
he calculates, about New-Year's-day; and a second edition
wanted; mine to do with what I like. If you in America
wanted more also--? I leave you to think of this.--And now
enough, enough!

My Brother went from us last Tuesday; ought to be in Paris
yesterday. I am yet writing nothing; feel forsaken, sad, sick,
--not unhappy. In general Death seems beautiful to me; sweet and
great. But Life also is beautiful, is great and divine, were it
never to be joyful any more. I read Books, my wife sewing by me,
with the light of a sinumbra, in a little apartment made snug
against the winter; and am happiest when all men leave me alone,
or nearly all,--though many men love me rather, ungrateful that I
am. My present book is _Horace Walpole;_ I get endless stuff
out of it; epic, tragic, lyrical, didactic: all inarticulate
indeed. An old blind Schoolmaster in Annan used to ask with
endless anxiety when a new scholar was offered him, "But are ye
sure _he's not a Dunce?_" It is really the one thing needful in
a man; for indeed (if we will candidly understand it) all else
is presupposed in that. Horace Walpole is no dunce, not a fibre
of him is duncish.

Your Friend Sumner was here yesterday, a good while, for the
first time: an ingenious, cultivated, courteous man; a little
sensitive or so, and with no other fault that I discerned. He
borrowed my copy of your Dartmouth business, and bound himself
over to return with it soon. Some approve of that here, some
condemn: my Wife and another lady call it better even than the
former, I not so good. And now the Heterodox, the Heterodox,
where is that? Adieu, my dear Friend. Commend me to the Concord
Household; to the little Boy, to his Grandmother, and Mother,
and Father; we must all meet some day,--or _some no-day_ then
(as it shall please God)! My Wife heartily greets you all.

Ever yours,
T. Carlyle

I sent your book, message, and address to Sterling; he is in
Florence or Rome. Read the article _Simonides_ by him in the
_London and Westminster_--brilliant prose, translations--wooden?
His signature is L (Pounds Sterling!).--_Now_ you are to write
_soon?_ I always forgot to tell you, there came long since two
packages evidently in your hand, marked "One printed sheet," and
"one Newspaper," for which the Postman demanded about Fifteen
shillings: _rejected._ After considerable correspondence the
Newspaper was again offered me at _ten pence;_ the _sheet_
unattainable altogether: "No," even at tenpence. The fact is,
it was wrong wrapped, that Newspaper. Leave it open at the ends,
and try me again, once; I think it will come almost gratis.
Steam and Iron are making all the Planet into one Village.--A Mr.
Dwight wrote to me about the dedicating of some German
translations: _Yes._ What are they or he?*--Your _Sartor_ is
off through Kennet. Could you send me two copies of the American
_Life of Schiller,_ if the thing is fit for making a present of,
and easy to be got? If not, do not mind it at all.--Addio!

-------------
* Mr. John S. Dwight, whose volume of _Select Minor Poems from
the German of Goethe and Schiller,_ published in 1839, was
dedicated to Carlyle. It was the third volume of _Specimens of
Foreign Standard Literature, edited by George Ripley. Beside Mr.
Dwight's own excellent versions, it contained translations by Mr.
Bancroft, Dr. Hedge, Dr. Frothingham, and others. For many years
Mr. Dwight rendered a notable public service as the editor of
_Dwight's Journal of Music,_--a publication which did more than
any other to raise and to maintain high the standard of musical
taste and culture in America.
---------

XXXII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 13 January, 1839

My Dear Friend,--I am not now in any Condition to write a letter,
having neither the facts from the booksellers which you would
know touching our future plans, nor yet a satisfactory account
balanced and settled of our past dealings; and lastly, no time
to write what I would say,--as my poor lectures are in full
course, and absorb all my wits; but as the "Royal William" will
not wait, and as I have a hundred pounds to send on account of
the sales of the _French Revolution,_ I must steal a few minutes
to send my salutation. I have received all your four good
letters: and you are a good and generous man to write so many.
Two came on the 2d and 3d of January, and the last on the 9th.
If the bookselling Munroe had answered me yesterday, as he ought,
I should be able to satisfy you as to the time when to expect our
cargo of _Miscellanies._ The third and fourth volumes are now
printing: 't is a fortnight since we began. You shall have two
hundred and fifty copies,--I am not quite sure you can have
more,--bound, and _entitled,_ and directed as you desire, at
least according to the best ability of our printer as far as the
typography is concerned, and we will speed the work as fast as we
can; but as we have but a single copy of _Fraser's Magazine_--we
do not get on rapidly. The _French Revolution_ was all sold more
than a month since. We should be glad of more copies, but the
bookseller thinks not of enough copies to justify a new edition
yet. I should not be surprised, however, to see that some bold
brother of the trade had undertaken it. Now, what does your
question point at in reference to your new edition, asking "if we
want more"? Could you send us out a part of your edition at
American prices, and at the same time to your advantage? I wish
I knew the precise answer to this question, then perhaps I could
keep all pirates out of our bay.

I shall convey in two days your message to Stearns Wheeler, who
is now busy in correcting the new volumes. He is now Greek Tutor
in Harvard College.*--Kindest thanks to Jane Carlyle for her
generous remembrances, which I will study to deserve. Has the
heterodoxy arrived in Chelsea, and quite destroyed us even in the
charity of our friend? I am sorry to have worried you so often
about the summer letter. Now am I your debtor four times. The
parish commotion, too, has long ago subsided here, and my course
of Lectures on "Human Life" finds a full attendance. I wait for
the coming of the _Westminster,_ which has not quite yet
arrived here, though I have seen the London advertisement. It
sounds prosperously in my ear what you say of Dr. Carlyle's
appointments. I was once very near the man in Rome, but did not
see him. I will atone as soon as I can for this truncated
epistle. You must answer it immediately, so far as to
acknowledge the receipt of the enclosed bill of exchange, and
soon I will send you the long promised _account_ of the _French
Revolution,_ and also such moral account of the same as is
over due.

Yours affectionately,
R.W. Emerson

---------
* This promising young scholar edited with English notes the
first American edition of Herodotus. He went to Europe to pursue
his studies, and died, greatly regretted, at Rome, of a fever,
in 1848.
---------

XXXIII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 8 February, 1859

My Dear Friend,--Your welcome little Letter, with the astonishing
inclosure, arrived safe four days ago; right welcome, as all
your Letters are, and bringing as these usually do the best news
I get here. The miraculous draught of Paper I have just sent to
a sure hand in Liverpool, there to lie till in due time it have
ripened into a crop of a hundred gold sovereigns! On this
subject, which gives room for so many thoughts, there is little
that can be said, that were not an impertinence more or less.
The matter grows serious to me, enjoins me to be silent and
reflect. I will say, at any rate, there never came money into my
hands I was so proud of; the promise of a blessing looks from
the face of it; nay, it _will_ be _twice_ blessed. So I will
ejaculate, with the Arabs, _Allah akbar!_ and walk silent by the
shore of the many-sounding Babel-tumult, meditating on much.
Thanks to the mysterious all-bounteous Guide of men, and to you
my true Brother, far over the sea!--For the rest, I showed Fraser
this Nehemiah document, and said I hoped he would blush very
deep;--which indeed the poor creature did, till I was absolutely
sorry for him.

But now first as to this question, What I mean? You must know
poor Fraser, a punctual but most pusillanimous mortal, has been
talking louder and louder lately of a "second edition" here;
whereupon, as labor-wages are not higher here than with you, and
printing-work, if well bargained for, ought to be about the same
price, it struck me that, as in the case of the _Miscellanies,_
so here inversely the supply of both the New and the Old England
might be profitably combined. Whether aught can come of this,
now that it is got close upon us, I yet know not. Fraser has
only seventy-five copies left; but when these will be done his
prophecy comprehends not,--"surely within the year"! For the
present I have set him to ascertain, and will otherwise ascertain
for myself, what the exact cost of _stereotyping_ the Book were,
in the same letter and style as yours; it is not so much more
than printing, they tell me: I should then have done with it
forever and a day. You on your side, and we on ours, might have
as many copies as were wanted for all time coming. This is, in
these very days, under inquisition; but there are many points to
be settled before the issue.

I have not yet succeeded in finding a Bookseller of any fitness,
but am waiting for one always. And even had I found such a one,
I mean an energetic seller that would sell on other terms than
forty percent for his trouble, it were still a question whether
one ought to venture on such a speculation: "quitting the old
highways," as I say, "in indignation at the excessive tolls, with
hope that you will arrive cheaper in the steeple-chase way!" It
is clear, however, that said highways are of the corduroy sort,
said tolls an anomaly that must be remedied soon; and also that
in all England there is no Book in a likelier case to adventure
it with than this same,--which did not sell at all for two
months, as I hear, which all Booksellers got terrified for, and
which has crept along mainly by its own gravitation ever since.
We will consider well, we shall see. You can understand that
such a thing, for your market too, is in agitation; if any
pirate step in before us in the meanwhile, we cannot help it.

Thanks again for your swift attention to the _Miscellanies;_
poor Fraser is in great haste to see them; hoping for his forty-
per-cent division of the spoil. If you have not yet got to the
very end with your printing, I will add a few errata; if they
come too late, never mind; they are of small moment....

This foggy Babylon tumbles along as it was wont; and, as for my
particular case, uses me not worse, but better, than of old.
Nay, there are many in it that have a real friendliness for me.
For example, the other night, a massive portmanteau of Books,
sent according to my written list, from the Cambridge University
Library, from certain friends there whom I have never seen; a
gratifying arrival. For we have no Library here, from which we
can borrow books home; and are only in these weeks striving to
get one:* think of that! The worst is the sore tear and wear of
this huge roaring Niagara of things on such a poor excitable set
of nerves as mine. The velocity of all things, of the very word
you hear on the streets, is at railway rate: joy itself is
unenjoyable, to be avoided like pain; there is no wish one has
so pressing as for quiet. Ah me! I often swear I will be buried
at least in free breezy Scotland, out of this insane hubbub,
where Fate tethers me in life! If Fate always tether me;--but if
ever the smallest competence of worldly means be mine, I will fly
this whirlpool as I would the Lake of _Malebolge,_ and only visit
it now and then! Yet perhaps it is the proper place after all,
seeing all places are improper: who knows? Meanwhile I lead a
most dyspeptic, solitary, self-shrouded life: consuming, if
possible in silence, my considerable daily allotment of pain;
glad when any strength is left in me for working, which is the
only use I can see in myself,--too rare a case of late. The
ground of my existence is black as Death; too black, when all
void too but at times there paint themselves on it pictures of
gold and rainbow and lightning; all the brighter for the black
ground, I suppose. Withal I am very much of a fool.--Some people
will have me write on _Cromwell,_ which I have been talking
about. I do read on that and English subjects, finding that I
know nothing and that nobody knows anything of that: but whether
anything will come of it remains to be seen. Mill, the
_Westminster_ friend, is gone in bad health to the Continent, and
has left a rude Aberdeen Longear, a great admirer of mine too,
with whom I conjecture I cannot act at all: so good-bye to that.
The wisest of all, I do believe, were that I bought my nag
_Yankee_ and set to galloping about the elevated places here! A
certain Mr. Coolidge,** a Boston man of clear iron visage and
character, came down to me the other day with Sumner; he left
a newspaper fragment, containing "the Socinian Pope's denunciation
of Emerson."

---------
* The beginning of the London Library, a most useful institution,
from which books may be borrowed. It served Carlyle well in
later years, and for a long time he was President of it.

** The late Mr. Joseph Coolidge.
---------

The thing denounced had not then arrived, though often asked for
at Kennet's; it did not arrive till yesterday, but had lain buried
in bales of I know not what. We have read it only once, and are
not yet at the bottom of it. Meanwhile, as I judge, the Socinian
"tempest in a washbowl" is all according to nature, and will be
profitable to you, not hurtful. A man is called to let his light
shine before men; but he ought to understand better and better
what medium it is through, what retinas it falls on: wherefore
look _there._ I find in this, as in the two other Speeches, that
noblest self-assertion, and believing originality, which is like
sacred fire, the _beginning_ of whatsoever is to flame and work;
and for young men especially one sees not what could be more
vivifying. Speak, therefore, while you feel called to do it;
and when you feel called. But for yourself, my friend, I
prophesy it will not do always: a faculty is in you for a _sort_
of speech which is itself _action,_ an artistic sort. You _tell_
us with piercing emphasis that man's soul is great; _show_ us a
great soul of a man, in some work symbolic of such: this is the
seal of such a message, and you will feel by and by that you are
called to this. I long to see some concrete Thing, some Event,
Man's Life, American Forest, or piece of Creation, which this
Emerson loves and wonders at, well _Emersonized,_ depictured by
Emerson, filled with the life of Emerson, and cast forth from him
then to live by itself. If these Orations balk me of this, how
profitable soever they be for others. I will not love them.--And
yet, what am I saying? How do I know what is good for _you,_
what authentically makes your own heart glad to work in it? I
speak from _without,_ the friendliest voice must speak from
without; and a man's ultimate monition comes only from _within._
Forgive me, and love me, and write soon. _A Dieu!_

--T. Carlyle

My Wife, very proud of your salutation, sends a sick return of
greeting. After a winter of unusual strength, she took cold the
other day, and coughs again; though she will not call it serious
yet. One likes none of these things. She has a brisk heart and
a stout, but too weak a frame for this rough life of mine. I
will not get sad about it.

One of the strangest things about these New England Orations is a
fact I have heard, but not yet seen, that a certain W. Gladstone,
an Oxford crack Scholar, Tory M.P., and devout Churchman of great
talent and hope, has contrived to insert a piece of you (_first_
Oration it must be) in a work of his on _Church and State,_ which
makes some figure at present! I know him for a solid, serious,
silent-minded man; but how with his Coleridge Shovel-Hattism he
has contrived to relate himself to _you,_ there is the mystery.
True men of all creeds, it _would_ seem, are Brothers.

To write soon!

XXXIV. Emerson to Carlyle*

Concord, 15 March, 1839

My Dear Friend,--I will spare you my apologies for not writing,
they are so many. You have been very generous, I very promising
and dilatory. I desired to send you an Account of the sales of
the _History,_ thinking that the details might be more
intelligible to you than to me, and might give you some insight
into literary and social, as well as bibliopolical relations.
But many details of this account will not yet settle themselves
into sure facts, but do dance and mystify me as one green in
ledgers. Bookseller says nine hundred and ninety-one copies came
from Binder, nine remaining imperfect, and so not bound. But in
all my reckonings of the particulars of distribution I make
either more or less than nine hundred and ninety-one copies. And
some of my accounts are with private individuals at a distance,
and they have their uncertainties and misrememberings also. But
the facts will soon show themselves, and I count confidently on a
small balance against the world to your credit.

----------
* This letter appeared in the _Athenaeum,_ July 22, 1882.
----------

The _Miscellanies_ go forward too slowly, at about the rate of
seventy-two pages a week, as I understand. Of the _Fraser_
articles and of some others we have but a single copy, (such are
the tough limits of some English immortalities and editorial
renowns,) but we expect the end of the printing in six weeks.
The first two volumes, with title-pages, are gone to the binder--
two hundred and sixty copies--with strait directions; and I
presume will go to sea very soon. We shall send the last two
volumes by a later ship. You will pay nothing for the books
we send except freight. We shall deduct the cost of the
books from the credit side of your account here. We print
of the second series twelve hundred and fifty copies, with the
intention of printing a second edition of the first series of
five hundred, if we see fit hereafter to supply the place of the
emigrating portion of the first. You express some surprise at
the cheapness of our work. The publishers, I believe, generally
get more profits. They grumbled a little at the face of the
account on the 1st of January; so in the new contract for the
new volumes I have allowed them nine cents more on each copy sold
by them. So that you should receive ninety-one cents on a copy
instead of one dollar. When the two hundred and fifty copies of
our first two volumes are gone to you, I think they will have but
about one hundred copies more to sell.

Your books are read. I hear, I think, more gratitude expressed
for the _Miscellanies_ than for the _History._ Young men at all
our colleges study them in closets, and the Copernican is
eradicating the Ptolemaic lore. I have frequent and cordial
testimonies to the good working of the leaven, and continual
inquiry whether the man will come hither. _Speriamo._

I was a fool to tell you once you must not come if I did tell you
so. I knew better at the time, and did steadily believe, as far
as I was concerned, that no polemical mud, however much was
thrown, could by any possibility stick to me; for I was purely
an observer; had not the smallest personal or _partial_
interest; and merely spoke to the question as a historian; and
I knew whoever could see me must see that. But, at the moment,
the little pamphlet made much stir and excitement in the
newspapers; and the whole thousand copies were bought up. The
ill wind has blown over. I advertised, as usual, my winter
course of Lectures, and it prospered very well. Ten Lectures:
I. Doctrine of the Soul; II. Home; III. The School; IV. Love;
V. Genius; VI. The Protest; VII. Tragedy; VIII. Comedy; IX.
Duty; X. Demonology. I designed to add two more, but my lungs
played me false with unseasonable inflammation, so I discoursed
no more on "Human Life." Now I am well again.--But, as I said,
as I could not hurt myself, it was foolish to flatter myself that
I could mix your cause with mine and hurt you. Nothing is more
certain than that you shall have all our ears, whenever you wish
for them, and free from that partial position which I deprecated.
Yet I cannot regret my letter, which procured me so affectionate
and magnanimous a reply.

Thanks, too, for your friendliest invitation. But I have a new
reason why I should not come to England,--a blessed babe, named
Ellen, almost three weeks old,--a little, fair, soft lump of
contented humanity, incessantly sleeping, and with an air of
incurious security that says she has come to stay, has come to be
loved, which has nothing mean, and quite piques me.

Yet how gladly should I be near you for a time. The months and
years make me more desirous of an unlimited conversation with
you; and one day, I think, the God will grant it, after whatever
way is best. I am lately taken with _The Onyx Ring,_ which
seemed to me full of knowledge, and good, bold, true drawing.
Very saucy, was it not? in John Sterling to paint Collins; and
what intrepid iconoclasm in this new Alcibiades to break in among
your Lares and disfigure your sacred Hermes himself in
Walsingham.* To me, a profane man, it was good sport to see the
Olympic lover of Frederica, Lili, and so forth, lampooned. And
by Alcibiades too, over whom the wrath of Pericles must pause and
brood ere it falls. I delight in this Sterling, but now that I
know him better I shall no longer expect him to write to me. I
wish I could talk to you on the grave questions, graver than all
literature, which the trifles of each day open. Our doing seems
to be a gaudy screen or popinjay to divert the eye from our
nondoing. I wish, too, you could know my friends here. A man
named Bronson Alcott is a majestic soul, with whom conversation
is possible. He is capable of truth, and gives me the same glad
astonishment that he should exist which the world does.

--------
* Collins and Walsingham, two characters in _The Onyx Ring,_ are
partly drawn, not very felicitously, from Carlyle and Goethe. In
his _Life of Sterling,_ Carlyle says of the story: "A tale still
worth reading, in which, among the imaginary characters, various
friends of Sterling's are shadowed forth not always in the truest
manner." It is reprinted in the second volume of Sterling's
Essays and Tales, edited by Julius Hare.
---------

As I hear not yet of your reception of the bill of exchange,
which went by the "Royal William" in January, I enclose the
duplicate. And now all success to the Lectures of April or May!
A new Kingdom with new extravagances of power and splendor I
know. Unless you can keep your own secret better in _Rahel,_
&c., you must not give it me to keep. The London _Sartor_
arrived in my hands March 5th, dated the 15th of November, so
long is the way from Kennet to Little & Co. The book is welcome,
and awakens a sort of nepotism in me,--my brother's child.

--R.W. Emerson

I rejoice in the good accounts you give me of your household; in
your wife's health; in your brother's position. My wife wishes
to be affectionately remembered to you and yours. And the lady
must continue to love her _old_ Transatlantic friend.

XXXV. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 19 March, 1839

My Dear Friend,--Only last Saturday I despatched a letter to you
containing a duplicate of the bill of exchange sent in January,
and all the facts I knew of our books; and now comes to me a
note from Wheeler, at Cambridge, saying that the printers, on
reckoning up their amount of copy, find that nowise can they make
450 pages per volume, as they have promised, for these two last
of the _Miscellanies._ They end the third volume with page 390,
and they have not but 350 or less pages for the fourth. They
ask, What shall be done? Nothing is known to me but to give them
_Rahel,_ though I grudge it, for I vastly prefer to end with
_Scott._ _Rahel,_ I fancy, cost you no night and no morning,
but was writ in that gentle after-dinner hour so friendly to good
digestion. Stearns Wheeler dreams that it is possible to draw at
this eleventh hour some possible manuscript out of the unedited
treasures of Teufelsdrockh's cabinets. If the manuscripts were
ready, all fairly copied out by foreseeing scribes in your
sanctuary at Chelsea, the good goblin of steam would--with the
least waiting, perhaps a few days--bring the packet to our types
in time. I have little hope, almost none, from a sally so
desperate on possible portfolios; but neither will I be wanting
to my sanguine co-editor, your good friend. So I told him I
would give you as instant notice as Mr. Rogers at the Merchants'
Exchange Bar can contrive, and tell you plainly that we shall
proceed to print _Rahel_ when we come so far on; and with that
paper end; unless we shall receive some contrary word from you.
And if we can obtain any manuscript from you before we have
actually bound our book, we will cancel our last sheets and
insert it. And so may the friendly Heaven grant a speedy passage
to my letter and to yours! I fear the possibility of our success
is still further reduced by the season of the year, as the
Lectures must shortly be on foot. Well, the best speed to them
also. When I think of you as speaking and not writing them, I
remember Luther's words, "He that can speak well, the same is
a man."

I hope you liked John Dwight's translations of Goethe, and his
notes. He is a good, susceptible, yearning soul, not so apt to
create as to receive with the freest allowance, but I like his
books very much.

Do think to say in a letter whether you received _from me_ a copy
of our edition of your _French Revolution._ I ordered a copy
sent to you,--probably wrote your name in it,--but it does not
appear in the bookseller's account. Farewell.

--R.W. Emerson

XXXVI. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 13 April, 1839

My Dear Emerson,--Has anything gone wrong with you? How is it
that you do not write to me? These three or four weeks, I know
not whether _duly_ or not so long, I have been in daily hope of
some sign from you; but none comes; not even a Newspaper,--open
at the ends. The German Translator, Mr. Dwight, mentioned, at
the end of a Letter I had not long ago, that you had given a
brilliant course of Lectures at Boston, but had been obliged to
_intermit it on account of illness._ Bad news indeed, that
latter clause; at the same time, it was thrown in so cursorily I
would not let myself be much alarmed; and since that, various
New England friends have assured me here that there was nothing
of great moment in it, that the business was all well over now,
and you safe at Concord again. Yet how is it that I do not
hear? I will tell you my guess is that those Boston Carlylean
_Miscellanies_ are to blame. The Printer is slack and lazy as
Printers are; and you do not wish to write till you can send
some news of him? I will hope and believe that only this is it,
till I hear worse.

I sent you a Dumfries Newspaper the other week, for a sign of my
existence and anxiety. A certain Mr. Ellis of Boston is this day
packing up a very small memorial of me to your Wife; a poor
Print rolled about a bit of wood: let her receive it graciously
in defect of better. It comes under your address. Nay, properly
it is my Wife's memorial to your Wife. It is to be hung up in
the Concord drawing-room. The two Households, divided by wide
seas, are to understand always that they are united nevertheless.

My special cause for writing this day rather than another is the
old story, book business. You have brought that upon yourself,
my friend; and must do the best you can with it. After all, why
should not Letters be on business too? Many a kind thought,
uniting man with man, in gratitude and helpfulness, is founded on
business. The speaker at Dartmouth College seems to think it
ought to be so. Nor do I dissent.--But the case is this, Fraser
and I are just about bargaining for a second edition of the
_Revolution._ He will print fifteen hundred for the English
market, in a somewhat closer style, and sell them here at twenty-
four shillings a copy. His first edition is all gone but some
handful; and the man is in haste, and has taken into a mood of
hope,--for he is weak and aguish, alternating from hot to cold;
otherwise, I find, a very accurate creature, and deals in his
unjust trade as justly as any other will. He has settled with
me; his half-profits amount to some L130, which by charging me
for every presentation copy he cuts down to somewhere about L110;
_not_ the lion's share in the gross produce, yet a great share
compared with an expectancy no higher than _zero!_ We continue
on the same system for this second adventure; I cannot go
hawking about in search of new terms; I might go farther and
fare worse. And now comes your part of the affair; in which I
would fain have had your counsel; but must ask your help,
proceeding with my own light alone. After Fraser's fifteen
hundred are printed off, the types remain standing, and I for my
own behoof throw off five hundred more, designed for your market.
Whether five hundred are too many or too few, I can only guess;
if too many, we can retain them here and turn them to account;
if too few, there is no remedy. At all events, costing me only
the paper and press-work, there is surely no Pirate in the Union
that can _undersell_ us! Nay, it seems they have a drawback on
our taxed paper, sufficient or nearly so to land the cargo at
Boston without more charge. You see, therefore, how it is. Can
you find me a Bookseller, as for yourself; he and you can fix
what price the ware will carry when you see it. Meanwhile I must
have his Title-page; I must have his directions (if any be
needed); nay, for that matter, you might write a Preface if you
liked,--though I see not what you have to say, and recommend
silence rather! The book is to be in three volumes duodecimo,
and we will take care it be fit to show its face in your market.
A few errors of the press; and one correction (about the sinking
of the _Vengeur,_ which I find lately to be an indisputable
falsehood); these are all the changes. We are to have done
printing, Fraser predicts, "in two months";--say two and a half!
I suppose you decipher the matter out of this plastering and
smearing; and will do what is needful in it. "Great inquiry" is
made for the _Miscellanies,_ Fraser says; though he suspects it
may perhaps be but one or two men inquiring _often,_--the dog!

I am again upon the threshold of extempore lecturing: on "the
Revolutions of Modern Europe"; Protestantism, 2 lectures;
Puritanism, 2; French Revolution, 2. I almost regret that I had
undertaken the thing this year at all, for I am no longer driven
by Poverty as heretofore. Nay, I am richer than I have been for
ten years; and have a kind of prospect, for the first time this
great while, of being allowed to subsist in this world for the
future: a great blessing, perhaps the greatest, when it comes as
a novelty! However, I thought it right to keep this Lecture
business open, come what might. I care less about it than I did;
it is not agony and wretched trembling to the marrow of the bone,
as it was the last two times. I believe, in spite of all my
perpetual indigestions and nervous woes, I am actually getting
into better health; the weary heart of me is quieter; I wait in
silence for the new chapter,--feeling truly that we are at the
end of one period here. I count it _two_ in my autobiography:
we shall see what the _third_ is; [if] third there be. But I am
in small haste for a third. How true is that of the old
Prophets, "The _word of the Lord_ came unto" such and such a one!
When it does not come, both Prophet and Prosaist ought to be
thankful (after a sort), and rigorously hold their tongue.--Lord
Durham's people have come over with golden reports of the
Americans, and their brotherly feelings. One Arthur Buller
preaches to me, with emphasis, on a quite personal topic till one
explodes in laughter to hear him, the good soul: That I, namely,
am the most esteemed, &c., and ought to go over and Lecture in
all great towns of the Union, and make, &c., &c.! I really do
begin to think of it in this interregnum that I am in. But then
my Lectures must be written; but then I must become a _hawker,
--ach Gott!_

The people are beginning to quote you here: _tant pis pour eux!_
I have found you in two Cambridge books. A certain Mr. Richard
M. Milnes, M.P., a beautiful little Tory dilettante poet and
politician whom I love much, applied to me for _Nature_ (the
others he has) that he might write upon it. Somebody has
stolen _Nature_ from me, or many have thumbed it to pieces; I
could not find a copy. Send me one, the first chance you have.
And see Miss Martineau in the last _Westminster Review:_--these
things you are old enough to stand? They are even of benefit?
Emerson is not without a select public, the root of a select
public on this side of the water too.--Popular Sumner is off to
Italy, the most popular of men,--inoffensive, like a worn
sixpence that has no physiognomy left. We preferred Coolidge to
him in this circle; a square-cut iron man, yet with clear
symptoms of a heart in him. Your people will come more and more
to their maternal Babylon, will they not, by the steamers?--
Adieu, my dear friend. My Wife joins me in all good prayers for
you and yours.

--Thomas Carlyle

XXXVII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 17 April, 1839

Dear Friend,--Some four days ago I wrote you a long Letter,
rather expressive of anxiety about you; it will probably come to
hand along with this. I had heard vaguely that you were unwell,
and wondered why you did not write. Happily, that point is as
good as settled now, even by your silence about it. I have, half
an hour ago, received your Concord Letter of the 19th of March.
The Letter you speak of there as "written last Saturday" has not
yet made its appearance, but may be looked for now shortly: as
there is no mention here of any mischance, except the shortcoming
of Printers' copy, I infer that all else is in a tolerably
correct state; I wait patiently for the "last Saturday" tidings,
and will answer as to the matters of copy, in good heart, without
loss of a moment.

There is nothing of the manuscript sort in Teufelsdrockh's
repositories that would suit you well; nothing at all in a
completed state, except a long rigmarole dissertation (in a
crabbed sardonic vein) about the early history of the Teutonic
Kindred, wriggling itself along not in the best style through
Proverb lore, and I know not what, till it end (if my memory
serve) in a kind of Essay on the _Minnesingers._ It was written
almost ten years ago, and never contented me well. It formed
part of a lucklessly projected _History of German Literature,_
subsequent portions of which, the _Nibelungen_ and _Reinecke
Fox,_ you have already printed. The unfortunate "_Cabinet
Library_ Editor," or whatever his title was, broke down; and I
let him off,--without paying me; and this alone remains of the
misventure; a thing not fit for you, nor indeed at bottom for
anybody, though I have never burnt it yet. My other Manuscripts
are scratchings and scrawlings;--children's _infant_ souls
weeping because they never could be born, but were left there
whimpering _in limine primo!_

On this side, therefore, is no help. Nevertheless, it seems to
me, otherwise there is. _Varnhagen_ may be printed I think
without offence, since there is need of it: if that will make up
your fourth volume to a due size, why not? It is the last faint
murmur one gives in Periodical Literature, and may indicate the
approach of silence and slumber. I know no errors of the Press
in _Varnhagen:_ there is one thing about Jean Paul F. Richter's
_want_ of humor in his _speech,_ which somehow I could like to
have the opportunity of uttering a word on, though _what_ word I
see not very well. My notion is partly that V. overstates the
thing, taking a Berlin _propos de salon_ for a scientifically
accurate record; and partly farther that the defect (if any) was
_creditable_ to Jean Paul, indicating that he talked from the
abundance of the heart, not burning himself off in miserable
perpetual sputter like a Town-wit, but speaking what he had to
say, were it dull, were it not dull,--for his own satisfaction
first of all! If you in a line or two could express at the right
point something of that sort, it were well; yet on the whole, if
not, then is almost no matter. Let the whole stand then as the
commencement of slumber and stertorous breathing!

Varnhagen himself will not bring up your fourth volume to the
right size; hardly beyond 380 pages, I should think; yet what
more can be done? Do you remember Fraser's Magazine for October,
1832, and a Translation there, with Notes, of a thing called
Goethe's Mahrchen? It is by me; I regard it as a most
remarkable piece, well worthy of perusal, especially by all
readers of mine. The printing of your third volume will of
course be finished before this letter arrive; nevertheless I
have a plan: that you (as might be done, I suppose, by
cancelling and reprinting the concluding leaf or leaves) append
the said Translated Tale, in a smaller type, to that volume. It
is 21 or 22 pages of _Fraser,_ and will perhaps bring yours up to
the mark. Nay, indeed there are two other little Translations
from Goethe which I reckon good, though of far less interest than
the _Mahrchen;_ I think they are in the Frasers almost
immediately preceding; one of them is called _Fragment from
Goethe_ (if I remember); in his _Works,_ it is _Novelle;_ it
treats of a visit by some princely household to a strange
Mountain ruin or castle, and the catastrophe is the escape of a
show-lion from its booth in the neighboring Market-Town. I have
not the thing here,--alas, sinner that I am, it now strikes me
that the "two other things" are this one thing, which my
treacherous memory is making into two! This however you will
find in the Number immediately, or not far from immediately,
preceding that of the _Mahrchen;_ along with which, in the same
type with which, it would give us letter-press enough. It ought
to stand _before_ the _Mahrchen:_ read it, and say whether it is
worthy or not worthy. Will this _Appendix_ do, then? I should
really rather like the _Mahrchen_ to be printed, and had thoughts
of putting [it] at the end of the English _Sartor._ The other I
care not for, intrinsically, but think it very beautiful in its
kind.--Some rubbish of my own, in small quantity, exists here and
there in _Fraser;_ one story, entitled _Cruthers and Jonson,_*
was written sixteen years ago, and printed somewhere early
(probably the second year) in that rubbish heap, with several
gross errors of the press (mares for maces was one!): it is the
first thing I wrote, or among the very first;--otherwise a thing
to be kept rather secret, except from the like of you! This or
any other of the "original" immaturities I will _not_ recommend
as an Appendix; I hope the _Mahrchen,_ or the _Novelle_ and
_Mahrchen,_ will suffice. But on the whole, to thee, O Friend,
and thy judgment and decision, without appeal, I leave it
altogether. Say Yes, say No; do what seemeth good to thee.--Nay
now, writing with the speed of light, another consideration
strikes me: Why should Volume Third be interfered with if it is
finished? Why will not this _Appendix_ do, these _Appendixes,_
to hang to the skirts of Volume Four as well? Perhaps better!
the _Mahrchen_ in any case closing the rear. I leave it all to
Emerson and Stearns Wheeler, my more than kind Editors: E. knows
it better than I; be his decision irrevocable.

-----------
* "Cruthers and Jonson; or, The Outskirts of Life. A True
Story." _Fraser's Magazine,_ January, 1831.
------------

This letter is far too long, but I had not time to make it
shorter.--I got your _French Revolution,_ and have seen no other:
my name is on it in your hand. I received Dwight's Book, liked
it, and have answered him: a good youth, of the kind you
describe; no Englishman, to my knowledge, has yet uttered as
much sense about Goethe and German things. I go this day to
settle with Fraser about printers and a second edition of the
_Revolution_ Book,--as specified in the other Letter: five
hundred copies for America, which are to cost he computes about
2/7, and _your_ Bookseller will bind them, and defy Piracy. My
Lectures come on, this day two weeks: O Heaven! I cannot
"speak"; I can only gasp and writhe and stutter, a spectacle to
gods and fashionables,--being forced to it by want of money. In
five weeks I shall be free, and then--! Shall it be Switzerland,
shall it be Scotland, nay, shall it be America and Concord?

Ever your affectionate
T. Carlyle

All love from both of us to the Mother and Boy. My Wife is
better than usual; rejoices in the promise of summer now
at last visible after a spring like Greenland. Scarcity,
discontent, fast ripening towards desperation, extends far
and wide among our working people. God help them! In man as
yet is small help. There will be work yet, before that account
is liquidated; a generation or two of work! Miss Martineau is
gone to Switzerland, after emitting _Deerwood_ [sic], a Novel.*
How do you like it? people ask. To which there are serious answers
returnable, but few so good as none. Ah me! Lady Bulwer too has
written a Novel, in satire of her Husband. I saw the Husband not
long since; one of the wretchedest Phantasms, it seemed to me, I
had yet fallen in with,--many, many, as they are here.

The L100 Sterling Bill came, in due time, in perfect order; and
will be payable one of these days. I forget dates; but had well
calculated that before the 19th of March this piece of news and
my gratitude for it had reached you.

--------
* _Deerbrook_
--------

XXXVIII. Emerson to Carlyle

Boston, 20 April, 1839

My Dear Friend,--Learning here in town that letters may go today
to the "Great Western," I seize the hour to communicate a
bookseller's message. I told Brown, of C.C. Little & Co., that
you think of stereotyping the _History._ He says that he can
make it profitable to himself and to you to use your plates here
in this manner (which he desires may be kept secret here, and I
suppose with you also). You are to get your plates made and
proved, then you are to send them out here to him, having first
insured them in London, and he is to pay you a price for every
copy he prints from them. As soon as he has printed a supply for
our market,--and we want, he says, five hundred copies now,--he
will send them back to you. I told him I thought he had better
fix the price per copy to be paid by him, and I would send it to
you as his offer. He is willing to do so, but not today. It was
only this morning I informed him of your plan. I think in a
fortnight I shall need to write again,--probably to introduce to
you my countrywoman, Miss Sedgwick, the writer of affectionate
New England tales and the like, who is about to go to Europe for
a year or more. I will then get somewhat definite from Brown as
to rates and prices. Brown thought you might better send the
plates here first, as we are in immediate want of copies; and
afterwards print with them in London. He is quite sure that it
would be more profitable to print them in this manner than to
try to import and sell here the books after being manufactured
in London.

On the 30th of April we shall ship at New York the first two
volumes of the _Miscellanies,_ two hundred and sixty copies. In
four weeks, the second two volumes will be finished, unless we
wait for something to be added by yourself, agreeably to a
suggestion of Wheeler's and mine. Two copies of _Schiller's
Life_ will go in the same box. We send them to the port of
London. When these are gone, only one hundred copies remain
unsold of the first two volumes (_Miscellanies_).

Brown said it was important that the plates should be proved
correct at London by striking off impressions before they were
sent hither. This is the whole of my present message. I shall
have somewhat presently to reply to your last letter, received
three weeks since. And may health and peace dwell with you
and yours!

--R.W. Emerson

XXXIX. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 25 April, 1839

My Dear Friend,--Behold my account! A very simple thing, is it
not! A very mouse, after such months, almost years, of promise!
Despise it not, however; for such is my extreme dulness at
figures and statements that this nothing has been a fear to me, a
long time, how to extract it from the bookseller's promiscuous
account with me, and from obscure records of my own. You see
that it promises yet to pay you between $60 and $70 more, if
Mr. Fuller (a gentleman of Providence, who procured many
_subscribers_ for us there) and Mr. Owen (who owes us also
for copies subscribed for) will pay us our demand. They have
both been lately reminded of their delinquency. Herrick and
Noyes, you will see credited for eight copies, $18. They are
booksellers who supplied eight subscribers, and charged us $2 for
their trouble and some alleged damage to a copy. One copy you
will see is sold to Ann Pomeroy for $3. This lady bought the
copy of me, and preferred sending me $3 to sending $2.50 for so
good a book. You will notice one or two other variations in the
prices, in each of which I aimed to use a friend's discretion.
Add lastly, that you must revise all my figures, as I am a
hopeless blunderer, and quite lately made a brilliant mistake in
regard to the amount of 9 multiplied by 12.

Have I asked you whether you received from me a copy of the
_History?_ I designated a copy to go, and the bookseller's boy
thinks he sent one, but there is none charged in their account.
The account of the _Miscellanies_ does not prosper quite
so well....

Thanks for your too friendly and generous expectations from my
wit. Alas! my friend, I can do no such gay thing as you say. I
do not belong to the poets, but only to a low department of
literature, the reporters; suburban men. But in God we are all
great, all rich, each entitled to say, All is mine. I hope the
advancing season has restored health to your wife, and, if
benedictions will help her, tell her we send them on every west
wind. My wife and babes are well.

--R.W.E.

XL. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 28 April, 1839

My Dear Friend,--I received last night C.C. Little & Co.'s
proposition in reference to the stereotyping the _History._
Their offer is based on my statement that you proposed to print
the book in two volumes similar to ours. They say, "We should be
willing to pay three hundred dollars for the use of plates for
striking off five hundred copies of the two volumes, with the
farther agreement that, if we wished to strike off another five
hundred in nine months after the publication of the first five
hundred, we should have the liberty to do so, paying the same
again; that is, another three hundred dollars for the privilege
of printing another five hundred copies;--the plates to be
furnished us ready for use and free of expense." They add,
"Should Mr. Carlyle send the plates to this country, he should be
particular to ship them to _this port direct._" I am no judge of
the liberality of this offer, as I know nothing of the expense of
the plates. The men, Little and Brown, are fair in their
dealings, and the most respectable book-selling firm in Boston.
When you have considered the matter, I hope you will send me as
early an answer as you can. For as we have no protection from
pirates we must use speed.

I ought to have added to my account and statement sent by Miss
Sedgwick one explanation. You will find in the account a credit
of $13.75, agreed on with Little & Co., as compensation for lost
subscribers. We had a little book, kept in the bookshop, into
which were transferred the names of subscribers from all lists
which were returned from various places. These names amounted to
two hundred, more or less. When we came to settle the account,
this book could not be found. They expressed much regret, and
made much vain searching. Their account with me recorded only
one hundred and thirty-four copies delivered to subscribers.
Thus, a large number, say sixty-six, had been sold by them to our
subscribers, and our half-dollar on each copy put in their pocket
as commission, expressly contrary to treaty! With some ado, I
mustered fifty-five names of subscribers known to me as such, not
recorded on their books as having received copies, and demanded
$27.50. They replied that they also had claims; that they had
sent the books to distant subscribers in various States, and had
charged no freight (with one or two exceptions, when the books
went alone); that other booksellers had, no doubt, in many
cases, sold the copies to subscribers for which I claimed the
half-dollar; and lastly, which is indeed the moving reason, that
they had sent twenty copies up the Mississippi to a bookseller
(in Vicksburg, I think), who had made them no return. On these
grounds they proposed that they should pay half my demand, and so
compromise. They said, however, that, if I insisted, they would
pay the whole. I was so glad to close the affair with mutual
goodwill that I said with the unjust steward, write $13.75. So
are we all pleased at your expense. [Greek] I think I will not
give you any more historiettes,--they take too much room; but as
I write this time only on business, you are welcome to this from
your friend,

--R.W. Emerson

XLI. Emerson to Carlyle*

Concord, 15 May, 1839.

My Dear Friend,--Last Saturday, 11th instant, I had your two
letters of 13th and 17th April. Before now, you must have one or
two notes of mine touching the stereotype plates: a proposition
superseded by your new plan. I have also despatched one or two
sheets lately containing accounts. Now for the new matter. I
was in Boston yesterday, and saw Brown, the bookseller. He
accedes gladly, to the project of five hundred American copies of
the _History._ He says, that the duty is the same on books in
sheets and books in boards; and desires, therefore, that the
books may come out _bound._ You bind yours in cloth? Put up his
in the same style as those for your market, only a little more
strongly than is the custom with London books, as it will only
cost a little more. He would be glad also to have his name added
in the titlepage (London: Published by J. Fraser; and Boston:
by C.C. Little and James Brown, 112 Washington St.), or is not
this the right way? He only said he should like to have his name
added. He threatens to charge me 20 percent commission. If, as
he computes from your hint of 2/7, the work costs you, say, 70
cents per copy, unbound; he reckons it at a dollar, when bound;
then 75 cents duty in Boston, $1.75. He thinks we cannot set a
higher price on it than $3.50, _because_ we sold our former
edition for $2.50. On that price, his commissions would be 70
cents; and $1.05 per copy will to you. If when we see the book,
we venture to put a higher price on it, your remainder shall be
more. I confess, when I set this forth on paper, it looks as bad
as your English trade,--this barefaced 20 percent; but their
plea is, We guarantee the sales; we advertise; we pay you when
it is sold, though we give our customers six months' credit. I
have made no final bargain with the man, and perhaps before the
books arrive I shall be better advised, and may get better terms
from him. Meantime, give me the best advice you can; and
despatch the books with all speed, and if you send six hundred, I
think, we will sell them.

------------
* In the first edition of this Correspondence a portion of this
letter was printed from a rough draft, such as Emerson was
accustomed to make of his letters to Carlyle. I owe the original
to the kindness of the editor of the _Athenaeum,_ in the pages
of which it was printed.
-----------

I went to the _Athenaeum,_ and procured the _Frasers'_ and will
print the _Novelle_ and the _Mahrchen_ at the end of the Fourth
Volume, which has been loitering under one workman for a week or
two past, awaiting this arrival. Now we will finish at once.
_Cruthers and Jonson_ I read gladly. It is indispensable to such
as would see the fountains of Nile: but I incline to what seems
your opinion, that it will be better in the final edition of your
Works than in this present First Collection of them. I believe I
could find more matter now of yours if we should be pinched
again. The Cat-Raphael? and _Mirabeau_ and _Macaulay?_ Stearns
Wheeler is very faithful in his loving labor,--has taken a world
of pains with the sweetest smile. We are very fortunate in
having him to friend.--For the _Miscellanies_ once more, the two
boxes containing two hundred and sixty copies of the first series
went to sea in the "St. James," Captain Sebor, addressed to Mr.
Fraser. (I hope rightly addressed; yet I saw a memorandum at
Munroe's in which he was named _John_ Fraser.)

Arthur Buller has my hearty thanks for his good and true
witnessing. And now that our old advice is indorsed by John Bull
himself, you will believe and come. Nothing can be better. As
soon as the lectures are over, let the trunks be packed. Only my
wife and my blessed sister dear--Elizabeth Hoar, betrothed in
better times to my brother Charles,--my wife and this lovely nun
do say that Mrs. Carlyle must come hither also; that it will
make her strong, and lengthen her days on the earth, and cheer
theirs also. Come, and make a home with me; and let us make a
truth that is better than dreams. From this farm-house of mine
you shall sally forth as God shall invite you, and "lecture in
the great cities." You shall do it by proclamation of your own,
or by the mediation of a committee, which will readily be found.
Wife, mother, and sister shall nurse thy wife meantime, and you
shall bring your republican laurels home so fast that she shall
not sigh for the Old England. Eyes here do sparkle at the very
thought. And my little placid Musketaquid River looked gayer
today in the sun. In very sooth and love, my friend, I shall
look for you in August. If aught that we know not must forbid
your wife at present, you will still come. In October, you shall
lecture in Boston; in November, in New York; in December, in
Philadelphia; in January, in Washington. I can show you three
or four great natures, as yet unsung by Harriet Martineau or Anna
Jameson, that content the heart and provoke the mind. And for
yourself, you shall be as cynical and headstrong and fantastical
as you can be.

I rejoice in what you say of better health and better prospects.
I was glad to hear of Milnes, whose _Poems_ already lay on my
table when your letter came. Since the little _Nature_ book is
not quite dead, I have sent you a few copies, and wish you would
offer one to Mr. Milnes with my respects. I hope before a great
while I may have somewhat better to send him. I am ashamed that
my little books should be "quoted" as you say.

My affectionate salutations to Mrs. Carlyle, who is to sanction
and enforce all I have written on the migration. In the prospect
of your coming I feel it to be foolish to write. I have very
much to say to you. But now only Good Bye.

--R.W. Emerson

XLII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 29 May, 1839

My Dear Emerson,--Your Letter, dated Boston, 20th April, has been
here for some two weeks. Miss Sedgwick, whom it taught us to
expect in "about a fortnight," has yet given no note of herself,
but shall be right welcome whenever she appears. Miss
Martineau's absence (she is in Switzerland this summer) will
probably be a loss to the fair Pilgrim;--which of course the rest
of us ought to exert ourselves to make good.... My Lectures are
happily over ten days ago; with "success" enough, as it is
called; the only _valuable_ part of which is some L200, gained
with great pain, but also with great brevity:--economical respite
for another solar year! The people were boundlessly tolerant;
my agitation beforehand was less this year, my remorse afterwards
proportionally greater. There was but one moderately good
Lecture, the last,--on Sausculottism, to an audience mostly Tory,
and rustling with the beautifulest quality silks! Two things I
find: first that _I ought to have had a horse;_ I had only
three incidental rides or gallops, hired rides; my horse
_Yankee_ is never yet purchased, but it shall be, for I cannot
live, except in great pain, without a horse. It was sweet beyond
measure to escape out of the dustwhirlpool here, and _fly,_ in
solitude, through the ocean of verdure and splendor, as far as
Harrow and back again; and one's nerves were _clear_ next day,
and words lying in one like water in a well. But the _second_
thing I found was, that extempore speaking, especially in the way
of Lecture, is an _art_ or craft, and requires an apprenticeship,
which I have never served. Repeatedly it has come into my head
that I should go to America, this very Fall, and belecture you
from North to South till I learn it! Such a thing does lie in
the bottom-scenes, should hard come to hard; and looks pleasant
enough.--On the whole, I say sometimes, I must either begin a
Book, or do it. Books are the lasting thing; Lectures are like
corn ground into flour; there are loaves for today, but no wheat
harvests for next year. Rudiments of a new Book (thank Heaven!)
do sometimes disclose themselves in me. _Festina lente._ It
ought to be better than the _French Revolution;_ I mean better
written. The greater part of that Book, as I read proof-sheets
of it in these weeks, does nothing but _disgust_ me. And yet it
was, as nearly as was good, the utmost that lay in me. I should
not like to be nearer killed with any other Book!--Books too are
a triviality. Life alone is great; with its infinite spaces,
its everlasting times, with its Death, with its Heaven and its
Hell. Ah me!

Wordsworth is here at present; a garrulous, rather watery, not
wearisome old man. There is a freshness as of brooks and
mountain breezes in him; one says of him: Thou art not great,
but thou art genuine; well speed _thou._ Sterling is home from
Italy, recovered in health, indeed very well could he but _sit
still._ He is for Clifton, near Bristol, for the next three
months. I hear him speak of some sonnet or other he means to
address to you: as for me he knows well that I call his
verses timber toned, without true melody either in thought,
phrase or sound. The good John! Did you ever see such a vacant
turnip-lantern as that Walsingham Goethe? Iconoclast Collins
strikes his wooden shoe through him, and passes on, saying almost
nothing.--My space is done! I greet the little _maidkin,_ and
bid her welcome to this unutterable world. Commend her, poor
little thing, to her little Brother, to her Mother and Father;--
Nature, I suppose, has sent her strong letters of recommendation,
without our help, to them all. Where I shall be in six weeks is
not very certain; likeliest in Scotland, whither our whole
household, servant and all, is pressingly invited, where they
have provided horses and gigs. Letters sent hither will still
find me, or lie waiting for me, safe: but perhaps the
_speediest_ address will be "Care of Fraser, 215 Regent Street."
My Brother wants me to the Tyrol and Vienna; but I think I shall
not go. Adieu, dear friend. It is a great treasure to me that I
have you in this world. My Wife salutes you all.--

Yours ever and ever,
T. Carlyle

XLIII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 24 June, 1833

Dear Friend,--Two Letters from you were brought hither by Miss
Sedgwick last week. The series of post Letters is a little
embroiled in my head; but I have a conviction that all hitherto
due have arrived; that up to the date of my last despatch (a
_Proof-sheet_ and a Letter), which ought to be getting into your
hands in these very days, our correspondence is clear. That
Letter and Proof-sheet, two separate pieces, were sent to
Liverpool some three weeks ago, to be despatched by the first
conveyance thence; as I say, they are probably in Boston about
this time. The Proof-sheet was one of the forty-seven such which
the new _French Revolution_ is to consist of: with this, as with
a correct sample, you were to act upon some Boston Bookseller,
and make a bargain for me,--or at least report that none was to
be made. A bad bargain will content me now, my hopes are not at
all high.

For the present, I am to announce on the part of Bookseller
Fraser that the First Portion of our celebrated _Miscellanies_
have been hovering about on these coasts for several weeks, have
lain safe "in the River" for some two weeks, and ought at last to
be safe in Fraser's shop today or else to morrow. I will ask
there, and verify, before this Letter go. The reason of these
"two weeks in the river" is that the packages were addressed
"_John_ Fraser, London," and the people had tried all the Frasers
in London before they attempted the right individual, James, of
215 Regent Street. Of course, the like mistake in the second
case will be avoided. A Letter, put ashore at Falmouth, and
properly addressed, but without any _signature,_ had first of all
announced that the thing was at the door, and so with this "John
Fraser," it has been knocking ever since, finding difficult
admission. In the present instance, such delay has done no ill,
for Fraser will not sell till the Second Portion come; and with
this the mistake will be avoided. What has shocked poor James
much more is a circumstance which your Boston Booksellers have no
power to avoid: the "enormousness" of the charges in our Port
here! He sends me the account of them last Saturday, with eyes--
such as drew Priam's curtains: L31 and odd silver, whereof L28
as duty on Books at L5 per cwt. is charged by the rapacious
Custom-house alone! What help, O James? I answer: we cannot
bombard the British Custom-house, and sack it, and explode it;
we must yield, and pay it the money; thankful for what is still
left.--On the whole, one has to learn by trying. This notable
finance-expedient, of printing in the one country what is to be
sold in the other, did not take Vandalic custom-houses into view,
which nevertheless do seem to exist. We must persist in it for
the present reciprocal pair of times, having started in it for
these: but on future occasions always, we can ask the past; and
_see_ whether it be not better to let each side of the water
stand on its own basis.

As for your "accounts," my Friend, I find them clear as day,
verifiable to the uttermost farthing. You are a good man to
conquer your horror of arithmetic; and, like hydrophobic Peter
of Russia making himself a sailor, become an Accountant for my
sake. But now will you forgive me if I never do verify this same
account, or look at it more in this world except as a memento of
affection, its arithmetical ciphers so many hierograms, really
_sacred_ to me! A reflection I cannot but make is that at bottom
this money was all yours; not a penny of it belonged to me by
any law except that of helpful Friendship. I feel as if I could
not examine it without a kind of crime. For the rest, you may
rejoice to think that, thanks to you and the Books, and to Heaven
over all, I am for the present no longer poor; but have a
reasonable prospect of existing, which, as I calculate, is
literally the most that money can do for a man. Not for these
twelve years, never since I had a house to maintain with money,
have I had as much money in my possession as even now. _Allah
kerim!_ We will hope all that is good on that side. And
herewith enough of _it._

You tell me you are but "a reporter": I like you for thinking
so. And you will never know that it is _not true,_ till you have
tried. Meanwhile, far be it from me to urge you to a trial
before your time come. Ah, it will come, and soon enough; much
better, perhaps, if it never came!--A man has "_such_ a baptism
to be baptized withal," no easy baptism; and is "straitened till
it be accomplished." As for me I honor peace before all things;
the silence of a great soul is to me greater than anything it
will ever say, it ever can say. Be tranquil, my friend; utter
no word till you cannot help it;--and think yourself a
"reporter," till you find (not with any great joy) that you are
not altogether that!

We have not yet seen Miss Sedgwick: your Letters with her card
were sent hither by post we went up next day, but she was out;
no meeting could be arranged earlier than tomorrow evening, when
we look for her here. Her reception, I have no doubt, will be
abundantly flattering in this England. American Notabilities
are daily becoming notabler among us; the ties of the two
Parishes, Mother and Daughter, getting closer and closer knit.
Indissoluble ties:--I reckon that this huge smoky Wen may, for
some centuries yet, be the best Mycale for our Saxon _Panionium,_
a yearly meeting-place of "All the Saxons," from beyond the
Atlantic, from the Antipodes, or wherever the restless wanderers
dwell and toil. After centuries, if Boston, if New York, have
become the most convenient _"All-Saxondom,"_ we will right
cheerfully go thither to hold such festival, and leave the Wen.--
Not many days ago I saw at breakfast the notabest of all your
Notabilities, Daniel Webster. He is a magnificent specimen; you
might say to all the world, This is your Yankee Englishman, such
Limbs _we_ make in Yankeeland! As a Logic-fencer, Advocate, or
Parliamentary Hercules, one would incline to back him at first
sight against all the extant world. The tanned complexion, that
amorphous crag-like face; the dull black eyes under their
precipice of brows, like dull anthracite furnaces, needing only
to be _blown;_ the mastiff-mouth, accurately closed:--I have not
traced as much of _silent Berserkir-rage,_ that I remember of, in
any other man. "I guess I should not like to be your nigger!"--
Webster is not loquacious, but he is pertinent, conclusive; a
dignified, perfectly bred man, though not English in breeding: a
man worthy of the best reception from us; and meeting such, I
understand. He did not speak much with me that morning, but
seemed not at all to dislike me: I meditate whether it is fit or
not fit that I should seek out his residence, and leave _my_ card
too, before I go? Probably not; for the man is political,
seemingly altogether; has been at the Queen's levee, &c., &c.:
it is simply as a mastiff-mouthed _man_ that he is interesting to
me, and not otherwise at all.

In about seven days hence we go to Scotland till the July heats
be over. That is our resolution after all. Our address there,
probably till the end of August, is "Templand, Thornhill,
Dumfries, N. B.,"--the residence of my Mother-in-law, within a
day's drive of my Mother's. Any Letter of yours sent by the old
constant address (Cheyne Row, Chelsea) will still find me there;
but the other, for that time, will be a day or two shorter. We
all go, servant and all. I am bent on writing _something;_ but
have no faith that I shall be able. I _must_ try. There is a
thing of mine in _Fraser_ for July, of no account, about the
"sinking of the _Vengeur_" as you will see. The _French
Revolution_ printing is not to stop; two thirds of it are done;
at this present rate, it ought to finish, and the whole be ready,
within three weeks hence. A Letter will be here from you about
that time, I think: I will print no title-page for the Five
Hundred till it do come. "Published by _Fraser and_ Little"
would, I suppose, be unobjectionable, though Fraser is the most
nervous of creatures: but why put _him_ in at all, since these
Five hundred copies are wholly Little's and yours? Adieu, my
Friend. Our blessings are with you and your house. My wife
grows better with the hot weather; I, always worse.

Yours ever,
T. Carlyle

I say not a word about America or Lecturing at present; because
I mean to consider it intently in Scotland, and there to decide.
My Brother is to be at Ischl (not far from Salzburg) during
Summer: he was anxious to have me there, and I to have gone;
but--but--Adieu.

_Fraser's Shop._ Books not yet come, but known to be safe, and
expected soon. Nay, the dexterous Fraser has argued away L15 of
the duty, he says! All is right therefore. N.B. he says you are
to send the second Portion _in sheets,_ the weight will be less.
This if it be still time.--_Basta._

--T.C.

XLIV. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 4 July, 1839

I hear tonight, O excellent man! that, unless I send a letter to
Boston tomorrow with the peep of day, it will miss the Liverpool
steamer, which sails earlier than I dreamed of. O foolish
Steamer! I am not ready to write. The facts are not yet ripe,
though on the turn of the blush. Couldst not wait a little?
Hurry is for slaves;--and Aristotle, if I rightly remember only
that little from my college lesson, affirmed that the high-minded
man never walked fast. O foolish Steamer! wait but a week, and
we will style thee Megalopsyche, and hang thee by the Argo in the
stars. Meantime I will not deny the dear and admirable man the
fragments of intelligence I have. Be it known unto you then,
Thomas Carlyle, that I received yesterday morning your letter by
the "Liverpool" with great contentment of heart and mind, in all
respects, saving that the American Hegira, so often predicted on
your side and prayed on ours, is treated with a most unbecoming
levity and oblivion; and, moreover, that you do not seem to have
received all the letters I seem to have sent. With the letter
came the proof-sheet safe, and shall be presently exhibited to
Little and Brown. You must have already the result of our first
colloquy on that matter. I can now bring the thing nearer to
certainty. But you must print their names as before advised on
the title-page.

Nearly four weeks ago Ellis sent me the noble Italian print for
my wife.* She is in Boston at this time, and I believe will be
glad that I have written without her aid or word this time, for
she was so deeply pleased with the gift that she said she never
could write to you. It came timely to me at least. It is a
right morning thought, full of health and flowing genius, and I
rejoice in it. It is fitly framed and tomorrow is to be hung in
the parlor.

--------
* Morghen's engraving of Guido's Aurora.
--------

Our Munroe's press, you must believe, was of Aristotle's category
of the high-minded and slow. Chiding would do no good. They
still said, "We have but one copy, and so but one hand at work"!
At last, on the 1st of July, the book appeared in the market, but
does not come from the binder fast enough to supply the instant
demand; and therefore your two hundred and sixty copies cannot
part from New York until the 20th of July. They will be on board
the London packet which sails on that day. The publisher has his
instructions to bind the volumes to match the old ones. Our year
since the publication of the Vols. I. and II. is just complete,
and I have set the man on the account, but doubt if I get it
before twelve or fourteen days. All the edition is gone except
forty copies, he told me; and asked me if I would not begin to
print a small edition of this First Series, five hundred, as we
have five hundred of the new Series too many, with that view.
But I am now so old a fox that I suspend majestically my answer
until I have his account. For on the 21st of July I am to pay
$462 for the paper of this new book: and by and by the printer's
bill,--whose amount I do not yet know; and it is better to be
"slow and high-minded" a little more, since we have been so much,
and not go deeper into these men's debt until we have tasted
somewhat of their credit. We are to get, as you know, by
contract, near a thousand dollars from these first two volumes;
yet a month ago I was forced to borrow two hundred dollars for
you on interest, such advances had the account required. But the
coming account will enlighten us all.

I am very happy in the "success" of the London lectures. I have
no word to add tonight, only that Sterling is not timber-toned,
that I love his poetry, that I admire his prose with reservations
here and there. What he knows he writes manly and well. Now and
then he puts in a pasteboard man; but all our readers here take
_Blackwood_ for his sake, and lately seek him in vain. I am
getting on with some studies of mine prosperously for me, have
got three essays nearly done, and who knows but in the autumn I
shall have a book? Meantime my little boy and maid, my mother
and wife, are well, and the two ladies send to you and yours
affectionate regards,--they would fain say urgent invitations.
My mother sends tonight, my wife always.

I shall send you presently a copy of a translation published here
of Eckermann, by Margaret Fuller, a friend of mine and of yours,
for the sake of its preface mainly. She is a most accomplished
lady, and her culture belongs rather to Europe than to America.
Good bye.

--R.W. Emerson

XLV. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 8 August, 1839

Dear Friend,--This day came the letter dated 24 June, with "steam
packet" written by you on the outside, but no paddles wheeled it
through the sea. It is forty-five days old, and too old to do
its errand even had it come twenty days sooner--so far as printer
and bookbinder are concerned. I am truly grieved for the
mischance of the _John_ Fraser, and will duly lecture the sinning
bookseller. I noticed the misnomer in a letter of his New York
correspondent, and, I believe, mentioned to you in a letter my
fear of such a mischance. I am more sorry for the costliness
of this adventure to you, though in a gracious note to me you
cut down the fine one half. The new books, tardily printed,
were tardily bound and tardily put to sea on the packet ship
"Ontario," which left New York for London on the 1st of August.
At least this was the promise of Munroe & Co. I stood over the
boxes in which they were packing them in the latter days of July.
I hope they have not gone to John again, but you must keep an eye
to both names....

I cannot tell you how glad I am that you have seen my brave
Senator, and seen him as I see him. All my days I have wished
that he should go to England, and never more than when I listened
two or three times to debates in the House of Commons. We send
out usually mean persons as public agents, mere partisans, for
whom I can only hope that no man with eyes will meet them; and
now those thirsty eyes, those portrait-eating, portrait-painting
eyes of thine, those fatal perceptions, have fallen full on the
great forehead which I followed about all my young days, from
court-house to senate-chamber, from caucus to street. He has his
own sins no doubt, is no saint, is a prodigal. He has drunk this
rum of Party too so long, that his strong head is soaked,
sometimes even like the soft sponges, but the "man's a man for a'
that." Better, he is a great boy,--as wilful, as nonchalant and
good-humored. But you must hear him speak, not a show speech
which he never does well, but _with cause_ he can strike a stroke
like a smith. I owe to him a hundred fine hours and two or three
moments of Eloquence. His voice in a great house is admirable.
I am sorry if you decided not to visit him. He loves a _man,_
too. I do not know him, but my brother Edward read law with him,
and loved him, and afterwards in sick and unfortunate days
received the steadiest kindness from him.

Well, I am glad you are to think in earnest in Scotland of our
Cisatlantic claims. We shall have more rights over the wise and
brave, I believe before many years or months. We shall have more
men and a better cause than has yet moved on our stagnant waters.
I think our Church, so called, must presently vanish. There is a
universal timidity, conformity, and rage; and on the other hand
the most resolute realism in the young. The man Alcott bides his
time. I have a young poet in this village named Thoreau, who
writes the truest verses. I pine to show you my treasures; and
tell your wife, we have women who deserve to know her.

--R.W. Emerson

The Yankees read and study the new volumes of _Miscellanies_ even
more than the old. The "Sam Johnson" and "Scott" are great
favorites. Stearns Wheeler corrected proofs affectionately to
the last. Truth and Health be with you alway!

XLVI. Carlyle to Emerson

Scotsbrig, Ecclefechan, 4 September, 1839

Dear Emerson,--A cheerful and right welcome Letter of yours,
dated 4th July, reached me here, duly forwarded, some three
weeks ago; I delayed answering till there could some definite
statement, as to bales of literature shipped or landed, or other
matter of business forwarded a stage, be made. I am here, with
my Wife, rusticating again, these two months; amid diluvian
rains, Chartism, Teetotalism, deficient harvest, and general
complaint and confusion; which not being able to mend, all that
I can do is to heed them as little as possible. "What care I for
the house? I am only a lodger." On the whole, I have sat under
the wing of Saint Swithin; uncheery, sluggish, murky, as the
wettest of his Days;--hoping always, nevertheless, that blue sky,
figurative and real, does exist, and will demonstrate itself by
and by. I have been the stupidest and laziest of men. I could
not write even to you, till some palpable call told me I must.

Yesternight, however, there arrives a despatch from Fraser,
apprising me that the American _Miscellanies,_ second cargo, are
announced from Portsmouth, and "will probably be in the River
tomorrow"; where accordingly they in all likelihood now are, a
fair landing and good welcome to them! Fraser "knows not whether
they are bound or not"; but will soon know. The first cargo, of
which I have a specimen here, contented him extremely; only
there was one fatality, the cloth of the binding was multiplex,
party-colored, some sets done in green, others in red, blue,
perhaps skyblue! Now if the second cargo were not multiplex,
party-colored, nay multiplex, _in exact concordance with the
first,_ as seemed almost impossible--?--Alas, in that case, one
could not well predict the issue!--Seriously, it is a most
handsome Book you have made; and I have nothing to return but
thanks and again thanks. By the bye, if you do print a small
second edition of the First Portion, I might have had a small set
of errata ready: but _where are they?_ The Book only came into
my hand here a few days ago; and I have been whipt from post
to pillar without will of my own, without energy to form a
will! The only glaring error I recollect at this moment is one
somewhere in the second article on _Jean Paul:_ "Osion" (I
think, or some such thing) instead of "Orson": it is not an
original American error, but copied from the English; if the
Printer get his eye upon it, let him rectify; if not, not, I
_deserve_ to have it stand against me there. Fraser's joy,
should the Books prove either unbound or multiplex in the right
way, will be great and unalloyed; he calculates on selling all
the copies very soon. He has begun reprinting Goethe's _Wilhelm
Meister_ too, the _Apprenticeship_ and _Travels_ under one; and
hopes to remunerate himself for that by and by: whether there
will then remain any small peculium for me is but uncertain;
meanwhile I correct the press, nothing doubting. One of these I
call my best Translation, the other my worst; I have read that
latter, the _Apprenticeship,_ again in these weeks; not without
surprise, disappointment, nay, aversion here and there, yet on
the whole with ever new esteem. I find I can pardon _all_ things
in a man except purblindness, falseness of vision,--for, indeed,
does not that presuppose every other kind of falseness?

But let me hasten to say that the _French Revolution,_ five
hundred strong for the New England market, is also, as Fraser
advises, "to go to sea in three days." It is bound in red cloth,
gilt; a pretty book, James says; which he will sell for
twenty-five shillings here;--nay, the London brotherhood have
"subscribed" for one hundred and eighty at once, which he
considers great work. I directed him to consign to Little and
Brown in Boston, the _property_ of the thing _yours,_ with such
phraseology and formalities as they use in those cases. I paid
him for it yesterday (to save discount) L95; that is the whole
cost to me, twenty or thirty pounds more than was once calculated
on. Do the best with it you can, my friend; and never mind the
result. If the thing fail, as is likely enough, we will simply
quit that transport trade, and my experience must be _paid for._
The Title-page was "Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown,"
then in a second line and smaller type, "London James Fraser";
to which arrangement James made not the slightest objection, or
indeed rather seemed to like it.--So much for trade matters: is
it not _enough?_ I declare I blush sometimes, and wonder where
the good Emerson gets all his patience. We shall be through the
affair one day, and find something better to speak about than
dollars and pounds. And yet, as you will say, why not even of
dollars? Ah, there are leaden-worded [bills] of exchange I
have seen which have had an almost sacred character to me!
_Pauca verba._

Doubt not your new utterances are eagerly waited for here; above
all things the "Book" is what I want to see. You might have told
me what it was about. We shall see by and by. A man that has
discerned somewhat, and knows it for himself, let him speak it
out, and thank Heaven. I pray that they do not confuse you by
praises; their blame will do no harm at all. Praise is sweet to
all men; and yet alas, alas, if the light of one's own heart go
out, bedimmed with poor vapors and sickly false glitterings and
flashings, what profit is it! Happier in darkness, in all manner
of mere outward darkness, misfortune and neglect, "so that _thou
canst endure,_"--which however one cannot to all lengths. God
speed you, my Brother! I hope all good things of you; and
wonder whether like Phoebus Apollo you are destined to be a youth
forever.--Sterling will be right glad to hear your praises; not
unmerited, for he is a man among millions that John of mine,
though his perpetual mobility wears me out at times. Did he ever
write to you? His latest speculation was that he should and
would; but I fancy it is among the clouds again. I hear from
him the other day, out of Welsh villages where he passed his
boyhood, &c., all in a flow of "lyrical recognition," hope,
faith, and sanguine unrest; I have even some thoughts of
returning by Bristol (in a week or so, that must be), and seeing
him. The dog has been reviewing me, he says, and it is coming
out in the next _Westminster!_ He hates terribly my doctrine of
_"Silence."_ As to America and lecturing, I cannot in this
torpid condition venture to say one word. Really it is not
impossible; and yet lecturing is a thing I shall never grow to
like; still less lionizing, Martineau-ing: _Ach Gott!_ My Wife
sends a thousand regards; _she_ will never get across the ocean,
you must come to her; she was almost _dead_ crossing from
Liverpool hither, and declares she will never go to sea for any
purpose whatsoever again. Never till next time! My good old
Mother is here, my Brother John (home with his Duke from Italy);
all send blessings and affection to you and yours. Adieu till I
get to London.

Yours ever,
T. Carlyle

XLVII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 8 December, 1839

My Dear Emerson,--What a time since we have written to one
another! was it you that defalcated? Alas, I fear it was myself;
I have had a feeling these nine or ten weeks that you were
expecting to hear from me; that I absolutely could not write.
Your kind gift of Fuller's _Eckermann_* was handed in to our
Hackney coach, in Regent Street, as we wended homewards from the
railway and Scotland, on perhaps the 8th of September last; a
welcome memorial of distant friends and doings: nay, perhaps
there was a Letter two weeks prior to that:--I am a great sinner!
But the truth is, I could not write; and now I can and do it!

----------
* "Conversations with Goethe. Translated from the German of
Eckermann. By S.M. Fuller." Boston, 1839. This was the fourth
volume in the series of "Specimens of Foreign Standard
Literature," edited by George Ripley. The book has a
characteristic Preface by Miss Fuller, in which she speaks of
Carlyle as "the only competent English critic" of Goethe.
----------

Our sojourn in Scotland was stagnant, sad; but tranquil, _well
let alone,_--an indispensable blessing to a poor creature fretted
to fiddle-strings, as I grow to be in this Babylon, take it as I
will. We had eight weeks of desolate rain; with about eight
days bright as diamonds intercalated in that black monotony of
bad weather. The old Hills are the same; the old Streams go
gushing along as in past years, in past ages; but he that looks
on them is no longer the same: and the old Friends, where are
they? I walk silent through my old haunts in that country; sunk
usually in inexpressible reflections, in an immeasurable chaos of
musings and mopings that cannot be reflected or articulated. The
only work I had on hand was one that would not prosper with me:
an Article for the _Quarterly Review_ on the state of the Working
Classes here. The thoughts were familiar to me, old, many years
old; but the utterance of them, in what spoken dialect to utter
them! The _Quarterly Review_ was not an eligible vehicle, and
yet the eligiblest; of Whigs, abandoned to Dilettantism and
withered sceptical conventionality, there was no hope at all;
the _London-and-Westminster_ Radicals, wedded to their Benthamee
Formulas, and tremulous at their own shadows, expressly rejected
my proposal many months ago: Tories alone remained; Tories I
often think have more stuff in them, in spite of their blindness,
than any other class we have;--Walter Scott's _sympathy_ with his
fellow creatures, what is it compared with Sydney Smith's, with a
Poor Law Commissioner's! Well: this thing would not prosper
with me in Scotland at all; nor here at all, where nevertheless
I had to persist writing; writing and burning, and cursing my
destiny, and then again writing. Finally the thing came out, as
an Essay on _Chartism;_ was shown to Lockhart, according to
agreement; was praised by him, but was also found unsuitable by
him; suitable to _explode_ a whole fleet of Quarterlies into
sky-rockets in these times! And now Fraser publishes it himself,
with some additions, as a little Volume; and it will go forth in
a week or two on its own footing; and England will see what she
has to say to it, whether something or nothing; and one man, as
usual, is right glad that he has nothing more to do with it.
This is the reason why I could not write. I mean to send you the
Proof-sheets of this thing, to do with as you see cause; there
will be but some five or six, I think. It is probable my New
England brothers may approve some portions of it; may be curious
to see it reprinted; you ought to say Yes or No in regard to
that. I think I will send all the sheets together; or at
farthest, at two times.

Fraser, when we returned hither, had already received his
_Miscellanies;_ had about despatched his five hundred _French
Revolutions,_ insured and so, forth, consigned, I suppose, to
your protection and the proper booksellers; probably they have
got over from New York into your neighborhood before now. Much
good may they do you! The _Miscellanies,_ with their variegated
binding, proved to be in perfect order; and are now all sold;
with much regret from poor James that we had not a thousand more
of them! This thousand he now sets about providing by his own
industry, poor man; I am revising the American copy in these
days; the printer is to proceed forthwith. I admire the good
Stearns Wheeler as I proceed; I write to him my thanks by this
post, and send him by Kennet a copy of Goethe's _Meister,_ for
symbol of acknowledgment. Another copy goes off for you, to the
care of Little and Company. Fraser has got it out two weeks ago;
a respectable enough book, now that the version is corrected
somewhat. Tell me whether you dislike it less; what you do
think of it? By the by, have you not learned to read German now?
I rather think you have. It is three months spent well, if ever
months were, for a thinking Englishman of this age.--I hope
Kennet will use more despatch than he sometimes does. Thank
Heaven for these Boston Steamers they project! May the Nereids
and Poseidon favor them! They will bring us a thousand miles
nearer, at one step; by and by we shall be of one parish
after all.

During Autumn I speculated often about a Hegira into New England
this very year: but alas! my horror of _Lecturing_ continues
great; and what else is there for me to do there? These several
years I have had no wish so pressing as to hold my peace. I
begin again to feel some use in articulate speech; perhaps I
shall one day have something that I want to utter even in your
side of the water. We shall see. Patience, and shuffle the
cards.--I saw no more of Webster; did not even learn well where
he was, till lately I noticed in the Newspapers that he had gone
home again. A certain Mr. Brown (I think) brought me a letter
from you, not long since; I forwarded him to Cambridge and
Scotland: a modest inoffensive man. He said he had never
personally met with Emerson. My Wife recalled to him the story
of the Scotch Traveler on the top of Vesuvius: "Never saw so
beautiful a scene in the world!"--"Nor I," replied a stranger
standing there, "except once; on the top of Dunmiot, in the
Ochil Hills in Scotland."--"Good Heavens! That is a part of my
Estate, and I was never there! I will go thither." Yes, do!--We
have seen no other Transoceanic that I remember. We expect your
_Book_ soon! We know the subject of your Winter Lectures too;
at least Miss Martineau thinks she does, and makes us think so.
Heaven speed the work! Heaven send my good Emerson a clear
utterance, in all right ways, of the nobleness that dwells in
him! He knows what silence means; let him know speech also, in
its season the two are like canvas and pigment, like darkness and
light-image painted thereon; the one is essential to the other,
not possible without the other.

Poor Miss Martineau is in Newcastle-on-Tyne this winter; sick,
painfully not dangerously; with a surgical brother-in-law. Her
meagre didacticalities afflict me no more; but also her blithe
friendly presence cheers me no more. We wish she were back.
This silence, I calculate, forced silence, will do her much good.
If I were a Legislator, I would order every man, once a week or
so, to lock his lips together, and utter no vocable at all
for four-and-twenty hours: it would do him an immense benefit,
poor fellow. Such racket, and cackle of mere hearsay and
sincere-cant, grows at last entirely deafening, enough to drive
one mad, --like the voice of mere infinite rookeries answering
your voice! Silence, silence! Sterling sent you a Letter from
Clifton, which I set under way here, having added the address.
He is not well again, the good Sterling; talks of Madeira this
season again: but I hope otherwise. You of course read his
sublime "article"? I tell him it was--a thing untellable!

Mr. Southey has fallen, it seems, into a mournful condition:
oblivion, mute hebetation, loss of all faculty. He suffered
greatly, nursing his former wife in her insanity, for years till
her relief by death; suffered, worked, and made no moan; the
brunt of the task over, he sank into collapse in the hands of a
new wife he had just wedded. What a lot for him; for her
especially! The most excitable but most methodic man I have ever
seen. [Greek] that is a word that awaits us all.--I have my
brother here at present; though talking of Lisbon with his
Buccleuchs. My Wife seems better than of late winters. I
actually had a Horse, nay actually have it, though it has gone to
the country till the mud abate again! It did me perceptible
good; I mean to try it farther. I am no longer so desperately
poor as I have been for twelve years back; sentence of
starvation or beggary seems revoked at last, a blessedness
really very considerable. Thanks, thanks! We send a thousand
regards to the two little ones, to the two mothers. _Valete
nostrum memores._

--T. Carlyle

XLVIII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 12 December, 1839

My Dear Friend,--Not until the 29th of November did the five
hundred copies of the _French Revolution_ arrive in Boston.
Fraser unhappily sent them to New York, whence they came not
without long delays. They came in perfectly good order, not in
the pretty red you told us of, but in a sober green;--not so
handsome and salable a back, our booksellers said, as their own;
but in every other respect a good book. The duties at the New
York Custom House on these and a quantity of other books sent by
Fraser amounted to $400.36, whereof, I understand, the _French
Revolution_ pays for its share $243. No bill has been brought us
for freight, so we conclude that you have paid it. I confided
the book very much to the conscience and discretion of Little and
Brown, and after some ciphering they settle to sell it at $3.75
per copy, wherefrom you are to get the cost of the book, and
(say) $1.10 per copy profit, and no more. The booksellers
eat the rest. The book is rather too dear for our market of
cheap manufactures, and therefore we are obliged to give the
booksellers a good percentage to get it off at all: for we stand
in daily danger of a cheap edition from some rival neighbor. I
hope to give you good news of its sale soon, although I have been
assured today that no book sells, the times are so bad. Brown
had disposed of fifty or sixty copies to the trade, and twelve at
retail. He doubted not to sell them all in six months....

Several persons have asked me to get some copies of the _German
Romance_ sent over here for sale. Last week a gentleman desired me
to say he wanted four copies, and today I have been charged to
procure another. I think, if you will send me by Little and Brown,
through Longman, six copies, we can find an immediate market.

It gives me great joy to write to my friend once more, slow as
you may think me to use the privilege. For a good while I dared
believe you were coming hither, and why should I write?--and now
for weeks I have been absorbed in my foolish lectures, of which
only two are yet delivered and ended. There should be eight
more; subject, "The Present Age." Out of these follies I
remember you with glad heart. Lately I had Sterling's letter,
which, since I have read his article on you, I am determined to
answer speedily. I delighted in the spirit of that paper, loving
you so well and accusing you so conscientiously. What does he at
Clifton? If you communicate with him, tell him I thank him for
his letter, and hold him dear. I am very happy lately in adding
one or two new friends to my little circle, and you may be sure
every friend of mine is a friend of yours. So when you come here
you shall not be lonely. A new person is always to me a great
event, and will not let me sleep.--I believe I was not wise to
volunteer myself to this fever fit of lecturing again. I ought
to have written instead in silence and serenity. Yet I work
better under this base necessity, and then I have a certain
delight (base also?) in speaking to a multitude. But my joy in
friends, those sacred people, is my consolation for the mishaps
of the adventure, and they for the most part come to me from this
_publication_ of myself.--After ten or twelve weeks I think I
shall address myself earnestly to writing, and give some form to
my formless scripture.

I beg you will write to me and tell me what you do, and give me
good news of your wife and your brother. Can they not see the
necessity of your coming to look after your American interests?
My wife and mother love both you and them. A young man of New
York told me the other day he was about getting you an invitation
from an Association in that city to give them a course of
lectures on such terms as would at least make you whole in the
expenses of coming thither. We could easily do that in Boston.

--R.W. Emerson

What manner of person is Heraud? Do you read Landor, or know
him, O seeing man? Farewell!

XLIX. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 6 January, 1840

My Dear Emerson,--It is you, I surely think, that are in my debt
now;* nevertheless I must fling you another word: may it
cross one from you coming hither--as near the _Lizard Point_ as
it likes!

---------
* The preceding letter had not yet arrived.
---------

Some four sheets making a Pamphlet called _Chartism_ addressed to
you at Concord are, I suppose, snorting along through the waters
this morning, part of the Cargo of the "British Queen." At least
I gave them to Mr. Brown (your unseen friend) about ten days ago,
who promised to dispose of them; the "British Queen," he said,
was the earliest chance. The Pamphlet itself (or rather booklet,
for Fraser has gilt it, &c., and asks five shillings for it as a
Book) is out since then; radicals and others yelping
considerably in a discordant manner about it; I have nothing
other to say to _you_ about it than what I said last time, that
the sheets were _yours_ to do with as you saw good,--to burn if
you reckoned that fittest. It is not entirely a Political
Pamphlet; nay, there are one or two things in it which my
American Friends specially may like: but the interests discussed
are altogether English, and cannot be considered as likely to
concern New-Englishmen very much. However, it will probably be
itself in your hand before this sheet, and you will have
determined what is fit.

A copy of _Wilhelm Meister,_ two copies, one for Stearns Wheeler,
are probably in some of the "Line Ships" at this time too: good
voyage to them! The _French Revolutions_ were all shipped,
invoiced, &c.; they have, I will suppose, arrived safe, as we
shall hear by and by. What freightages, landings, and
embarkments! For only two days ago I sent you off, through
Kennet, another Book: John Sterling's _Poems,_ which he has
collected into a volume. Poor John has overworked himself again,
or the climate without fault on his side has proved too hard for
him: he sails for Madeira again next week! His Doctors tell me
there is no intrinsic danger; but they judge the measure safe as
one of precaution. It is very mortifying he had nestled himself
down at Clifton, thinking he might now hope to continue there;
and lo! he has to fly again.--Did you get his letter? The
address to him now will be, for three months to come, "_Edward_
Sterling, Esq., South Place, Knightsbridge, London," his
Father's designation.

Farther I must not omit to say that Richard Monckton Milnes
purposes, through the strength of Heaven, to _review_ you! In
the next Number of the _London and Westminster,_ the courageous
youth will do this feat, if they let him. Nay, he has already
done it, the Paper being actually written he employed me last
week in negotiating with the Editors about it; and their answer
was, "Send us the Paper, it promises very well." We shall see
whether it comes out or not; keeping silence till then. Milnes
is a _Tory_ Member of Parliament; think of that! For the rest,
he describes his religion in these terms: "I profess to be a
Crypto-Catholic." Conceive the man! A most bland-smiling, semi-
quizzical, affectionate, high-bred, Italianized little man, who
has long olive-blond hair, a dimple, next to no chin, and flings
his arm round your neck when he addresses you in public society!
Let us hear now what he will say, of the American _Vates._*

---------
* The end of this letter has been cut off.
---------

L. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 17 January, 1840

Dear Emerson,--Your Letter of the 12th of December, greatly, to
my satisfaction, has arrived; the struggling Steamship, in spite
of all hurricanes, has brought it safe across the waters to me.
I find it good to write you a word in return straightway; though
I think there are already two, or perhaps even three, messages of
mine to you flying about unacknowledged somewhere under the moon;
nay, the last of them perhaps may go by the same packet as this,
--having been forwarded, as this will be, to _Liverpool,_ after
the "British Queen" sailed from London.

Your account of the _French Revolution_ packages, and prognosis
of what Little and Brown will do with them, is altogether as it
should be. I apprised Fraser instantly of his invoiceless Books,
&c.; he answers, that order has been taken in that long since,
"instructions" sent, and, I conclude, arrangements for _bills_
least of all forgotten. I mentioned what share of the duty was
his; and that your men meant to draw on him for it. That is all
right. As to the _French Revolution,_ I agree with your
Booksellers altogether about it; the American Edition actually
pleases myself better for looking at; nor do I know that
this new English one has much superiority for use: it is
despicably printed, I fear, so far as false spellings and other
slovenlinesses can go. Fraser "finds the people like it";
_credat Judaeus;_--as for me, I have told him I will _not print
any more_ with that man, but with some other man. Curious
enough, the price Little and Brown have fixed upon was the price
I remember guessing at beforehand, and the result they propose to
realize for me corresponds closely with my prophecy too. Thanks,
a thousand thanks, for all the trouble you never grudge to take.
We shall get ourselves handsomely out of this export and import
speculation; and know, taught at a rather _cheap_ rate, not to
embark in the like again.

There went off a _Wilhelm Meister_ for you, and a letter to
announce it, several weeks ago; that was message first. Your
traveling neighbor, Brown, took charge of a Pamphlet named
_Chartism,_ to be put into the "British Queen's" Letter-bag
(where I hope, and doubt not, he did put it, though I have seen
nothing of him since); that and a letter in reference to it was
message second. Thirdly, I sent off a volume of _Poems_ by
Sterling, likewise announced in that letter. And now this that I
actually write is the fourth (it turns out to be) and last of all
the messages. Let us take Arithmetic along with us in all
things.--Of _Chartism_ I have nothing farther to say, except that
Fraser is striking off another One Thousand copies to be called
Second Edition; and that the people accuse me, not of being
an incendiary and speculative Sansculotte threatening to
become practical, but of being a Tory,--thank Heaven. The
_Miscellanies_ are at press; at _two_ presses; to be out, as
Hope asseverates, in March: five volumes, without _Chartism;_
with Hoffmann and Tieck from German Romance, stuck in somewhere
as Appendix; with some other trifles stuck in elsewhere, chiefly
as Appendix; and no essential change from the Boston Edition.
Fraser, "overwhelmed with business," does not yet send me his net
result of those Two Hundred and Fifty Copies sold off some
time ago; so soon as he does, you shall hear of it for your
satisfaction.--As to _German Romance,_ tell my friends that it
has been out of print these ten years; procurable, of late not
without difficulty, only in the Old-Bookshops. The comfort is
that the best part of it stands in the new _Wilhelm Meister:_
Fraser and I had some thought of adding Tieck's and Richter's
parts, had they suited for a volume; the rest may without
detriment to anybody perish.

Such press-correctings and arrangings waste my time here, not in
the agreeablest way. I begin, though in as sulky a state of
health as ever, to look again towards some new kind of work. I
have often thought of Cromwell and Puritans; but do not see how
the subject can be presented still alive. A subject dead is not
worth presenting. Meanwhile I read rubbish of Books; Eichhorn,
Grimm, &c.; very considerable rubbish; one grain in the cart
load worth pocketing. It is pity I have no appetite for
lecturing! Many applications have been made to me here;--none
more touching to me than one, the day before yesterday, by a
fine, innocent-looking Scotch lad, in the name of himself and
certain other Booksellers' shopmen eastward in the City! I
cannot get them out of my head. Poor fellows! they have nobody
to say an honest word to them, in this articulate-speaking world,
and they apply to _me._--For you, good friend, I account you
luckier; I do verily: lecture there what innumerable things you
have got to say on "The Present Age";--yet withal do not forget
to _write_ either, for that is the lasting plan after all. I
have a curious Note, sent me for inspection the other day; it is
addressed to a Scotch Mr. Erskine (famed among the saints here)
by a Madame Necker, Madame de Stael's kinswoman, to whom he, the
said Mr. Erskine, had lent your first Pamphlet at Geneva. She
regards you with a certain love, yet a _shuddering_ love. She
says, "Cela sent l'Americain qui apres avoir abattu les forets a
coup de hache, croit qu'on doit de meme conquerir le monde
intellectuel"! What R.M. Milnes will say of you we hope also to
see.--I know both Heraud and Landor; but alas, what room is
here! Another sheet with less of "Arithmetic" in it will soon be
allowed me. Adieu, dear friend.

Yours, ever and ever,
T. Carlyle

LI. Emerson to Carlyle*

New York, 18 March, 1840

My Dear Friend,--I have just seen the steamer "British Queen"
enter the harbor from sea, and here lies the "Great Western," to
sail tomorrow. I will not resist hints so broad upon my long
procrastinations. You shall have at least a tardy acknowledgment
that I received in January your letter of December, which I
should have answered at once had it not found me absorbed in
writing foolish lectures which were then in high tide. I had
written you, a little earlier, tidings of the receipt of your
_French Revolution._ Your letter was very welcome, as all
your letters are. I have since seen tidings of the _Essay on
Chartism_ in an English periodical, but have not yet got my
proof-sheets. They are probably still rolling somewhere outside
of this port, for all our packetships have had the longest
passages: only one has come in for many a week. We will be as
patient as we can.

--------
* This letter appeared in the _Athenaeum,_ for July 22, 1882
--------

I am here on a visit to my brother, who is a lawyer in this city,
and lives at Staten Island, at a distance of half an hour's sail.
The city has such immense natural advantages and such
capabilities of boundless growth, and such varied and ever
increasing accommodations and appliances for eye and ear, for
memory and wit, for locomotion and lavation, and all manner of
delectation, that I see that the poor fellows that live here do
get some compensation for the sale of their souls. And how they
multiply! They estimate the population today at 350,000, and
forty years ago, it is said, there were but 20,000. But I always
seem to suffer some loss of faith on entering cities. They are
great conspiracies; the parties are all maskers, who have taken
mutual oaths of silence not to betray each other's secret and
each to keep the other's madness in countenance. You can scarce
drive any craft here that does not seem a subornation of the
treason. I believe in the spade and an acre of good ground.
Whoso cuts a straight path to his own bread, by the help of God
in the sun and rain and sprouting of the grain, seems to me an
_universal_ workman. He solves the problem of life, not for one,
but for all men of sound body. I wish I may one day send you
word, or, better, show you the fact, that I live by my hands
without loss of memory or of hope. And yet I am of such a puny
constitution, as far as concerns bodily labor, that perhaps I
never shall. We will see.

Did I tell you that we hope shortly to send you some American
verses and prose of good intent? My vivacious friend Margaret
Fuller is to edit a journal whose first number she promises for
the 1st of July next, which I think will be written with a good
will if written at all. I saw some poetical fragments which
charmed me,--if only the writer consents to give them to
the public.

I believe I have yet little to tell you of myself. I ended in
the middle of February my ten lectures on the Present Age. They
are attended by four hundred and fifty to five hundred people,
and the young people are so attentive; and out of the hall ask
me so many questions, that I assume all the airs of Age and
Sapience. I am very happy in the sympathy and society of from
six to a dozen persons, who teach me to hope and expect
everything from my countrymen. We shall have many Richmonds in
the field presently. I turn my face homeward to-morrow, and this
summer I mean to resume my endeavor to make some presentable book
of Essays out of my mountain of manuscript, were it only for the
sake of clearance. I left my wife, and boy, and girl,--the
softest, gracefulest little maiden alive, creeping like a turtle
with head erect all about the house,--well at home a week ago.
The boy has two deep blue wells for eyes, into which I gladly
peer when I am tired. Ellen, they say, has no such depth of orb,
but I believe I love her better than ever I did the boy. I
brought my mother with me here to spend the summer with William
Emerson and his wife and ruddy boy of four years. All these
persons love and honour you in proportion to their knowledge
and years.

My letter will find you, I suppose, meditating new lectures for
your London disciples. May love and truth inspire them! I can
see easily that my predictions are coming to pass, and that.
having waited until your Fame wag in the floodtide, we shall not
now see you at all on western shores. Our saintly Dr. T---, I am
told, had a letter within a year from Lord Byron's daughter,
_informing_ the good man of the appearance of a certain wonderful
genius in London named Thomas Carlyle, and all his astonishing
workings on her own and her friends' brains, and him the very
monster whom the Doctor had been honoring with his best dread and
consternation these five years. But do come in one of Mr.
Cunard's ships as soon as the booksellers have made you rich. If
they fail to do so, come and read lectures which the Yankees will
pay for. Give my love and hope and perpetual remembrance to your
wife, and my wife's also, who bears her in her kindest heart, and
who resolves every now and then to write to her, that she may
thank her for the beautiful Guido.

You told me to send you no more accounts. But I certainly shall,
as our financial relations are grown more complex, and I wish at
least to relieve myself of this unwonted burden of booksellers'
accounts and long delays, by sharing them. I have had one of
their estimates by me a year, waiting to send. Farewell.

--R.W.E.

LII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 1 April, 1840

My Dear Emerson,--A Letter has been due to you from me, if not by
palpable law of reciprocity, yet by other law and right, for some
week or two. I meant to write, so soon as Fraser and I had got a
settlement effected. The traveling Sumner being about to return
into your neighborhood, I gladly accept his offer to take a
message to you. I wish I had anything beyond a dull Letter to
send! But unless, as my Wife suggests, I go and get you a
D'Orsay _Portrait_ of myself, I see not what there is! Do you
read German or not? I now and then fall in with a curious German
volume, not perhaps so easily accessible in the Western world.
Tell me. Or do you ever mean to learn it? I decidedly wish you
would.--As to the D'Orsay Portrait, it is a real curiosity:
Count D'Orsay the emperor of European Dandies portraying the
Prophet of spiritual Sansculottism! He came rolling down hither
one day, many months ago, in his sun-chariot, to the bedazzlement
of all bystanders; found me in dusty gray-plaid dressing-gown,
grim as the spirit of Presbyterianism (my Wife said), and
contrived to get along well enough with me. I found him a man
worth talking to, once and away; a man of decided natural gifts;
every utterance of his containing in it a wild caricature
_likeness_ of some object or other; a dashing man, who might,
some twenty years sooner born, have become one of Bonaparte's
Marshals, and _is,_ alas,--Count D'Orsay! The Portrait he dashed
off in some twenty minutes (I was dining there, to meet Landor);
we have not chanced to meet together since, and I refuse to
undergo any more eight-o'clock dinners for such an object.--Now
if I do not send you the Portrait, after all?

Fraser's account of the _Miscellanies_ stood legibly extended
over large spaces of paper, and was in several senses amazing to
look upon. I trouble _you_ only with the result. Two Hundred
and forty-eight copies (for there were some one or two
"imperfect"): all these he had sold, at two guineas each; and
sold swiftly, for I recollect in December, or perhaps November,
he told me he was "holding back," not to run entirely out. Well,
of the L500 and odd so realized for these Books, the portion that
belonged to me was L239,--the L261 had been the expense of
handing the ware to Emerson over the counter, and drawing in
the coin for it! "Rules of the Trade";--it is a Trade, one would
surmise, in which the Devil has a large interest. However,--not
to spend an instant polluting one's eyesight with that side of
it,--let me feel joyfully, with thanks to Heaven and America,
that I do receive such a sum in the shape of wages, by decidedly
the noblest method in which wages could come to a man. Without
Friendship, without Ralph Waldo Emerson, there had been no
sixpence of that money here. Thanks, and again thanks. This
earth is not an unmingled ball of Mud, after all. Sunbeams
visit it;--mud _and_ sunbeams are the stuff it has from of old
consisted of.--I hasten away from the Ledger, with the mere good-
news that James is altogether content with the "progress" of all
these Books, including even the well-abused _Chartism_ Book. We
are just on the point of finishing our English reprint of the
_Miscellanies;_ of which I hope to send you a copy before long.

And now why do not _you_ write to me? Your Lectures must be done
long ago. Or are you perhaps writing a Book? I shall be right
glad to hear of that; and withal to hear that you do not hurry
yourself, but strive with deliberate energy to produce what in
you is best. Certainly, I think, a right Book does lie in the
man! It is to be remembered also always that the true value is
determined by what we _do not_ write! There is nothing truer
than that now all but forgotten truth; it is eternally true. He
whom it concerns can consider it.--You have doubtless seen
Milnes's review of you. I know not that you will find it to
strike direct upon the secret of _Emerson,_ to hit the nail on
the head, anywhere at all; I rather think not. But it is
gently, not unlovingly done;--and lays the first plank of a kind
of pulpit for you here and throughout all Saxondom: a thing
rather to be thankful for. It on the whole surpassed my
expectations. Milnes tells me he is sending you a copy and a
Note, by Sumner. He is really a pretty little robin-redbreast of
a man.

You asked me about Landor and Heraud. Before my paper entirely
vanish, let me put down a word about them. Heraud is a
loquacious scribacious little man, of middle age, of parboiled
greasy aspect, whom Leigh Hunt describes as "wavering in the most
astonishing manner between being Something and Nothing." To me
he is chiefly remarkable as being still--with his entirely
enormous vanity and very small stock of faculty--out of Bedlam.
He picked up a notion or two from Coleridge many years ago; and
has ever since been rattling them in his head, like peas in an
empty bladder, and calling on the world to "List the Music of the
spheres." He escapes _assassination,_ as I calculate, chiefly by
being the cheerfulest best-natured little creature extant.--You
cannot kill him he laughs so softly, even when he is like killing
you. John Mill said, "I forgive him freely for interpreting the
Universe, now when I find he cannot pronounce the _h's!_" Really
this is no caricature; you have not seen the match of Heraud in
your days. I mentioned to him once that Novalis had said, "The
highest problem of Authorship is the writing of a Bible."--
"That is precisely what I am doing!" answered the aspiring,
unaspirating.*--Of Landor I have not got much benefit either. We
met first, some four years ago, on Cheyne Walk here: a tall,
broad, burly man, with gray hair, and large, fierce-rolling eyes;
of the most restless, impetuous vivacity, not to be held in by
the most perfect breeding,--expressing itself in high-colored
superlatives, indeed in reckless exaggeration, now and then in a
dry sharp laugh not of sport but of mockery; a wild man, whom no
extent of culture had been able to tame! His intellectual
faculty seemed to me to be weak in proportion to his violence of
temper: the judgment he gives about anything is more apt to be
wrong than right,--as the inward whirlwind shows him this side or
the other of the object; and _sides_ of an object are all that
he sees. He is not an original man; in most cases one but sighs
over the spectacle of common place torn to rags. I find him
painful as a writer; like a soul ever promising to take wing
into the Aether, yet never doing it, ever splashing webfooted in
the terrene mud, and only splashing the worse the more he
strives! Two new tragedies of his that I read lately are the
fatalest stuff I have seen for long: not an ingot; ah no, a
distracted coil of wire-drawings salable in no market. Poor
Landor has left his Wife (who is said to be a fool) in Italy,
with his children, who would not quit her; but it seems he has
honestly surrendered all his money to her, except a bare annuity
for furnished lodgings; and now lives at Bath, a solitary
sexagenarian, in that manner. He visits London in May; but says
always it would kill him soon: alas, I can well believe that!
They say he has a kind heart; nor does it seem unlikely: a
perfectly honest heart, free and fearless, dwelling amid such
hallucinations, excitations, tempestuous confusions, I can see he
has. Enough of him! Me he likes well enough, more thanks to
him; but two hours of such speech as his leave me giddy and
undone. I have seen some other Lions, and Lion's-_providers;_
but consider them a worthless species.--When will you write,
then? Consider my frightful outlook with a Course of Lectures to
give "On Heroes and Hero-worship,"--from Odin to Robert Burns!
My Wife salutes you all. Good be in the Concord Household!

Yours ever,
T. Carlyle

--------
* There is an account of Heraud by an admirer in the _Dial_ for
October, 1842, p. 241. It contrasts curiously and instructively
with Carlyle's sketch.
--------

LIII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 21 April, 1840

My Dear Friend,--Three weeks ago I received a letter from you
following another in the week before, which I should have
immediately acknowledged but that I was promised a private
opportunity for the 25th of April, by which time I promised
myself to send you sheets of accounts. I had also written you
from New York about the middle of March. But now I suppose Mr.
Grinnell--a hospitable, humane, modest gentleman in Providence,
R.I., a merchant, much beloved by all his townspeople, and,
though no scholar, yet very fond of silently listening to such--
is packing his trunk to go to England. He offered to carry any
letters for me, and as at his house during my visit to Providence
I was eagerly catechised by all comers concerning Thomas Carlyle,
I thought it behoved me to offer him for his brethren, sisters,
and companions' sake, the joy of seeing the living face of that
wonderful man. Let him see thy face and pass on his way. I who
cannot see it, nor hear the voice that comes forth of it, must
even betake me to this paper to repay the best I can the love of
the Scottish man, and in the hope to deserve more.

Your letter announces _Wilhelm Meister,_ Sterling's _Poems,_ and
_Chartism._ I am very rich, or am to be. But Kennet is no
Mercury. _Wilhelm_ and _Sterling_ have not yet made their
appearance, though diligently inquired after by Stearns Wheeler
and me. Little and Brown now correspond with Longman, not with
Kennet. But they will come soon, perhaps are already arrived.

_Chartism_ arrived at Concord by mail not until one of the last
days of March, though dated by you, I think, the 21st of
December. I returned home on the 3d of April, and found it
waiting. All that is therein said is well and strongly said, and
as the words are barbed and feathered the memory of men cannot
choose but carry them whithersoever men go. And yet I thought
the book itself instructed me to look for more. We seemed to
have a right to an answer less concise to a question so grave and
humane, and put with energy and eloquence. I mean that whatever
probabilities or possibilities of solution occurred should have
been opened to us in some detail. But now it stands as a
preliminary word, and you will one day, when the fact itself is
riper; write the Second Lesson; or those whom you have
influenced will. I read the book twice hastily through, and sent
it directly to press, fearing to be forestalled, for the London
book was in Boston already. Little and Brown are to print it.
Their estimate is:--

Printing page for page with copy ....... $63.35
Paper .....................................44.00
Binding .................................. 90.00
Total .................................... $197.35

Costing say twenty cents per copy for one thousand copies bound.
The book to sell for fifty cents: the Bookseller's commission
twenty percent on the Retail price. The author's profit fifteen
cents per copy. They intend, if a cheap edition is published,--
no unlikely event,--to stitch the book as pamphlet, and sell it
at thirty-eight cents. I expect it from the press in a few days.
I shall not on this sheet break into the other accounts, as I am
expecting hourly from Munroe's clerk an entire account of
R.W.E. with T.C., of which I have furnished him with all the
facts I had, and he is to write it out in the manner of his
craft. I did not give it to him until I had made some unsuccessful
experiments myself.

I am here at work now for a fortnight to spin some single cord
out of my thousand and one strands of every color and texture
that lie raveled around me in old snarls. We need to be
possessed with a mountainous conviction of the value of our
advice to our contemporaries, if we will take such pains to find
what that is. But no, it is the pleasure of the spinning that
betrays poor spinners into the loss of so much good time. I
shall work with the more diligence on this book to-be of mine,
that you inform me again and again that my penny tracts are still
extant; nay, that, beside friendly men, learned and poetic men
read and even review them. I am like Scholasticus of the Greek
Primer, who was ashamed to bring out so small a dead child before
such grand people. Pygmalion shall try if he cannot fashion a
better, certainly a bigger.--I am sad to hear that Sterling sails
again for his health. I am ungrateful not to have written to
him, as his letter was very welcome to me. I will not promise
again until I do it. I received a note last week forwarded by
Mr. Hume from New York, and instantly replied to greet the good
messenger to our Babylonian city, and sent him letters to a few
friends of mine there. But my brother writes me that he had left
New York for Washington when he went to seek him at his lodgings.
I hope he will come northward presently, and let us see his face.

_22 April._--Last evening came true the promised account drawn up
by Munroe's clerk, Chapman. I have studied it with more zeal
than success. An account seems an ingenious way of burying
facts: it asks wit equal to his who hid them to find them. I am
far as yet from being master of this statement, yet, as I have
promised it so long, I will send it now, and study a copy of it
at my leisure. It is intended to begin where the last account I
sent you, viz. of _French Revolution,_ ended, with a balance of
$9.53 in your favor.... I send you also a paper which Munroe drew
up a long time ago by way of satisfying me that, so far as the
first and second volumes [of the _Miscellanies_] were concerned,
the result had accorded with the promise that you should have
$1,000 profit from the edition. We prosper marvelously on paper,
but the realized benefit loiters. Will you now set some friend
of yours in Fraser's shop at work on this paper, and see if this
statement is true and transparent. I trust the Munroe firm,--
chiefly Nichols, the clerical partner,--and yet it is a duty to
understand one's own affair. When I ask, at each six months'
reckoning, why we should always be in debt to them, they still
remind me of new and newer printing, and promise correspondent
profits at last. By sending you this account I make it entirely
an affair between you and them. You will have all the facts
which any of us know. I am only concerned as having advanced the
sums which are charged in the account for the payment of paper
and printing, and which promise to liquidate themselves soon, for
Munroe declares he shall have $550 to pay me in a few days. For
the benefit of all parties bid your clerk sift them. One word
more and I have done with this matter, which shall not be weary
if it comes to good,--the account of the London five hundred
_French Revolution_ is not yet six months old, and so does not
come in. Neither does that of the second edition of the first
and second volumes of the _Miscellanies,_ for the same reason.
They will come in due time. I have very good hope that my friend
Margaret Fuller's Journal--after many false baptisms now saying
it will be called _The Dial,_ and which is to appear in July--
will give you a better knowledge of our young people than any you
have had. I will see that it goes to you when the sun first
shines on its face. You asked me if I read German, and I forget
if I have answered. I have contrived to read almost every volume
of Goethe, and I have fifty-five, but I have read nothing else:
but I have not now looked even into Goethe for a long time.
There is no great need that I should discourse to you on books,
least of all on _his_ books; but in a lecture on Literature, in
my course last winter, I blurted all my nonsense on that subject,
and who knows but Margaret Fuller may be glad to print it and
send it to you? I know not.

A Bronson Alcott, who is a great man if he cannot write well, has
come to Concord with his wife and three children and taken a
cottage and an acre of ground to get his living by the help of
God and his own spade. I see that some of the Education people
in England have a school called "Alcott House" after my friend.
At home here he is despised and rejected of men as much as was
ever Pestalozzi. But the creature thinks and talks, and I am
glad and proud of my neighbor. He is interested more than need
is in the Editor Heraud. So do not fail to tell me of him. Of
Landor I would gladly know your knowledge. And now I think I
will release your eyes.

Yours always,
R.W. Emerson

LIV. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 30 June, 1840

My Dear Carlyle,--Since I wrote a couple of letters to you,--I
know not exactly when, but in near succession many weeks ago,--
there has come to me _Wilhelm Meister_ in three volumes, goodly
to see, good to read,--indeed quite irresistible;--for though I
thought I knew it all, I began at the beginning and read to the
end of the _Apprenticeship,_ and no doubt shall despatch the
_Travels,_ on the earliest holiday. My conclusions and
inferences therefrom I will spare you now, since I appended them
to a piece I had been copying fairly for Margaret Fuller's
_Dial,_--"Thoughts on Modern Literature," and which is the
substance of a lecture in my last winter's course. But I learn
that my paper is crowded out of the first Number, and is not to
appear until October. I will not reckon the accidents that
threaten the ghost of an article through three months of pre-
existence! Meantime, I rest your glad debtor for the good book.
With it came Sterling's _Poems,_ which, in the interim, I have
acknowledged in a letter to him. Sumner has since brought me a
gay letter from yourself, concerning, in part, Landor and Heraud;
in which as I know justice is not done to the one I suppose it is
not done to the other. But Heraud I give up freely to your
tender mercies: I have no wish to save him. Landor can be shorn
of all that is false and foolish, and yet leave a great deal for
me to admire. Many years ago I have read a hundred fine
memorable things in the _Imaginary Conversations,_ though I know
well the faults of that book, and the _Pericles_ and _Aspasia_
within two years has given me delight. I was introduced to the
man Landor when I was in Florence, and he was very kind to me in
answering a multitude of questions. His speech, I remember, was
below his writing. I love the rich variety of his mind, his
proud taste, his penetrating glances, and the poetic loftiness of
his sentiment, which rises now and then to the meridian, though
with the flight, I own, rather of a rocket than an orb, and
terminated sometimes by a sudden tumble. I suspect you of very
short and dashing reading in his books; and yet I should think
you would like him,--both of you such glorious haters of cant.
Forgive me, I have put you two together twenty times in my
thought as the only writers who have the old briskness and
vivacity. But you must leave me to my bad taste and my perverse
and whimsical combinations.

I have written to Mr. Milnes who sent me by Sumner a copy of his
article with a note. I addressed my letter to him at "London,"--
no more. Will it ever reach him? I told him that if I should
print more he would find me worse than ever with my rash,
unwhipped generalization. For my journals, which I dot here at
home day by day, are full of disjointed dreams, audacities,
unsystematic irresponsible lampoons of systems, and all manner of
rambling reveries, the poor drupes and berries I find in my
basket after endless and aimless rambles in woods and pastures.
I ask constantly of all men whether life may not be poetic as
well as stupid?

I shall try and persuade Mr. Calvert, who has sent to me for a
letter to you, to find room in his trunk for a poor lithograph
portrait of our Concord "Battle-field," so called, and village,
that you may see the faint effigy of the fields and houses in
which we walk and love you. The view includes my Grandfather's
house (under the trees near the Monument), in which I lived for a
time until I married and bought my present house, which is not in
the scope of this drawing. I will roll up two of them, and, as
Sterling seems to be more nomadic than you, I beg you will send
him also this particle of foreign parts.

With this, or presently after it, I shall send a copy of the
_Dial._ It is not yet much; indeed, though no copy has come to
me, I know it is far short of what it should be, for they have
suffered puffs and dulness to creep in for the sake of the
complement of pages; but it is better than anything we had; and
I have some poetry communicated to me for the next number which I
wish Sterling and Milnes to see. In this number what say you to
the _Elegy_ written by a youth who grew up in this town and lives
near me,--Henry Thoreau? A criticism on Persius is his also.
From the papers of my brother Charles, I gave them the fragments
on Homer, Shakespeare, Burke: and my brother Edward wrote the
little _Farewell,_ when last he left his home. The Address of
the Editors to the Readers is all the prose that is mine, and
whether they have printed a few verses for me I do not know. I
am daily expecting an account for you from Little and Brown.
They promised it at this time. It will speedily follow this
sheet, if it do not accompany it. But I am determined, if I
can, to send one letter which is not on business. Send me
some word of the Lectures. I have yet seen only the initial
notices. Surely you will send me some time the D'Orsay portrait.
Sumner thinks Mrs. Carlyle was very well when he saw her last,
which makes me glad.--I wish you both to love me, as I am
affectionately Yours,

--R.W. Emerson

LV. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 2 July, 1840

My Dear Emerson,--Surely I am a sinful man to neglect so long
making any acknowledgment of the benevolent and beneficent
Arithmetic you sent me! It is many weeks, perhaps it is months,
since the worthy citizen--your Host as I understood you in some
of your Northern States--stept in here, one mild evening, with
his mild honest face and manners; presented me your Bookseller
Accounts; talked for half an hour, and then went his way into
France. Much has come and gone since then; Letters of yours,
beautiful Disciples of yours:--I pray you forgive me! I have
been lecturing; I have been sick; I have been beaten about in
all ways. Nay, at bottom, it was only three days ago that I got
the _Bibliopoliana_ back from Fraser; to whom, as you
recommended, I, totally inadequate like yourself to understand
such things, had straightway handed them for examination. I
always put off writing till Fraser should have spoken. I did not
urge him, or he would have spoken any day: there is my sin.

Fraser declares the Accounts to be made out in the most beautiful
manner; intelligible to any human capacity; correct so far as
he sees, and promising to yield by and by a beautiful return of
money. A precious crop, which we must not cut in the blade;
mere time will ripen it into yellow nutritive ears yet. So he
thinks. The only point on which I heard him make any criticism
was on what he called, if I remember, "the number of Copies
_delivered,_"--that is to say, delivered by the Printer and
Binder as actually available for sale. The edition being of a
Thousand, there have only 984 come bodily forth; 16 are "waste."
Our Printers, it appears, are in the habit of _adding_ one for
every fifty beforehand, whereby the _waste_ is usually made good,
and more; so that in One Thousand there will usually be some
dozen called "Author's copies" over and above. Fraser supposes
your Printers have a different custom. That is all. The rest is
apparently every-way _right;_ is to be received with faith;
with faith, charity, and even hope,--and packed into the bottom
of one's drawer, never to be looked at more except on the
outside, as a memorial of one of the best and helpfulest of men!
In that capacity it shall lie there.

My Lectures were in May, about _Great Men._ The misery of it was
hardly equal to that of former years, yet still was very hateful.
I had got to a certain feeling of superiority over my audience;
as if I had something to tell them, and would tell it them. At
times I felt as if I could, in the end, learn to speak. The
beautiful people listened with boundless tolerance, eager
attention. I meant to tell them, among other things, that man
was still alive, Nature not dead or like to die; that all true
men continued true to this hour,--Odin himself true, and the
Grand Lama of Thibet himself not wholly a lie. The Lecture on
Mahomet ("the Hero as Prophet") astonished my worthy friends
beyond measure. It seems then this Mahomet was not a quack? Not
a bit of him! That he is a better Christian, with his "bastard
Christianity," than the most of us shovel-hatted? I guess than
almost any of you!--Not so much as Oliver Cromwell ("the Hero as
King") would I allow to have been a Quack. All quacks I asserted
to be and to have been Nothing, _chaff_ that would not grow: my
poor Mahomet "was _wheat_ with barn sweepings"; Nature had
tolerantly hidden the barn sweepings; and as to the _wheat,_
behold she had said Yes to it, and it was growing!--On the whole,
I fear I did little but confuse my esteemed audience: I was
amazed, after all their reading of me, to be understood so ill;--
gratified nevertheless to see how the rudest _speech_ of a man's
heart goes into men's hearts, and is the welcomest thing there.
Withal I regretted that I had not six months of preaching,
whereby to learn to preach, and explain things fully! In the
fire of the moment I had all but decided on setting out for
America this autumn, and preaching far and wide like a very lion
there. Quit your paper formulas, my brethren,--equivalent to old
wooden idols, _un_divine as they: in the name of God, understand
that you are alive, and that God is alive! Did the Upholsterer
make this Universe? Were you created by the Tailor? I tell you,
and conjure you to believe me literally, No, a thousand times No!
Thus did I mean to preach, on "Heroes, Hero-worship, and the
Heroic"; in America too. Alas! the fire of determination died
away again: all that I did resolve upon was to write these
Lectures down, and in some way promulgate them farther. Two of
them accordingly are actually written; the Third to be begun on
Monday: it is my chief work here, ever since the end of May.
Whether I go to preach them a second time extempore in America
rests once more with the Destinies. It is a shame to talk so
much about a thing, and have it still hang _in nubibus:_ but I
was, and perhaps am, really nearer doing it than I had ever
before been. A month or two now, I suppose, will bring us back
to the old nonentity again. Is there, at bottom, in the world or
out of it, anything one would like so well, with one's whole
heart _well,_ as PEACE? Is lecturing and noise the way to get at
that? Popular lecturer! Popular writer! If they would
undertake in Chancery, or Heaven's Chancery, to make a wise man
Mahomet Second and Greater, "Mahomet of Saxondom," not reviewed
only, but worshiped for twelve centuries by all Bulldom, Yankee-
doodle-doodom, Felondom New Zealand, under the Tropics and in
part of Flanders,--would he not rather answer: Thank you; but
in a few years I shall be dead, twelve Centuries will have become
Eternity; part of Flanders Immensity: we will sit still here if
you please, and consider what quieter thing we can do! Enough
of this.

Richard Milnes had a Letter from you, one morning lately, when I
met him at old Rogers's. He is brisk as ever; his kindly
_Dilettantism_ looking sometimes as if it would grow a sort of
Earnest by and by. He has a new volume of Poems out: I advised
him to try Prose; he admitted that Poetry would not be generally
read again in these ages,--but pleaded, "It was so convenient for
veiling commonplace!" The honest little heart!--We did not know
what to make of the bright Miss --- here; she fell in love with
my wife;--the _contrary,_ I doubt, with me: my hard realism
jarred upon her beautiful rose-pink dreams. Is not all that very
morbid,--unworthy the children of Odin, not to speak of Luther,
Knox, and the other Brave? I can do nothing with vapors, but
wish them _condensed._ Kennet had a copy of the English
_Miscellanies_ for you a good many weeks ago: indeed, it was
just a day or two _before_ your advice to try Green henceforth.
Has the _Meister_ ever arrived? I received a Controversial
Volume from Mr. Ripley: pray thank him very kindly. Somebody
borrowed the Book from me; I have not yet read it. I did read a
Pamphlet which seems now to have been made part of it. Norton*
surely is a chimera; but what has the whole business they are
jarring about become? As healthy _worshiping_ Paganism is to
Seneca and Company, so is healthy worshiping Christianity to--I
had rather not work the sum!--Send me some swift news of
yourself, dear Emerson. We salute you and yours, in all
heartiness of brotherhood.

Yours ever and always--
T. Carlyle

---------
* Professor Andrews Norton. The controversy was that occasioned
by Professor Norton's Discourse on "The Latest Form of
Infidelity."
---------

LVI. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 30 August, 1840

My Dear Carlyle,--I fear, nay I know, that when I wrote last to
you, about the 1st of July, I promised to follow my sheet
immediately with a bookseller's account. The bookseller did
presently after render his account, but on its face appeared the
fact--which with many and by me unanswerable reasons they
supported--that the balance thereon credited to you was not
payable until the 1st of October. The account is footed "Net
sales of _French Revolution_ to 1 July, 1840, due October 1,
$249.77." Let us hope then that we shall get, not only a new
page of statement, but also some small payment in money a month
hence. Having no better story to tell, I told nothing.

But I will not let the second of the Cunard boats leave Boston
without a word to you. Since I wrote by Calvert came your letter
describing your lectures and their success: very welcome news,
for a good London newspaper, which I consulted, promised reports,
but gave none. I have heard so oft of your projected trip to
America, that my ear would now be dull, and my faith cold, but
that I wish it so much. My friend, your audience still waits for
you here willing and eager, and greatly larger no doubt than it
would have been when the matter was first debated.

Our community begin to stand in some terror of Transcendentalism,
and the _Dial,_ poor little thing, whose first number contains
scarce anything considerable or even visible, is just now honored
by attacks from almost every newspaper and magazine; which at
least betrays the irritability and the instincts of the good
public. But they would hardly be able to fasten on so huge a man
as you are any party badge. We must all hear you for ourselves.
But beside my own hunger to see and know you, and to hear you
speak at ease and at large under my own roof, I have a growing
desire to present you to three or four friends, and them to you.
Almost all my life has been passed alone. Within three or four
years I have been drawing nearer to a few men and women whose
love gives me in these days more happiness than I can write of.
How gladly I would bring your Jovial light upon this friendly
constellation, and make you too know my distant riches! We have
our own problems to solve also, and a good deal of movement and
tendency emerging into sight every day in church and state, in
social modes and in letters. I sometimes fancy our cipher is
larger and easier to read than that of your English society.

You will naturally ask me if I try my hand at the history of all
this,--I who have leisure, and write. No, not in the near and
practical way in which they seem to invite. I incline to write
philosophy, poetry, possibility,--anything but history. And yet
this phantom of the next age limns himself sometimes so large and
plain that every feature is apprehensible, and challenges a
painter. I can brag little of my diligence or achievement this
summer. I dot evermore in my endless journal, a line on every
knowable in nature; but the arrangement loiters long, and I get
a brick kiln instead of a house.--Consider, however, that all
summer I see a good deal of company,--so near as my fields are to
the city. But next winter I think to omit lectures, and write
more faithfully. Hope for me that I shall get a book ready to
send you by New-Year's-day.

Sumner came to see me the other day. I was glad to learn all the
little that he knew of you and yours. I do not wonder you set so
lightly by my talkative countryman. He has brought nothing home
but names, dates, and prefaces. At Cambridge last week I saw
Brown for the first time. I had little opportunity to learn what
he knew. Mr. Hume has never yet shown his face here. He sent me
his Poems from New York, and then went South, and I know no more
of him.

My Mother and Wife send you kind regards and best wishes,--to you
and all your house. Tell your wife that I hate to hear that she
cannot sail the seas. Perhaps now she is stronger she will be a
better sailor. For the sake of America will she not try the trip
to Leith again? It is only twelve days from Liverpool to Boston.
Love, truth, and power abide with you always!

--R.W.E.

LVII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 26 September, 1840

My Dear Emerson,--Two Letters of yours are here, the latest of
them for above a week: I am a great sinner not to have answered
sooner. My way of life has been a thing of petty confusions,
uncertainties; I did not till a short while ago see any definite
highway, through the multitude of byelanes that opened out on me,
even for the next few months. Partly I was busy; partly too, as
my wont is, I was half asleep:--perhaps you do not know the
_combination_ of these two predicables in one and the same
unfortunate human subject! Seeing my course now for a little, I
must speak.

According to your prognosis, it becomes at length manifest that I
do _not_ go to America for the present. Alas, no! It was but a
dream of the fancy; projected, like the French shoemaker's fairy
shoes, "in a moment of enthusiasm." The nervous flutter of May
Lecturing has subsided into stagnancy; into the feeling that, of
all things in the world, public speaking is the hatefulest for
me; that I ought devoutly to thank Heaven there is no absolute
compulsion laid on me at present to speak! My notion in general
was but an absurd one: I fancied I might go across the sea, open
my lips wide; go raging and lecturing over the Union like a very
lion (too like a frothy mountebank) for several months;--till I
had gained, say a thousand pounds; therewith to retire to some
small, quiet cottage by the shore of the sea, at least three
hundred miles from this, and sit silent there for ten years to
come, or forever and a day perhaps! That was my poor little day
dream;--incapable of being realized. It appears, I have to stay
here, in this brick Babylon; tugging at my chains, which will
not break for me: the less I tug, the better. Ah me! On the
whole, I have written down my last course of lectures, and shall
probably print them; and you, with the aid of proof-sheets, may
again print them; that will be the easiest way of lecturing to
America! It is truly very weak to speak about that matter so
often and long, that matter of coming to you; and never to come.
_Frey ist das Herz,_ as Goethe says, _doch ist der Fuss
gebunden._ After innumerable projects, and invitations towards
all the four winds, for this summer, I have ended about a week
ago by--simply going nowhither, not even to see my dear aged
Mother, but sitting still here under the Autumn sky such as I
have it; in these vacant streets I am lonelier than elsewhere,
have more chance for composure than elsewhere! With Sterne's
starling I repeat to myself, "I can't get out."--Well, hang it,
stay in then; and let people alone of it!

I have parted with my horse; after an experiment of seven or
eight months, most assiduously prosecuted, I came to the
conclusion that, though it did me some good, there was not
_enough_ of good to warrant such equestrianism: so I plunged
out, into green England, in the end of July, for a whole week of
riding, an _explosion_ of riding, therewith to end the business,
and send off my poor quadruped for sale. I rode over Surrey,--
with a leather valise behind me and a mackintosh before; very
singular to see: over Sussex, down to Pevensey where the Norman
Bastard landed; I saw Julius Hare (whose _Guesses at Truth_ you
perhaps know), saw Saint Dunstan's stithy and hammer, at
Mayfield, and the very tongs with which he took the Devil by the
nose;--finally I got home again, a right wearied man; sent my
horse off to be sold, as I say; and finished the writing of my
Lectures on Heroes. This is all the rustication I have had, or
am like to have. I am now over head and ears in _Cromwellian_
Books; studying, for perhaps the fourth time in my life, to see
if it be possible to get any credible face-to-face acquaintance
with our English Puritan period; or whether it must be left
forever a mere hearsay and echo to one. Books equal in dulness
were at no epoch of the world penned by unassisted man.
Nevertheless, courage! I have got, within the last twelve
months, actually, as it were, to _see_ that this Cromwell was one
of the greatest souls ever born of the English kin; a great
amorphous semi-articulate _Baresark;_ very interesting to me. I
grope in the dark vacuity of Baxters, Neales; thankful for here
a glimpse and there a glimpse. This is to be my reading for
some time.

The _Dial_ No. 1 came duly: of course I read it with interest;
it is an utterance of what is purest, youngest in your land;
pure, ethereal, as the voices of the Morning! And yet--you
know me--for me it is _too_ ethereal, speculative, theoretic:
all theory becomes more and more confessedly inadequate, untrue,
unsatisfactory, almost a kind of mockery to me! I will have all
things condense themselves, take shape and body, if they are to
have my sympathy. I have a _body_ myself; in the brown leaf,
sport of the Autumn winds, I find what mocks all prophesyings,
even Hebrew ones,--Royal Societies, and Scientific Associations
eating venison at Glasgow, not once reckoned in! Nevertheless go
on with this, my Brothers. The world has many most strange
utterances of a prophetic nature in it at the present time; and
this surely is worth listening to among the rest. Do you know
English Puseyism? Good Heavens! in the whole circle of History
is there the parallel of that,--a true worship rising at this
hour of the day for Bands and the Shovel-hat? Distraction
surely, incipience of the "final deliration" enters upon the poor
old English Formulism that has called itself for some two
centuries a Church. No likelier symptom of its being soon about
to leave the world has come to light in my time. As if King
Macready should quit Covent-Garden, go down to St. Stephen's, and
insist on saying, _Le roi le veut!_--I read last night the
wonderfulest article to that effect, in the shape of a criticism
on myself, in the _Quarterly Review._ It seems to be by one
Sewell, an Oxford doctor of note, one of the chief men among the
Pusey-and-Newman Corporation. A good man, and with good notions,
whom I have noted for some years back. He finds me a very worthy
fellow; "true, most true,"--except where I part from Puseyism,
and reckon the shovel-hat to be an old bit of felt; then I am
false, most false. As the Turks say, _Allah akbar!_

I forget altogether what I said of Landor; but I hope I did not
put him in the Heraud category: a cockney windbag is one thing;
a scholar and bred man, though incontinent, explosive, half-true,
is another. He has not been in town, this year; Milnes
describes him as _eating_ greatly at Bath, and perhaps even
cooking! Milnes did get your Letter: I told you? Sterling has
the Concord landscape; mine is to go upon the wall here, and
remind me of many things. Sterling is busy writing; he is to
make Falmouth do, this winter, and try to dispense with Italy.
He cannot away with my doctrine of _Silence;_ the good John. My
Wife has been better than usual all summer; she begins to shiver
again as winter draws nigh. Adieu, dear Emerson. Good be with
you and yours. I must be far gone when I cease to love you.
"The stars are above us, the graves are under us." Adieu.

--T. Carlyle

LVIII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 30 October, 1840

My Dear Friend,--My hope is that you may live until this creeping
bookseller's balance shall incline at last to your side. My rude
ciphering, based on the last account of this kind which I sent
you in April from J. Munroe & Co., had convinced me that I was to
be in debt to you at this time L40 or more; so that I actually
bought L40 the day before the "Caledonia" sailed to send you;
but on giving my new accounts to J.M. & Co., to bring the
statement up to this time, they astonished me with the above
written result. I professed absolute incredulity, but Nichols*
labored to show me the rise and progress of all my blunders.
Please to send the account with the last to your Fraser, and have
it sifted. That I paid, a few weeks since, $481.34, and again,
$28.12, for printing and paper respectively, is true.--C.C.
Little & Co. acknowledge the sale of 82 more copies of the London
Edition _French Revolution_ since the 187 copies of July 1; but
these they do not get paid for until January 1, and we it seems
must wait as long. We will see if the New-Year's-day will bring
us more pence.

---------
* Partner in the firm of J. Munroe & Co.
---------

I received by the "Acadia" a letter from you, which I acknowledge
now, lest I should not answer it more at large on another sheet,
which I think to do. If you do not despair of American
booksellers send the new proofs of the Lectures when they are in
type to me by John Green, 121 Newgate Street (I believe), to the
care of J. Munroe & Co. He sends a box to Munroe by every
steamer. I sent a _Dial,_ No. 2, for you, to Green. Kennet, I
hear, has failed. I hope he did not give his creditors my
_Miscellanies,_ which you told me were there. I shall be glad if
you will draw Cromwell, though if I should choose it would be
Carlyle. You will not feel that you have done your work until
those devouring eyes and that portraying hand have achieved
England in the Nineteenth Century. Perhaps you cannot do it
until you have made your American visit. I assure you the view
of Britain is excellent from New England.

We are all a little wild here with numberless projects of social
reform. Not a reading man but has a draft of a new Community in
his waistcoat pocket. I am gently mad myself, and am resolved to
live cleanly. George Ripley is talking up a colony of
agriculturists and scholars, with whom he threatens to take the
field and the book.* One man renounces the use of animal food;
and another of coin; and another of domestic hired service; and
another of the State; and on the whole we have a commendable
share of reason and hope.

-----------
* Preliminary to the experiment of Brook Farm, in 1841.
-----------

I am ashamed to tell you, though it seems most due, anything of
my own studies, they seem so desultory, idle, and unproductive.
I still hope to print a book of essays this winter, but it cannot
be very large. I write myself into letters, the last few months,
to three or four dear and beautiful persons, my country-men and
women here. I lit my candle at both ends, but will now be colder
and scholastic. I mean to write no lectures this winter. I hear
gladly of your wife's better health; and a letter of Jane
Tuckerman's, which I saw, gave the happiest tidings of her. We
do not despair of seeing her yet in Concord, since it is now but
twelve and a half days to you.

I had a letter from Sterling, which I will answer. In all love
and good hope for you and yours, your affectionate

--R.W. Emerson

LIX. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 9 December, 1840

Dear Emerson,--My answer on this occasion has been delayed above
two weeks by a rigorous, searching investigation into the
procedure of the hapless Book-conveyer, Kennet, in reference to
that copy of the _Miscellanies._ I was deceived by hopes of a
conclusive response from day to day; not till yesterday did any
come. My first step, taken long ago, was to address a new copy
of the Book, not to you, luckless man, but to _Lydia_ Emerson,
the fortunate wife; this copy Green now has lying by him,
waiting for the January Steamer (we sail only once a month in
this season); before the New Year has got out of infancy the
Lady will be graciously pleased to make a few inches of room on
her bookshelves for this celebrated performance. And now as to
Kennet, take the brief outcome of some dozen visitations,
judicial interrogatories, searches of documents, and other
piercing work on the part of methodic Fraser, attended with
demurrers, pleadings, false denials, false affirmings, on the
part of innocent chaotic Kennet: namely, that the said Kennet,
so urged, did in the end of the last week, fish up from his
repositories your very identical Book directed to Munroe's care,
duly booked and engaged for, in May last, but left to repose
itself in the Covent-Garden crypts ever since without disturbance
from gods or men! Fraser has brought back the Book, and you have
lost it;--and the Library of my native village in Scotland is to
get it; and not Kennet any more in this world, but Green ever
henceforth is to be our Book Carrier. There is a history.
Green, it seems, addresses also to Munroe; but the thing, I
suppose, will now shift for itself without watching.

As to the bibliopolic Accounts, my Friend! we will trust them,
with a faith known only in the purer ages of Roman Catholicism,--
when Papacy had indeed become a Dubiety, but was not yet a
Quackery and Falsehood, was a thing _as_ true as it could manage
to be! That really may be the fact of this too. In any case
what signifies it much? Money were still useful; but it is not
now so indispensable. Booksellers by their knavery or their
fidelity cannot kill us or cure us. Of the truth of Waldo
Emerson's heart to me, there is, God be thanked for it, no doubt
at all.

My Hero-Lectures lie still in Manuscript. Fraser offers no
amount of cash adequate to be an outward motive; and inwardly
there is as yet none altogether clear, though I rather feel of
late as if it were clearing. To fly in the teeth of English
Puseyism, and risk such shrill welcome as I am pretty sure of, is
questionable: yet at bottom why not? Dost thou not as entirely
reject this new Distraction of a Puseyism as man can reject a
thing,--and couldst utterly abjure it, and even abhor it,--were
the shadow of a cobweb ever likely to become momentous, the
cobweb itself being _beheaded,_ with axe and block on Tower Hill,
two centuries ago? I think it were as well to _tell_ Puseyism
that it has something of good, but also much of bad and even
worst. We shall see. If I print the thing, we shall surely take
in America again; either by stereotype or in some other way.
Fear not that!--Do you attend at all to this new _Laudism_ of
ours? It spreads far and wide among our Clergy in these days; a
most notable symptom, very cheering to me many ways; whether or
not one of the fatalest our poor Church of England has ever
exhibited, and betokening swifter ruin to it than any other, I do
not inquire. Thank God, men do discover at last that there is
still a God present in their affairs, and must be, or their
affairs are of the Devil, naught, and worthy of being sent to the
Devil! This once given, I find that all is given; daily
History, in Kingdom and in Parish, is an _experimentum crucis_ to
show what is the Devil's and what not. But on the whole are we
not the _formalest_ people ever created under this Sun? Cased
and overgrown with Formulas, like very lobsters with their
shells, from birth upwards; so that in the man we see only his
breeches, and believe and swear that wherever a pair of old
breeches are there is a man! I declare I could both laugh and
cry. These poor good men, merciful, zealous, with many
sympathies and thoughts, there do they vehemently appeal to me,
_Et tu, Brute?_ Brother, wilt thou too insist on the breeches
being old,--not ply a needle among us here?--To the naked
Caliban, gigantic, for whom such breeches would not be a glove,
who is stalking and groping there in search of new breeches and
accoutrements, sure to get them, and to tread into nonentity
whoever hinders him in the search,--they are blind as if they had
no eyes. Sartorial men; ninth-parts of a man:--enough of them.

The second Number of the _Dial_ has also arrived some days ago.
I like it decidedly better than the first; in fact, it is right
well worth being put on paper, and sent circulating;--I find
only, as before that it is still too much of a soul for
circulating as it should. I wish you could in future contrive to
mark at the end of each Article who writes it, or give me some
general key for knowing. I recognize Emerson readily; the rest
are of [Greek] for most part. But it is all good and very good
as a _soul;_ wants only a body, which want means a great deal!
Your Paper on Literature is incomparably the worthiest thing
hitherto; a thing I read with delight. Speak out, my brave
Emerson; there are many good men that listen! Even what you
say of Goethe gratifies me; it is one of the few things yet
spoken of him from personal insight, the sole kind of things that
should be spoken! You call him _actual,_ not _ideal;_ there is
truth in that too; and yet at bottom is not the whole truth
rather this: The actual well-seen _is_ the ideal? The _actual,_
what really is and exists: the past, the present, the future no
less, do all lie there! Ah yes! one day you will find that this
sunny-looking, courtly Goethe held veiled in him a Prophetic
sorrow deep as Dante's,--all the nobler to me and to you, that he
_could_ so hold it. I believe this; no man can _see_ as he
sees, that has not suffered and striven as man seldom did.--
Apropos of _this,_ Have you got Miss Martineau's _Hour and Man?_
How curious it were to have the real History of the Negro
Toussaint, and his _black_ Sansculottism in Saint Domingo,--the
most atrocious form Sansculottism could or can assume! This of a
"black Wilberforce-Washington," as Sterling calls it, is
decidedly something. Adieu, dear Emerson: time presses, paper
is done. Commend me to your good wife, your good Mother, and
love me as well as you can. Peace and health under clear winter
skies be with you all.

--T. Carlyle

My Wife rebukes me sharply that I have "forgot her love." She is
much better this winter than of old.

Having mentioned Sterling I should say that he is at Torquay
(Devonshire) for the winter, meditating new publication of Poems.
I work still in Cromwellism; all but desperate of any feasible
issue worth naming. I "enjoy bad health" too, considerably!

LX. Carlyle to Mrs. Emerson

Chelsea, London, 21 February, 1841

Dear Mrs. Emerson,--Your Husband's Letter shall have answer when
some moment of leisure is granted me; he will wait till then,
and must. But the beautiful utterance which you send over to me;
melodious as the voice of flutes, of Aeolian Harps borne on the
rude winds so _far,_--this must have answer, some word or
growl of answer, be there leisure or none! The "Acadia," it
seems, is to return from Liverpool the day after tomorrow. I
shove my paper-whirlpools aside for a little, and grumble in
pleased response.

You are an enthusiast; make Arabian Nights out of dull foggy
London Days; with your beautiful female imagination, shape
burnished copper Castles out of London Fog! It is very beautiful
of you;--nay, it is not foolish either, it is wise. I have a
guess what of truth there may be in that; and you the fair
Alchemist, are you not all the richer and better that you know
the _essential_ gold, and will not have it called pewter or
spelter, though in the shops it is only such? I honor such
Alchemy, and love it; and have myself done something in that
kind. Long may the talent abide with you; long may I abide to
have it exercised on me! Except the Annandale Farm where my good
Mother still lives, there is no House in all this world which I
should be gladder to see than the one at Concord. It seems to
stand as only over the hill, in the next Parish to me, familiar
from boyhood. Alas! and wide-waste Atlantics roll between; and
I cannot walk over of an evening!--I never give up the hope of
getting thither some time. Were I a little richer, were I
a little healthier; were I this and that--!--One has no
Fortunatus' "Time-annihilating" or even "Space-annihilating Hat":
it were a thing worth having in this world.

My Wife unites with me in all kindest acknowledgments: she is
getting stronger these last two years; but is still such a
_sailor_ as the Island hardly parallels: had she the _Space-
annihilating Hat,_ she too were soon with you.
Your message shall reach Miss Martineau; my Dame will send it in
her first Letter. The good Harriet is not well; but keeps a
very courageous heart. She lives by the shore of the beautiful
blue Northumbrian Sea; a "many-sounding" solitude which I often
envy her. She writes unweariedly, has many friends visiting her.
You saw her _Toussaint l'Ouverture:_ how she has made such a
beautiful "black Washington," or "Washington-Christ-Macready," as
I have heard some call it, of a rough-handed, hard-headed, semi-
articulate gabbling Negro; and of the horriblest phasis that
"Sansculottism" _can_ exhibit, of a Black Sansculottism, a
musical Opera or Oratorio in pink stockings! It is very
beautiful. Beautiful as a child's heart,--and in so shrewd a
head as that. She is now writing express Children's-Tales, which
I calculate I shall find more perfect.

Some ten days ago there went from me to Liverpool, perhaps there
will arrive at Concord by this very "Acadia," a bundle of Printed
Sheets directed to your Husband: pray apprise the man of that.
They are sheets of a Volume called _Lectures on Heroes;_ the
Concord Hero gets them without direction or advice of any kind.
I have got some four sheets more ready for him here; shall
perhaps send them too, along with this. Some four again more
will complete the thing. I know not what he will make of it;--
perhaps wry faces at it?

Adieu, dear Mrs. Emerson. We salute you from this house. May
all good which the Heavens grant to a kind heart, and the good
which they never _refuse_ to one such, abide with you always. I
commend myself to your and Emerson's good Mother, to the
mischievous Boys and--all the Household. Peace and fair Spring-
weather be there!

Yours with great regard,
T. Carlyle

LXI. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 28 February, 1841

My Dear Carlyle,--Behold Mr. George Nichols's new digest and
exegesis of his October accounts. The letter seems to me the
most intelligible of the two papers, but I have long been that
man's victim, semi-annually, and never dare to make head against
his figures. You are a brave man, and out of the ring of his
enchantments, and withal have magicians of your own who can give
spell for spell, and read his incantations backward. I entreat
you to set them on the work, and convict his figures if you
can. He has really taken pains, and is quite proud of his
establishment of his accounts. In a month it will be April, and
be will have a new one to fender. Little and Brown also in April
promise a payment on _French Revolution,_--and I suppose
something is due from _Chartism._ We will hope that a Bill of
Exchange will yet cross from us to you, before our booksellers
fail.

I hoped before this to have reached my last proofsheet, but shall
have two or three more yet. In a fortnight or three weeks my
little raft will be afloat.* Expect nothing more of my powers of
construction,--no shipbuilding, no clipper, smack, nor skiff
even, only boards and logs tied together. I read to some
Mechanics' Apprentices a long lecture on Reform, one evening, a
little while ago. They asked me to print it, but Margaret Fuller
asked it also, and I preferred the _Dial,_ which shall have the
dubious sermon, and I will send it to you in that.--You see the
bookseller reverendizes me notwithstanding your laudable
perseverance to adorn me with profane titles, on the one hand,
and the growing habit of the majority of my correspondents to
clip my name of all titles on the other. I desire that you and
your wife will keep your kindness for

--R. W. Emerson

----------
* The first series of _Essays._
----------

LXII. Emerson to Carlyle

Boston, 30 April, 1841

My Dear Carlyle,--Above you have a bill of exchange for one
hundred pounds sterling drawn by T.W. Ward & Co. on the Messrs.
Barings, payable at sight. Let us hope it is but the first of a
long series. I have vainly endeavored to get your account to be
rendered by Munroe & Co. to the date of the 1st of April. It was
conditionally promised for the day of the last steamer (15
April). It is not ready for that which sails tomorrow and
carries this. Little & Co. acknowledge a debt of $607.90 due to
you 1st of April, and just now paid me; and regret that their
sales have been so slow, which they attribute to the dulness of
all trade among us for the last two years. You shall have the
particulars of their account from Munroe's statement of the
account between you and me. Munroe & Co. have a long apology for
not rendering their own account; their book keeper left them at
a critical moment, they were without one six weeks, &c.;--but
they add, if we could give you it, to what use, since we should
be utterly unable to make you any payment at this time? To what
use, surely? I am too much used to similar statements from
our booksellers and others in the last few years to be much
surprised; nor do I doubt their readiness or their power to pay
all their debts at last; but a great deal of mutual concession
and accommodation has been the familiar resort of our tradesmen
now for a good while, a vice which they are all fain to lay at
the doors of the Government, whilst it belongs in the first
instance, no doubt, to the rashness of the individual traders.
These men I believe to be prudent, honest, and solvent, and that
we shall get all our debt from them at last. They are not
reckoned as rich as Little and Brown. By the next steamer they
think they can promise to have their account ready. I am sorry
to find that we have been driven from the market by the New
York Pirates in the affair of the Six Lectures.* The book was
received from London and for sale in New York and Boston before
my last sheets arrived by the "Columbia." Appleton in New York
braved us and printed it, and furthermore told us that he intends
to print in future everything of yours that shall be printed in
London,--complaining in rude terms of the monopoly your
publishers here exercise, and the small commissions they allow to
the trade, &c., &c. Munroe showed me the letter, which certainly
was not an amiable one. In this distress, then, I beg you, when
you have more histories and lectures to print, to have the
manuscript copied by a scrivener before you print at home, and
send it out to me, and I will keep all Appletons and Corsairs
whatsoever out of the lists. Not only these men made a book (of
which, by the by, Munroe sends you by this steamer a copy, which
you will find at John Green's, Newgate Street), but the New York
newspapers print the book in chapters, and you circulate for six
cents per newspaper at the corners of all streets in New York and
Boston; gaining in fame what you lose in coin.--The book is a
good book, and goes to make men brave and happy. I bear glad
witness to its cheering and arming quality.

---------
* "Heroes and Hero-Worship."
---------

I have put into Munroe's box which goes to Green a _Dial_ No. 4
also, which I could heartily wish were a better book. But
Margaret Fuller, who is a noble woman, is not in sufficiently
vigorous health to do this editing work as she would and should,
and there is no other who can and will.

Yours affectionately,
R.W. Emerson

LXIII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 8 May, 1841

My Dear Emerson,--Your last letter found me on the southern
border of Yorkshire, whither Richard Milnes had persuaded me with
him, for the time they call "Easter Holidays" here. I was to
shake off the remnants of an ugly _Influenza_ which still hung
about me; my little portmanteau, unexpectedly driven in again by
perverse accidents, had stood packed, its cowardly owner, the
worst of all travelers, standing dubious the while, for two weeks
or more; Milnes offering to take me as under his cloak, I went
with Milnes. The mild, cordial, though something dilettante
nature of the man distinguishes him for me among men, as men go.
For ten days I rode or sauntered among Yorkshire fields and
knolls; the sight of the young Spring, new to me these seven
years, was beautiful, or better than beauty. Solitude itself,
the great Silence of the Earth, was as balm to this weary, sick
heart of mine; not Dragons of Wantley (so they call Lord
Wharncliffe, the wooden Tory man), not babbling itinerant
Barrister people, fox-hunting Aristocracy, nor Yeomanry Captains
cultivating milk-white mustachios, nor the perpetual racket, and
"dinner at eight o'clock," could altogether countervail the fact
that green Earth was around one and unadulterated sky overhead,
and the voice of waters and birds,--not the foolish speech of
Cockneys at _all_ times!--On the last morning, as Richard and I
drove off towards the railway, your Letter came in, just in time;
and Richard, who loves you well, hearing from whom it was, asked
with such an air to see it that I could not refuse him. We
parted at the "station," flying each his several way on the wings
of Steam; and have not yet met again. I went over to Leeds,
staid two days with its steeple-chimneys and smoke-volcano still
in view; then hurried over to native Annandale, to see my aged
excellent Mother yet again in this world while she is spared to
me. My birth-land is always as the Cave of Trophonius to me; I
return from it with a haste to which the speed of Steam is slow,
--with no smile on my face; avoiding all speech with men! It is
not yet eight-and-forty hours since I got back; your Letter is
among the first I answer, even with a line; your new Book--But
we will not yet speak of that....

My Friend, I _thank_ you for this Volume of yours; not for the
copy alone which you send to me, but for writing and printing
such a Book. _Euge!_ say I, from afar. The voice of one crying
in the desert;--it is once more the voice of a _man._ Ah me! I
feel as if in the wide world there were still but this one voice
that responded intelligently to my own; as if the rest were all
hearsays, melodious or unmelodious echoes; as if this alone were
true and alive. My blessing on you, good Ralph Waldo! I read
the Book all yesterday; my Wife scarcely yet done with telling
me her news. It has rebuked me, it has aroused and comforted me.
Objections of all kinds I might make, how many objections to
superficies and detail, to a dialect of thought and speech as yet
imperfect enough, a hundred-fold too narrow for the Infinitude it
strives to speak: but what were all that? It is an Infinitude,
the real vision and belief of one, seen face to face: a "voice
of the heart of Nature" is here once more. This is the one fact
for me, which absorbs all others whatsoever. Persist, persist;
you have much to say and to do. These voices of yours which I
likened to unembodied souls, and censure sometimes for having no
body,--how can they have a body? They are light-rays darting
upwards in the East; they will yet make much and much to have a
body! You are a new era, my man, in your new huge country: God
give you strength, and speaking and silent faculty, to do such a
work as seems possible now for you! And if the Devil will be
pleased to set all the Popularities _against_ you and evermore
against you,--perhaps that is of all things the very kindest any
_Angel_ could do.

Of myself I have nothing good to report. Years of sick idleness
and barrenness have grown wearisome to me. I do nothing. I
waver and hover, and painfully speculate even now as to health,
and where I shall spend the summer out of London! I am a very
poor fellow;--but hope to grow better by and by. Then this
_alluvies_ of foul lazy stuff that has long swum over me may
perhaps yield the better harvest. _Esperons!_--Hail to all of
you from both of us.

Yours ever,
T. Carlyle

LXIV. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 21 May, 1841

My Dear Emerson,--About a week ago I wrote to you, after too long
a silence. Since that there has another Letter come, with a
Draft of L100 in it, and other comfortable items not pecuniary;
a line in acknowledgment of the money is again very clearly among
my duties. Yesterday, on my first expedition up to Town, I gave
the Paper to Fraser; who is to present the result to me in the
shape of cash tomorrow. Thanks, and again thanks. This L100, I
think, nearly clears off for me the outlay of the second _French
Revolution;_ an ill-printed, ill-conditioned publication, the
prime cost of which, once all lying saved from the Atlantic
whirlpools and hard and fast in my own hand, it was not perhaps
well done to venture thitherward again. To the new trouble of my
friends withal! We will now let the rest of the game play itself
out as it can; and my friends, and my one friend, must not take
more trouble than their own kind feelings towards me will reward.

The Books, the _Dial_ No. 4, and Appleton's pirated _Lectures,_
are still expected from Green. In a day or two he will send
them: if not, we will jog him into wakefulness, and remind him
of the _Parcels Delivery Company,_ which carries luggage of all
kinds, like mere letters, many times a day, over all corners of
our Babylon. In this, in the universal British _Penny Post,_ and
a thing or two of that sort, men begin to take advantage of their
crowded ever-whirling condition in these days, which brings such
enormous disadvantages along with it _un_sought for.--
Bibliopolist Appleton does not seem to be a "Hero,"--except after
his own fashion. He is one of those of whom the Scotch say,
"Thou wouldst do little for God if the Devil were dead!" The
Devil is unhappily dead, in that international bibliopolic
province, and little hope of his reviving for some time;
whereupon this is what Squire Appleton does. My respects to him
even in the Bedouin department, I like to see a complete man, a
clear decisive Bedouin.

For the rest, there is one man who ought to be apprised that I
can now stand robbery a little better; that I am no longer so
very poor as I once was. In Fraser himself there do now lie
vestiges of money! I feel it a great relief to see, for a year
or two at least, the despicable bugbear of Beggary driven out of
my sight; for _which_ small mercy, at any rate, be the Heavens
thanked. Fraser himself, for these two editions, One thousand
copies each, of the Lectures and _Sartor,_ pays me down on the
nail L150; consider that miracle! Of the other Books which he
is selling on a joint-stock basis, the poor man likewise promises
something, though as yet, ever since New-Year's-day, I cannot
learn what, owing to a grievous sickness of his,--for which
otherwise I cannot but be sorry, poor Fraser within the Cockney
limits being really a worthy, accurate, and rather friendly
creature. So you see me here provided with bread and water for a
season,--it is but for a season one needs either water or bread,
--and rejoice with me accordingly. It is the one useful, nay, I
will say the one _innoxious,_ result of all this trumpeting,
reviewing, and dinner-invitationing; from which I feel it
indispensable to withdraw myself more and more resolutely, and
altogether count it as a thing not there. Solitude is what I
long and pray for. In the babble of men my own soul goes all to
babble: like soil you were forever _screening,_ tumbling over
with shovels and riddles; in _which_ soil no fruit can grow! My
trust in Heaven is, I shall yet get away "to some cottage by the
sea-shore"; far enough from all the mad and mad making things
that dance round me here, which I shall then look on only as a
theatrical phantasmagory, with an eye only to the _meaning_ that
lies hidden in it. You, friend Emerson, are to be a Farmer, you
say, and dig Earth for your living? Well; I envy you that as
much as any other of your blessednesses. Meanwhile, I sit shrunk
together here in a small _dressing-closet,_ aloft in the back
part of the house, excluding all cackle and cockneys; and,
looking out over the similitude of a May grove (with little brick
in it, and only the minarets of Westminster and gilt cross of St.
Paul's visible in the distance, and the enormous roar of London
softened into an enormous hum), endeavor to await what will
betide. I am busy with Luther in one Marheinecke's very long-
winded Book. I think of innumerable things; steal out westward
at sunset among the Kensington lanes; would this _May_ weather
last, I might be as well here as in any attainable place. But
June comes; the rabid dogs get muzzles; all is brown-parched,
dusty, suffocating, desperate, and I shall have to run! Enough
of all that. On my paper there comes, or promises to come,
as yet simply nothing at all. Patience;--and yet who can
be patient?

Had you the happiness to see yourself not long ago, in _Fraser's
Magazine,_ classed _nominatim_ by an emphatic earnest man, not
without a kind of splay-footed strength and sincerity,--among the
chief Heresiarchs of the--world? Perfectly right. Fraser was
very anxious to know what I thought of the Paper,--"by an
entirely unknown man in the country." I counseled "that there
was something in him, which he ought to improve by holding his
peace for the next five years."

Adieu, dear Emerson; there is not a scrap more of Paper. All
copies of your _Essays_ are out at use; with what result we
shall perhaps see. As for me I love the Book and man, and their
noble rustic herohood and manhood:--one voice as of a living man
amid such jabberings of galvanized corpses: _Ach Gott!_

Yours evermore,
T. Carlyle

LXV. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 80 May, 1841

My Dear Friend,--In my letter written to you on the 1st of May
(enclosing a bill of exchange of L100 sterling, which, I hope,
arrived safely) I believe I promised to send you by the next
steamer an account for April. But the false tardy Munroe & Co.
did not send it to me until one day too late. Here it is, as
they render it, compiled from Little and Brown's statement and
their own. I have never yet heard whether you have received
their _Analysis_ or explanation of the last abstract they drew up
of the mutual claims between the great houses of T.C. and R.W.E.,
and I am impatient to know whether you have caused it to be
examined, and whether it was satisfactory. This new one is based
on that, and if that was incorrect, this must be also. I am
daily looking for some letter from you, which is perhaps near at
hand. If you have not written, write me exactly and immediately
on this subject, I entreat you. You will see that in this sheet
I am charged with a debt to you of $184.29. I shall tomorrow
morning pay to Mr. James Brown (of Little and Brown), who should
be the bearer of this letter, $185.00, which sum he will pay
you in its equivalent of English coin. I give Mr. Brown an
introductory letter to you, and you must not let slip the
opportunity to make the man explain his own accounts, if any
darkness hang on them. In due time, perhaps, we can send you
Munroe, and Nichols also, and so all your factors shall render
direct account of themselves to you. I believe I shall also make
Brown the bearer of a little book written some time since by a
young friend of mine in a very peculiar frame of mind,--thought
by most persons to be mad,--and of the publication of which I
took the charge.* Mr. Very requested me to send you a copy.--I
had a letter from Sterling, lately, which rejoiced me in all but
the dark picture it gave of his health. I earnestly wish good
news of him. When you see him, show him these poems, and ask him
if they have not a grandeur.

---------
* _Essays and Poems,_ by Jones Very,--a little volume, the work
of an exquisite spirit. Some of the poems it contains are as if
written by a George Herbert who had studied Shakespeare, read
Wordsworth, and lived in America.
---------

When I wrote last, I believe all the sheets of the Six Lectures
had not come to me. They all arrived safely, although the last
package not until our American pirated copy was just out of press
in New York. My private reading was not less happy for this
robbery whereby the eager public were supplied. Odin was all new
to me; and Mahomet, for the most part; and it was all good to
read, abounding in truth and nobleness. Yet, as I read these
pages, I dream that your audience in London are less prepared to
hear, than is our New England one. I judge only from the tone.
I think I know many persons here who accept thoughts of this vein
so readily now, that, if you were speaking on this shore, you
would not feel that emphasis you use to be necessary. I have
been feeble and almost sick during all the spring, and have been
in Boston but once or twice, and know nothing of the reception
the book meets from the Catholic Carlylian Church. One reader
and friend of yours dwells now in my house, and, as I hope, for a
twelvemonth to come,--Henry Thoreau,--a poet whom you may one
day be proud of;--a noble, manly youth, full of melodies and
inventions. We work together day by day in my garden, and I grow
well and strong. My mother, my wife, my boy and girl, are all in
usual health, and according to their several ability salute you
and yours. Do not cease to tell me of the health of your wife
and of the learned and friendly physician.

Yours,
R.W. Emerson

LXVI. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 25 June, 1841

Dear Emerson,--Now that there begins again to be some program
possible of my future motions for some time, I hastily despatch
you some needful outline of the same.

After infinite confused uncertainty, I learn yesternight that
there has been a kind of country-house got for us, at a place
called Annan, on the north shore of the Solway Frith, in my
native County of Dumfries. You passed through the little Burgh,
I suppose, in your way homeward from Craigenputtock: it stands
about midway, on the great road, between Dumfries and Carlisle.
It is the place where I got my schooling;--consider what a
_preter_natural significance such a scene has now got for me! It
is within eight miles of my aged Mother's dwelling-place; within
riding distance, in fact, of almost all the Kindred I have in the
world.--The house, which is built since my time, and was never
yet seen by me, is said to be a reasonable kind of house. We get
it for a small sum in proportion to its value (thanks to kind
accident); the three hundred miles of travel, very hateful to
me, will at least entirely obliterate all traces of _this_ Dust-
Babel; the place too being naturally almost ugly, as far as a
green leafy place in sight of sea and mountains can be so
nicknamed, the whole gang of picturesque Tourists, Cockney
friends of Nature, &c., &c., who penetrate now by steam, in
shoals every autumn, into the very centre of the Scotch Highlands,
will be safe over the horizon! In short, we are all bound
thitherward in few days; must cobble up some kind of gypsy
establishment; and bless Heaven for solitude, for the sight of
green fields, heathy moors; for a silent sky over one's head,
and air to breathe which does not consist of coal-smoke, finely
powdered flint, and other beautiful _etceteras_ of that kind
among others! God knows I have need enough to be left altogether
alone for some considerable while (_forever,_ as it at present
seems to me), to get my inner world, and my poor bodily nerves,
both all torn to pieces, set in order a little again! After much
vain reluctance therefore; disregarding many considerations,--
disregarding _finance_ in the front of these,--I am off; and
calculate on staying till I am heartily _sated_ with country,
till at least the last gleam of summer weather has departed. My
way of life has all along hitherto been a resolute _staying at
home:_ I find now, however, that I must alter my habits, cost
what it may; that I cannot live all the year round in London,
under pain of dying or going rabid;--that I must, in fact, learn
to travel, as others do, and be hanged to me! Wherefore, in
brief, my Friend, our address for the next two or three months is
"Newington Lodge, Annan, Scotland,"--where a letter from Emerson
will be a right pleasant visitor! _Faustum sit._

My second piece of news, not less interesting I hope, is that
_Emerson's Essays,_ the Book so called, is to be reprinted here;
nay, I think, is even now at press,--in the hands of that
invaluable Printer, Robson, who did the _Miscellanies._ Fraser
undertakes it, "on _half-profits_";--T. Carlyle writing a
Preface,*--which accordingly he did (in rather sullen humor,--not
with you!) last night and the foregoing days. Robson will stand
by the text to the very utmost; and I also am to read the Proof
sheets. The edition is of Seven Hundred and Fifty; which Fraser
thinks he will sell. With what joy shall I then sack up the
small Ten Pounds Sterling perhaps of "Half-Profits," and remit
them to the man Emerson; saying: There, Man! Tit for tat, the
reciprocity _not_ all on one side!--I ought to say, moreover,
that this was a volunteer scheme of Fraser's; the risk is all
his, the origin of it was with him: I advised him to have it
reviewed, as being a really noteworthy Book; "Write you a
Preface," said he, "and I will reprint it";--to which, after due
delay and meditation; I consented. Let me add only, on this
subject, the story of a certain Rio,** a French Breton, with
long, distracted, black hair. He found your Book at Richard
Milnes's, a borrowed copy, and could not borrow it; whereupon he
appeals passionately to me; carries off my Wife's copy, this
distracted Rio; and is to "read it _four_ times" during this
current autumn, at Quimperle, in his native Celtdom! The man
withal is a _Catholic,_ eats fish on Friday;--a great lion here
when he visits us; one of the _naivest_ men in the world:
concerning whom nevertheless, among fashionables, there is a
controversy, "Whether he is an Angel, or partially a Windbag and
_Humbug?_" Such is the lot of loveliness in the World! A truer
man I never saw; how _wind_less, how windy, I will not compute
at present. Me he likes greatly (in spite of my unspeakable
contempt for his fish on Friday); likes,--but withal is apt
to bore.

----------
* The greater part of this interesting Preface is reprinted in
Mr. George Willis Cooke's excellent book on the _Life, Writings,
and Philosophy of Emerson,_ Boston, 1881, p. 109.

** The author of a book once much admired, _De 'l'Art Chretien._
In a later work entitled _Epilogue a l'Art Chretien,_ but
actually a sort of autobiography, written in the naivest spirit
of personal conceit and pious sentimentalism, M. Rio gives an
exceedingly entertaining account of his intercourse with Carlyle.
----------

Enough, dear Emerson; and more than enough for a day so hurried.
Our Island is all in a ferment electioneering: Tories to come
in;--perhaps not to come in; at all events not to stay long,
without altering their figure much! I sometimes ask myself
rather earnestly, What is the duty of a citizen? To be as I have
been hitherto, a pacific _Alien?_ That is the _easiest,_ with my
humor!--Our brave Dame here, just rallying for the _remove,_
sends loving salutations. Good be with you all always. Adieu,
dear Emerson.

--T. Carlyle

Appleton's Book of _Hero-Worship_ has come; for which pray thank
Mr. Munroe for me: it is smart on the surface; but printed
altogether scandalously!

LXVII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 31 July, 1841

My Dear Carlyle,--Eight days ago--when I had gone to Nantasket
Beach, to sit by the sea and inhale its air and refresh this puny
body of mine--came to me your letter, all bounteous as all your
letters are, generous to a fault, generous to the shaming of me,
cold, fastidious, ebbing person that I am. Already in a former
letter you had said too much good of my poor little arid book,--
which is as sand to my eyes,--and now in this you tell me it
shall be printed in London, and graced with a preface from the
man of men. I can only say that I heartily wish the book were
better, and I must try and deserve so much favor from the kind
gods by a bolder and truer living in the months to come; such as
may perchance one day relax and invigorate this cramp hand of
mine, and teach it to draw some grand and adequate strokes, which
other men may find their own account and not their good-nature in
repeating. Yet I think I shall never be killed by my ambition.
I behold my failures and shortcomings there in writing, wherein
it would give me much joy to thrive, with an equanimity which my
worst enemy might be glad to see. And yet it is not that I am
occupied with better things. One could well leave to others the
record, who was absorbed in the life. But I have done nothing.
I think the branch of the "tree of life" which headed to a bud in
me, curtailed me somehow of a drop or two of sap, and so dwarfed
all my florets and drupes. Yet as I tell you I am very easy in
my mind, and never dream of suicide. My whole philosophy--which
is very real--teaches acquiescence and optimism. Only when I see
how much work is to be done, what room for a poet--for any
spiritualist--in this great, intelligent, sensual, and avaricious
America, I lament my fumbling fingers and stammering tongue. I
have sometimes fancied I was to catch sympathetic activity from
contact with noble persons; that you would come and see me;
that I should form stricter habits of love and conversation with
some men and women here who are already dear to me,--and at some
rate get off the numb palsy, and feel the new blood sting and
tingle in my fingers' ends. Well, sure I am that the right word
will be spoken though I cut out my tongue. Thanks, too, to your
munificent Fraser for his liberal intention to divide the profits
of the _Essays._ I wish, for the encouragement of such a
bookseller, there were to be profits to divide. But I have no
faith in your public for their heed to a mere book like mine.
There are things I should like to say to them, in a lecture-room
or in a "steeple house," if I were there. Seven hundred and
fifty copies! Ah no!

And so my dear brother has quitted the roaring city, and gone
back in peace to his own land,--not the man he left it, but
richer every way, chiefly in the sense of having done something
valiantly and well, which the land, and the lands, and all that
wide elastic English race in all their dispersion, will know and
thank him for. The holy gifts of nature and solitude be showered
upon you! Do you not believe that the fields and woods have
their proper virtue, and that there are good and great things
which will not be spoken in the city? I give you joy in your new
and rightful home, and the same greetings to Jane Carlyle! with
thanks and hopes and loves to you both.

--R.W. Emerson

As usual at this season of the year, I, incorrigible spouting
Yankee, am writing an oration to deliver to the boys in one of
our little country colleges, nine days hence.* You will say I do
not deserve the aid of any Muse. O but if you knew how natural
it is to me to run to these places! Besides, I always am lured
on by the hope of saying something which shall stick by the good
boys. I hope Brown did not fail to find you, with thirty-eight
sovereigns (I believe) which he should carry you.

----------
* "The Method of Nature. An Address to the Society of the
Adelphi, in Waterville College, Maine, August 11, 1841."
----------

LXVIII. Carlyle to Emerson

Newby, Annan, Scotland, 18 August, 1841

My Dear Emerson,--Two days ago your Letter, direct from
Liverpool, reached me here; only fifteen days after date on the
other side of the Ocean: one of the swiftest messengers that
have yet come from you. Steamers have been known to come, they
say, in nine days. By and by we shall visibly be, what I always
say we virtually are, members of neighboring Parishes; paying
continual visits to one another. What is to hinder huge London
from being to universal Saxondom what small Mycale was to the
Tribes of Greece,--a place to hold your [Greek] in? A meeting of
_All the English_ ought to be as good as one of All the Ionians;
--and as Homeric "equal ships" are to Bristol steamers, so, or
somewhat so, may New York and New Holland be to Ephesus and
Crete, with their distances, relations, and etceteras!--Few
things on this Earth look to me greater than the Future of that
Family of Men.

It is some two months since I got into this region; my Wife
followed me with her maid and equipments some five weeks ago.
Newington Lodge, when I came to inspect it with eyes, proved to
be too rough an undertaking: upholsterers, expense and
confusion,--the Cynic snarled, "Give me a whole Tub rather! I
want nothing but shelter from the elements, and to be let alone
of all men." After a little groping, this little furnished
cottage, close by the beach of the Solway Frith, was got hold of:
here we have been, in absolute seclusion, for a month,--no
company but the corn-fields and the everlasting sands and brine;
mountains, and thousand-voiced memories on all hands, sending
their regards to one, from the distance. Daily (sometimes even
nightly!) I have swashed about in the sea; I have been perfectly
idle, at least inarticulate; I fancy I feel myself considerably
sounder of body and of mind. Deeply do I agree with you in the
great unfathomable meaning of a colloquy with the dumb Ocean,
with the dumb Earth, and their eloquence! A Legislator would
prescribe some weeks of that annually as a religious duty for all
mortals, if he could. A Legislator will prescribe it for
himself, since he can! You too have been at Nantasket; my
Friend, this great rough purple sea-flood that roars under my
little garret-window here, this too comes from Nantasket and
farther,--swung hitherward by the Moon and the Sun.

It cannot be said that I feel "happy" here, which means joyful;--
as far as possible from that. The Cave of Trophonius could not
be grimmer for one than this old Land of Graves. But it is a
sadness worth any hundred "happinesses." _N'en parlons plus._
By the way, have you ever clearly remarked withal what a
despicable function "view-hunting" is. Analogous to
"philanthropy," "pleasures of virtue," &c., &c. I for my part,
in these singular circumstances, often find an honestly ugly
country the preferable one. Black eternal peat-bog, or these
waste-howling sands with mews and seagulls: you meet at least no
Cockney to exclaim, "How charming it is!"

One of the last things I did in London was to pocket Bookseller
Brown's L38: a very honest-looking man, that Brown; whom I was
sorry I could not manage to welcome better. You asked in that
Letter about some other item of business,--Munroe's or Brown's
account to acknowledge?--something or other that I was to _do:_
I only remember vaguely that it seemed to me I had as good as
done it. Your Letter is not here now, but at Chelsea.

Three sheets of the _Essays_ lay waiting me at my Mother's, for
correction; needing as good as none. The type and shape is the
same as that of late _Lectures on Heroes._ Robson the Printer,
who is a very punctual intelligent man, a scholar withal,
undertook to be himself the corrector of the other sheets. I
hope you will find them "exactly conformable to the text, _minus_
mere Typographical blunders and the more salient American
spellings (labor for labour, &c.)." The Book is perhaps just
getting itself subscribed in these very days. It should have
been out before now: but poor Fraser is in the country,
dangerously ill, which perhaps retards it a little; and the
season, at any rate, is at the very dullest. By the first
conveyance I will send a certain Lady two copies of it. Little
danger but the Edition will sell; Fraser knows his own Trade
well enough, and is as much a "desperado" as poor Attila
Schmelzle was! Poor James, I wish he were well again; but
really at times I am very anxious about him.--The Book will sell;
will be liked and disliked. Harriet Martineau, whom I saw in
passing hitherward, writes with her accustomed enthusiasm about
it. Richard Milnes too is very warm. John Sterling scolds and
kisses it (as the manner of the man is), and concludes by
inquiring, whether there is any procurable Likeness of Emerson?
Emerson himself can answer. There ought to be.

--Good Heavens! Here came my Wife, all in tears, pointing out to
me a poor ship, just tumbled over on a sand-bank on the
Cumberland coast; men still said to be alive on it,--a Belfast
steamer doing all it can to get in contact with it! Moments are
precious (say the people on the beach), the flood runs ten miles
an hour. Thank God, the steamer's boat is out: "eleven men,"
says a person with a glass, "are saved: it is an American
timber-ship, coming up without a Pilot." And now--in ten minutes
more--there lies the melancholy mass alone among the waters,
wreck-boats all hastening towards it, like birds of prey; the
poor Canadians all up and away towards Annan. What an end for my
Letter, which nevertheless must end! Adieu, dear Emerson.
Address to Chelsea next time. I can say no more.

Yours ever,
T.C.

LXIX. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 30 October, 1841

My Dear Carlyle,--I was in Boston yesterday, and found at
Munroe's your promised packet of the two London Books. They are
very handsome,--that for my wife is beautiful,--and I am not so
old or so cold but that I can feel the hope and the pleasure that
lie in this gift. It seems I am to speak in England--great
England--fortified by the good word of one whose word is fame.
Well, it is a lasting joy to be indebted to the wise and
generous; and I am well contented that my little boat should
swim, whilst it can, beside your great galleys, nor will I allow
my discontent with the great faults of the book, which the rich
English dress cannot hide, to spoil my joy in this fine little
romance of friendship and hope. I am determined--so help me all
Muses--to send you something better another day.

But no more printing for me at present. I have just decided to
go to Boston once more, with a course of lectures, which I will
perhaps baptize "On the Times," by way of making once again the
experiment whether I cannot, not only speak the truth, but speak
it truly, or in proportion. I fancy I need more than another to
speak, with such a formidable tendency to the lapidary style. I
build my house of boulders; somebody asked me "if I built of
medals." Besides, I am always haunted with brave dreams of what
might be accomplished in the lecture-room,--so free and so
unpretending a platform,--a Delos not yet made fast. I imagine
an eloquence of infinite variety,--rich as conversation can be,
with anecdote, joke, tragedy, epics and pindarics, argument and
confession. I should love myself wonderfully better if I could
arm myself to go, as you go, with the word in the heart and not
in a paper.

When I was in Boston I saw the booksellers, the children of
Tantalus,--no, but they who trust in them are. This time, Little
and Brown render us their credit account to T.C. $366 (I think it
was), payable in three months from 1 October. They had sold all
the London _French Revolutions_ but fifteen copies. May we all
live until 1 January. J. Munroe & Co. acknowledge about $180 due
and now rightfully payable to T.C., but, unhappily, not yet paid.
By the help of brokers, I will send that sum more or less in some
English Currency, by the next steamship, which sails in about a
fortnight, and will address it, as you last bade me, to Chelsea.

What news, my dear friend, from your study? what designs ripened
or executed? what thoughts? what hopes? you can say nothing of
yourself that will not greatly interest us all. Harriet
Martineau, whose sicknesses may it please God to heal! wrote me a
kind, cheerful letter, and the most agreeable notice of your
health and spirit on a visit at her house. My little boy is five
years old today, and almost old enough to send you his love.

With kindest greetings to Jane Carlyle, I am her and your friend,

--R.W.E.

LXX. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 14 November, 1841

My Dear Carlyle,--Above, you have a bill of exchange for forty
pounds sterling, with which sum you must credit the Munroe
account. The bill, I must not fail to notice, is drawn by a
lover of yours who expresses great satisfaction in doing us this
courtesy; and courtesy I must think it when he gives me a bill
at sight, whilst of all other merchants I have got only one
payable at some remote day. ---- is a beautiful and noble youth,
of a most subtle and magnetic nature, made for an artist, a
painter, and in his art has made admirable sketches, but his
criticism, I fancy, was too keen for his poetry (shall I say?);
he sacrificed to Despair, and threw away his pencil. For the
present, he buys and sells. I wrote you some sort of letter a
fortnight ago, promising to send a paper like this. The hour
when this should be despatched finds me by chance very busy with
little affairs. I sent you by an Italian, Signor Gambardella,*--
who took a letter to you with good intent to persuade you to sit
to him for your portrait,--a _Dial,_ and some copies of an
oration I printed lately. If you should have any opportunity to
send one of them to Harriet Martineau, my debts to her are great,
and I wish to acknowledge her abounding kindness by a letter, as
I must. I am now in the rage of preparation for my Lectures "On
the Times;" which begin in a fortnight. There shall be eight,
but I cannot yet accurately divide the topics. If it were
eighty, I could better. In fear lest this sheet should not
safely and timely reach its man, I must now write some duplicate.

Farewell, dear friend.
R.W. Emerson

--------
* Spiridione Gambardella was born at Naples. He was a refugee
from Italy, having escaped, the story was, on board an American
man-of-war. He had been educated as a public singer, but he had
a facile genius, and turned readily to painting as a means of
livelihood. He painted some excellent portraits in Boston,
between 1835 and 1840, among them one of Dr. Channing, and one of
Dr. Follen; both of these were engraved. He had some success
for a time as a portrait-painter in London.
----------

LXXI. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 19 November, 1841

Dear Emerson,--Since that going down of the American Timber-ship
on one of the Banks of the Solway under my window, I do not
remember that you have heard a word of me. I only added that the
men were all saved, and the beach all in agitation, certain women
not far from hysterics;--and there ended. I did design to send
you some announcement of our return hither; but fear there is no
chance that I did it! About ten days ago the Signor Gambardella
arrived, with a Note and Books from you: and here now is your
Letter of October 30th; which, arriving at a moment when I have
a little leisure, draws forth an answer almost instantly.

The Signor Gambardella, whom we are to see a second time tonight
or tomorrow, amuses and interests us not a little. His face is
the very image of the Classic God Pan's; with horns, and cloven
feet, we feel that he would make a perfect wood-god;--really,
some of Poussin's Satyrs are almost portraits of this brave
Gambardella. I will warrant him a right glowing mass of
Southern-Italian vitality,--full of laughter, wild insight,
caricature, and every sort of energy and joyous savagery: a most
profitable element to get introduced (in moderate quantity), I
should say, into the general current of your Puritan blood over
in New England there! Gambardella has behaved with magnanimity
in that matter of the Portrait: I have already sat, to men in
the like case, some four times, and Gambardella knows it is a
dreadful weariness; I directed him, accordingly, to my last
painter, one Laurence, a man of real parts, whom I wished
Gambardella to know,--and whom I wished to know Gambardella
withal, that he might tell me whether there was any probability
of a _good_ picture by him in case one did decide on encountering
the weariness. Well: Gambardella returns with a magnanimous
report that Laurence's picture far transcends any capability of
his; that whoever in America or elsewhere will have a likeness
of the said individual must apply to Laurence, not to
Gambardella,--which latter artist heroically throws down his
brush, and says, Be it far from me! The brave Gambardella! if I
can get him this night to dilate a little farther on his Visit to
the _Community of Shakers,_ and the things he saw and felt there,
it will be a most true benefit to me. Inextinguishable laughter
seemed to me to lie in Gambardella's vision of that Phenomenon,--
the sight and the seer, but we broke out too loud all at once,
and he was afraid to continue.--Alas! there is almost no laughter
going in the world at present. True laughter is as rare as any
other truth,--the sham of it frequent and detestable, like all
other shams. I know nothing wholesomer; but it is rarer even
than Christmas, which comes but once a year, and does always
come once.

Your satisfactions and reflections at sight of your English Book
are such as I too am very thankful for. I understand them well.
May worse guest never visit the Drawing-room at Concord than that
bound Book. Tell the good Wife to rejoice in it: she has all
the pleasure;--to her poor Husband it will be increase of pain
withal: nay, let us call it increase of valiant labor and
endeavor; no evil for a man, if he be fit for it! A man must
learn to digest praise too, and not be poisoned with it: some of
it _is_ wholesome to the system under certain circumstances; the
most of it a healthy system will learn by and by to throw into
the slop-basin, harmlessly, without any _trial_ to digest it. A
thinker, I take it, in the long run finds that essentially he
must ever be and continue _alone;--alone:_ "silent, rest over
him the stars, and under him the graves"! The clatter of the
world, be it a friendly, be it a hostile world, shall not
intermeddle with him much. The Book of _Essays,_ however, does
decidedly "speak to England," in its way, in these months; and
even makes what one may call a kind of appropriate "sensation"
here. Reviews of it are many, in all notes of the gamut;--of
small value mostly; as you might see by the two Newspaper
specimens I sent you. (Did you get those two Newspapers?) The
worst enemy admits that there are piercing radiances of perverse
insight in it; the highest friends, some few, go to a very high
point indeed. Newspapers are busy with extracts;--much
complaining that it is "abstruse," neological, hard to get the
meaning of. All which is very proper. Still better,--though
poor Fraser, alas, is dead, (poor Fraser!), and no help could
come from industries of the Bookshop, and Books indeed it seems
were never selling worse than of late months,--I learn that the
"sale of the Essays goes very steadily forward," and will wind
itself handsomely up in due time, we may believe! So Emerson
henceforth has a real Public in Old England as well as New. And
finally, my Friend, do _not_ disturb yourself about turning
better, &c., &c.; write as it is given you, and not till it be
given you, and never mind it a whit.

The new _Adelphi_ piece seems to me, as a piece of Composition,
the best _written_ of them all. People cry over it: "Whitherward?
What, What?" In fact, I do again desiderate some _concretion_ of
these beautiful _abstracta._ It seems to me they will never be
_right_ otherwise; that otherwise they are but as prophecies yet,
not fulfilments.

The Dial too, it is all spirit-like, aeriform, aurora-borealis
like. Will no _Angel_ body himself out of that; no stalwart
Yankee _man,_ with color in the cheeks of him, and a coat on his
back! These things I _say:_ and yet, very true, you alone can
decide what practical meaning is in them. Write you always _as_
it is given you,_ be it in the solid, in the aeriform, or
whatsoever way. There is no other rule given among men.--I have
sent the criticism on Landor* to an Editorial Friend of L.'s, by
whom I expect it will be put into the Newspapers here, for the
benefit of Walter Savage; he is not often so well praised among
us, and deserves a little good praise.

--------
* From the Dial for October, 1841.
--------

You propose again to send me Moneys,--surprising man! I am glad
also to hear that that beggarly misprinted _French Revolution_ is
nearly out among you. I only hope farther your Booksellers will
have an eye on that rascal Appleton, and not let _him_ reprint
and deface, if more copies of the Book turn out to be wanted.
Adieu, dear Emerson! Good speed to you at Boston, and in all
true things. I hope to write soon again.

Yours ever,
T. Carlyle

LXXII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 6 December, 1841

Dear Emerson,--Though I wrote to you very lately, and am in great
haste today, I must lose no time in announcing that the Letter
with the L40 draught came to hand some mornings ago; and now,
this same morning, a second Letter round by Dumfriesshire, which
had been sent as a duplicate, or substitute in case of accident,
for the former. It is all right, my friend ----'s paper has got
itself changed into forty gold sovereigns, and lies here waiting
use; thanks, many thanks! Sums of that kind come always upon me
like manna out of the sky; surely they, more emphatically than
any others, are the gift of Heaven. Let us receive, use, and be
thankful. I am not so poor now at all; Heaven be praised:
indeed, I do not know, now and then when I reflect on it, whether
being rich were not a considerably harder problem. With the
wealth of Rothschild what farther good thing could one get,--if
not perhaps some but to live in, under free skies, in the
country, with a horse to ride and have a little less pain on?
_Angulus ille ridet!_--I will add, for practical purposes in the
future, that it is in general of little or no moment whether an
American Bill be at sight or after a great many days; that the
paper can wait as conveniently here as the cash can,--if your New
England House and Baring of Old England will forbear bankruptcy
in the mean while. By the bye, will you tell me some time or
other in _what_ American funds it is that your funded money, you
once gave me note of, now lies? I too am creditor to America,--
State of Illinois or some such State: one thousand dollars of
mine, which some years ago I had no use for, now lies there,
paying I suppose for canals, in a very obstructed condition! My
Brother here is continually telling me that I shall lose it all,
--which is not so bad; but lose it all by my own unreason,--which
is very bad. It struck me I would ask where Emerson's money
lies, and lay mine there too, let it live or perish as it likes!

Your _Adelphi_ went straightway off to Miss Martineau with a
message. Richard Milnes has another; John Sterling is to have a
third,--had certain other parties seen it first. For the man
Emerson is become a person to be _seen_ in these times. I also
gave a _Morning-Chronicle_ Editor your brave eulogy on Landor,
with instructions that it were well worth publishing there, for
Landor's and others' sake. Landor deserves more praise than he
gets at present; the world too, what is far more, should hear of
him oftener than it does. A brave man after his kind,--though
considerably "flamed on from the Hell beneath." He speaks
notable things; and at lowest and worst has the faculty too of
holding his peace.

The "Lectures on the Times" are even now in progress? Good speed
to the Speaker, to the Speech. Your Country is luckier than most
at this time; it has still real Preaching; the tongue of man is
not, whensoever it begins wagging, entirely sure to emit
babblement, twaddlement, sincere--cant, and other noises which
awaken the passionate wish for silence! That must alter
everywhere the human tongue is no wooden watchman's-rattle or
other _obsolete_ implement; it continues forever new and useful,
nay indispensable.

As for me and my doings--_Ay de mi!_*

-------
* The signature has been cut off.
-------

LXXIII. Emerson to Carlyle

New York, 28 February, 1842

My Dear Friend,--I enclose a bill of exchange for forty-eight
pounds sterling, payable by Baring Brothers & Co. after sixty
days from the 25th of February.

This Sum is part of a payment from Little and Brown on account of
sales of your London _French Revolution and of Chartism._ As
another part of their payment they asked me if they might not
draw on the estate of James Fraser for a balance due from his
house to them, and pay you so. I, perhaps unwisely, consented to
make the proffer to you, with the distinct stipulation, however,
that if it should not prove perfectly agreeable to you, and
exactly as available as another form of money, you should
instantly return it to me, and they shall pay me the amount,
$41.57, or L8 12s. 5d. in cash. My mercantile friend, Abel
Adams, did not admire my wisdom in accepting this bill of Little
and Brown; so I told them I should probably bring it back to
them, and if there is a shadow of inconvenience in it you will
send it back to me by the next steamer. For they have no claims
on us. I decide not to enclose the Little and Brown bill in this
sheet,--but to let it accompany this letter in the same packet.

I grieve to hear that you have bought any of our wretched
Southern Stocks. In New England all Southern and Southwestern
debt is usually regarded as hopeless, unless the debtor is
personally known. Massachusetts stock is in the best credit of
any public stock. Ward told me that it would be safest for you
to keep your Illinois stock, although he could say nothing very
good of it.

Our city banks in Boston are in better credit than the banks in
any other city here, yet one in which a large part of my own
property is invested has failed, for the two last half-years, to
pay any dividend, and I am a poor man until next April, when, I
hope, it will not fail me again. If you wish to invest money
here, my friend Abel Adams, who is the principal partner in one
of our best houses, Barnard, Adams, & Co., will know how to give
you the best assistance and action the case admits.

My dear friend, you should have had this letter and these
messages by the last steamer; but when it sailed, my son, a
perfect little boy of five years and three months, had ended his
earthly life.* You can never sympathize with me; you can never
know how much of me such a young child can take away. A few
weeks ago I accounted myself a very rich man, and now the poorest
of all. What would it avail to tell you anecdotes of a sweet and
wonderful boy, such as we solace and sadden ourselves with at
home every morning and evening? From a perfect health and as
happy a life and as happy influences as ever child enjoyed, he
was hurried out of my arms in three short days by Scarlatina.--We
have two babes yet,--one girl of three years, and one girl of
three months and a week, but a promise like that Boy's I shall
never see. How often I have pleased myself that one day I should
send to you this Morning Star of mine, and stay at home so gladly
behind such a representative. I dare not fathom the Invisible
and Untold to inquire what relations to my Departed ones I yet
sustain. Lidian, the poor Lidian, moans at home by day and by
night. You too will grieve for us, afar. I believe I have two
letters from you since I wrote last. I shall write again soon,
for Bronson Alcott will probably go to London in about a month,
and him I shall surely send to you, hoping to atone by his great
nature for many smaller one, that have craved to see you. Give
me early advice of receiving these Bills of Exchange.

---------
* The memory of this Boy, "born for the future, to the future
lost;" is enshrined in the heart of every lover of childhood and
of poetry by his father's impassioned _Threnody._
-----------

Tell Jane Carlyle our sorrowing story with much love, and with
all good hope for her health and happiness. Tell us when you
write, with as much particularity as you can, how it stands with
you, and all your household; with the Doctor, and the friends;
what you do, and propose to do, and whether you will yet come to
America, one good day?

Yours with love,
R. Waldo Emerson

LXXIV. Carlyle to Emerson

Templand, Thornhill, Dumfries, Scotland
28 March, 1842

My Dear Friend,--This is heavy news that you send me; the
heaviest outward bereavement that can befall a man has overtaken
you. Your calm tone of deep, quiet sorrow, coming in on the rear
of poor trivial worldly businesses, all punctually despatched and
recorded too, as if the Higher and Highest had not been busy with
you, tells me a sad tale. What can we say in these cases? There
is nothing to be said,--nothing but what the wild son of Ishmael,
and every thinking heart, from of old have learned to say: God
is great! He is terrible and stern; but we know also He is
good. "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." Your bright
little Boy, chief of your possessions here below, is rapt away
from you; but of very truth he is with God, even as we that yet
live are,--and surely in the way that was best for him, and for
you, and for all of us.--Poor Lidian Emerson, poor Mother! To
her I have no word. Such poignant unspeakable grief, I believe,
visits no creature as that of a Mother bereft of her child. The
poor sparrow in the bush affects one with pity, mourning for its
young; how much more the human soul of one's Friend! I cannot
bid her be of comfort; for there is as yet no comfort. May good
Influences watch over her, bring her some assuagement. As the
Hebrew David said, "We shall go to him, he will not return
to us."

I also am here in a house rendered vacant and sacred by Death. A
sore calamity has fallen on us, or rather has fallen on my poor
Wife (for what am I but like a spectator in comparison?): she
has lost unexpectedly her good Mother, her sole surviving Parent,
and almost only relative of much value that was left to her. The
manner too was almost tragic. We had heard of illness here, but
only of commonplace illness, and had no alarm. The Doctor
himself, specially applied to, made answer as if there was no
danger: his poor Patient, in whose character the like of that
intimately lay, had rigorously charged him to do so: her poor
Daughter was far off, confined to her room by illness of her own;
why alarm her, make her wretched? The danger itself did seem
over; the Doctor accordingly obeyed. Our first intimation of
alarm was despatched on the very day which proved the final one.
My poor Wife, casting sickness behind her, got instantly ready,
set off by the first railway train: traveling all night, on the
morrow morning at her Uncle's door in Liverpool she is met by
tidings that all is already ended. She broke down there; she
is now home again at Chelsea, a cheery, amiable younger Jane
Welsh to nurse her: the tone of her Letters is still full of
disconsolateness. I had to proceed hither, and have to stay here
till this establishment can be abolished, and all the sad wrecks
of it in some seemly manner swept away. It is above three weeks
that I have been here; not till eight days ago could I so much
as manage to command solitude, to be left altogether alone. I
lead a strange life; full of sadness, of solemnity, not without
a kind of blessedness. I say it is right and fitting that one be
left entirely alone now and then, alone with one's own griefs and
sins, with the mysterious ancient Earth round one, the
everlasting Heaven over one, and what one can make of these.
Poor rustic businesses, subletting of Farms, disposal of houses,
household goods: these strangely intervene, like matter upon
spirit, every day;--wholesome this too perhaps. It is many years
since I have stood so in close contact face to face with the
reality of Earth, with its haggard ugliness, its divine beauty,
its depths of Death and of Life. Yesterday, one of, the stillest
Sundays, I sat long by the side of the swift river Nith; sauntered
among woods all vocal only with rooks and pairing birds.* The
hills are often white with snow-powder, black brief spring-tempests
rush fiercely down from them, and then again the sky looks forth
with a pale pure brightness,--like Eternity from behind Time.
The _Sky,_ when one thinks of it, is _always_ blue, pure changeless
azure; rains and tempests are only for the little dwellings where
men abide. Let us think of this too. Think of this, thou
sorrowing Mother! Thy Boy has escaped many showers.

---------
* "Templand has a very fine situation; old Walter's walk, at the
south end of the house, was one of the most picturesque and
pretty to be found in the world. Nith valley (river half a mile
off, winding through green holms, now in its border of clean
shingle, now lost in pleasant woods and rushes) lay patent to the
South. "Carlyle's Reminiscences," Vol. II. p. 137.
---------

In some three weeks I shall probably be back at Chelsea. Write
thitherward so soon as you have opportunity; I will write again
before long, even if I do not hear from you. The moneys, &c. are
all safe here as you describe: if Fraser's' Executors make any
demur, your Bookseller shall soon hear of it.

I had begun to write some Book on Cromwell: I have often begun,
but know not how to set about it; the most unutterable of all
subjects I ever felt much meaning to lie in. There is risk yet
that, with the loss of still farther labor, I may have to abandon
it;--and then the great dumb Oliver may lie unspoken forever;
gathered to the mighty _Silent_ of the Earth; for, I think,
there will hardly ever live another man that will believe in him
and his Puritanism as I do. To _him_ small matter.

Adieu, my good kind Friend, ever dear to me, dearer now in
sorrow. My Wife when she hears of your affliction will send a
true thought over to you also. The poor Lidian!--John Sterling
is driven off again, setting out I think this very day for
Gibraltar, Malta, and Naples. Farewell, and better days to us.

Your affectionate
T. Carlyle

LXXV. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 81 March, 1842

My Dear Carlyle,--I wrote you a letter from my brother's office
in New York nearly a month ago to tell you how hardly it had
fared with me here at home, that the eye of my home was plucked
out when that little innocent boy departed in his beauty and
perfection from my sight. Well, I have come back hither to my
work and my play, but he comes not back, and I must simply suffer
it. Doubtless the day will come which will resolve this, as
everything gets resolved, into light, but not yet.

I write now to tell you of a piece of life. I wish you to know
that there is shortly coming to you a man by the name of Bronson
Alcott. If you have heard his name before, forget what you have
heard. Especially if you have ever read anything to which this
name was attached, be sure to forget that; and, inasmuch as in
you lies, permit this stranger when he arrives at your gate to
make a new and primary impression. I do not wish to bespeak any
courtesies or good or bad opinion concerning him. You may love
him, or hate him, or apathetically pass by him, as your genius
shall dictate; only I entreat this, that you do not let him go
quite out of your reach until you are sure you have seen him
and know for certain the nature of the man. And so I leave
contentedly my pilgrim to his fate.

I should tell you that my friend Margaret Fuller, who has edited
our little _Dial_ with such dubious approbation on the part of
you and other men, has suddenly decided a few days ago that she
will edit it no more. The second volume was just closing; shall
it live for a third year? You should know that, if its interior
and spiritual life has been ill fed, its outward and bibliopolic
existence has been worse managed. Its publishers failed, its
short list of subscribers became shorter, and it has never paid
its laborious editor, who has been very generous of her time and
labor, the smallest remuneration. Unhappily, to me alone could
the question be put whether the little aspiring starveling should
be reprieved for another year. I had not the cruelty to kill it,
and so must answer with my own proper care and nursing for its
new life. Perhaps it is a great folly in me who have little
adroitness in turning off work to assume this sure vexation, but
the _Dial_ has certain charms to me as an opportunity, which I
grudge to destroy. Lately at New York I found it to be to a
certain class of men and women, though few, an object of
tenderness and religion. You cannot believe it?

Mr. Lee,* who brings you this letter, is the son of one of the
best men in Massachusetts, a man whose name is a proverb among
merchants for his probity, for his sense and his information.
The son, who bears his father's name, is a favorite among all the
young people for his sense and spirit, and has lived always with
good people.

---------
* Mr. Henry Lee.
--------

I have read at New York six out of eight lectures on the Times
which I read this winter in Boston. I found a very intelligent
and friendly audience. The penny papers reported my lectures,
somewhat to my chagrin when I tried to read them; many persons
came and talked with me, and I felt when I came away that New
York is open to me henceforward whenever my Boston parish is not
large enough. This summer, I must try to set in order a few more
chapters from these rambling lectures, one on "The Poet" and one
on "Character" at least. And now will you not tell me what you
read and write? Is it Cromwell still? For I supposed from the
_Westminster_ piece that the laborer must be in that quarter.

I send herewith a new _Dial,_ No. 8, and the last of this
dispensation. I hope you have received every number. They have
been sent in order. I have written no line in this Number. I
send a letter for Sterling, as I do not know whether his address
is still at Falmouth. Is he now a preacher? By the "Acadia" you
should have received a letter of exchange on the Barings, and
another on James Fraser's estate.

With constant good hope for yourself and for your wife, I am
your friend,

--R.W. Emerson

End of Vol. I.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I" ***

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