Chapter IX: Part 9

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