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!