Journeys this Earth, her eye on a Sun, through the heavenly spaces;
Joyous in radiance, or joyless by fits and swallowed in tempests;
Falters not, alters not, equal advancing, home at the due hour:
So thou, weather-proof, constant, may, equal with day, March!
I have not a moment more tonight;—and besides am inclined to write unprofitables if I persist. Adieu, my friend; all blessings be with you always.
Yours ever truly,
T. Carlyle
XC. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 29 February, 1844
My Dear Carlyle,—I received by the last steamer your letter, and its prefixed order for one hundred and twenty-one dollars, which order I sent to Ward, who turned it at once into money. Thanks, dear friend, for your care and activity, which have brought me this pleasing and most unlooked for result. And I beg you, if you know any family representative of Mr. Fraser, to express my sense of obligation to that departed man. I feel a kindness not without some wonder for those good-natured five hundred Englishmen who could buy and read my miscellany. I shall not fail to send them a new collection, which I hope they will like better. My faith in the Writers, as an organic class, increases daily, and in the possibility to a faithful man of arriving at statements for which he shall not feel responsible, but which shall be parallel with nature. Yet without any effort I fancy I make progress also in the doctrine of Indifferency, and am certain and content that the truth can very well spare me, and have itself spoken by another without leaving it or me the worse. Enough if we have learned that music exists, that it is proper to us, and that we cannot go forth of it. Our pipes, however shrill and squeaking, certify this our faith in Tune, and the eternal Amelioration may one day reach our ears and instruments. It is a poor second thought, this literary activity.
Perhaps I am not made obnoxious to much suffering, but I have had happy hours enough in gazing from afar at the splendors of the Intellectual Law, to overpay me for any pains I know. Existence may go on to be better, and, if it have such insights, it never can be bad. You sometimes charge me with I know not what sky- blue, sky-void idealism. As far as it is a partiality, I fear I may be more deeply infected than you think me. I have very joyful dreams which I cannot bring to paper, much less to any approach to practice, and I blame myself not at all for my reveries, but that they have not yet got possession of my house and barn. But I shall not lose my love for books. I only worship Eternal Buddh in the retirements and intermissions of Brahma.—But I must not egotize and generalize to the end of my sheet, as I have a message or two to declare.
I enclose a bill of exchange on the Barings for thirty-six pounds; which is the sum of two recent payments of Munroe and of Little and Brown, whereof I do not despair you shall yet have some account in booksellers' figures. I have got so far with Clark as to have his consent to audit the accounts when I shall get energy and time enough to compile them out of my ridiculous Journal. Munroe begs me to say what possibly I have already asked for him, that, when the History of Cromwell is ready to be seen of men, you will have an entire copy of the Manuscript taken, and sent over to us. Then will he print a cheap edition such as no one will undersell, and secure such a share of profit to the author as the cheap press allows. Perhaps only thirty or forty pounds would make it worth while to take the trouble. A valued friend of mine wishes to know who wrote (perhaps three years ago) a series of metaphysical articles in Blackwood on Consciousness. Can you remember and tell me? And now I commend you to the good God, you and your History, and the true kind wife who is always good to the eager Yankees, and am yours heartily,
—R.W. Emerson
XCI. Carlyle to Emerson