I have had sad things to do and see since I wrote to you: the loss of my dear and good old Mother, which could not be spared me forever, has come more like a kind of total bankruptcy upon me than might have been expected, considering her age and mine. Oh those last two days, that last Christmas Sunday! She was a true, pious, brave, and noble Mother to me; and it is now all over; and the Past has all become pale and sad and sacred;—and the all-devouring potency of Death, what we call Death, has never looked so strange, cruel and unspeakable to me. Nay not cruel altogether, let me say: huge, profound, unspeakable, that is the word.—You too have lost your good old Mother, who stayed with you like mine, clear to the last: alas, alas, it is the oldest Law of Nature; and it comes on every one of us with a strange originality, as if it had never happened before.— Forward, however; and no more lamenting; no more than cannot be helped. "Paradise is under the shadow of our swords," said the Emir: "Forward!"—

I make no way in my Prussian History; I bore and dig toilsomely through the unutterablest mass of dead rubbish, which is not even English, which is German and inhuman; and hardly from ten tons of learned inanity is there to be riddled one old rusty nail. For I have been back as far as Pytheas who, first of speaking creatures, beheld the Teutonic Countries; and have questioned all manner of extinct German shadows,—who answer nothing but mumblings. And on the whole Fritz himself is not sufficiently divine to me, far from it; and I am getting old, and heavy of heart;—and in short, it oftenest seems to me I shall never write any word about that matter; and have again fairly got into the element of the IMPOSSIBLE. Very well: could I help it? I can at least be honestly silent; and "bear my indigence with dignity," as you once said. The insuperable difficulty of Frederic is, that he, the genuine little ray of Veritable and Eternal that was in him, lay imbedded in the putrid Eighteenth Century, such an Ocean of sordid nothingness, shams, and scandalous hypocrisies, as never weltered in the world before; and that in everything I can find yet written or recorded of him, he still, to all intents and purposes, most tragically lies THERE;—and ought not to lie there, if any use is ever to be had of him, or at least of writing about him; for as to him, he with his work is safe enough to us, far elsewhere.—Pity me, pity me; I know not on what hand to turn; and have such a Chaos filling all my Earth and Heaven as was seldom seen in British or Foreign Literature! Add to which, the Sacred Entity, Literature itself, is not growing more venerable to me, but less and ever less: good Heavens, I feel often as if there were no madder set of bladders tumbling on the billows of the general Bedlam at this moment than even the Literary ones,—dear at twopence a gross, I should say, unless one could annihilate them by purchase on those easy terms! But do not tell this in Gath; let it be a sad family secret.

I smile, with a kind of grave joy, over your American speculations, and wild dashing portraitures of things as they are with you; and recognize well, under your light caricature, the outlines of a right true picture, which has often made me sad and grim in late years. Yes, I consider that the "Battle of Freedom and Slavery" is very far from ended; and that the fate of poor "Freedom" in the quarrel is very questionable indeed! Alas, there is but one Slavery, as I wrote somewhere; and that, I think, is mounting towards a height, which may bring strokes to bear upon it again! Meanwhile, patience; for us there is nothing else appointed.—Tell me, however, what has become of your Book on England? We shall really be obliged to you for that. A piece of it went through all the Newspapers, some years ago; which was really unique for its quaint kindly insight, humor, and other qualities; like an etching by Hollar or Durer, amid the continents of vile smearing which are called "pictures" at present. Come on, Come on; give us the Book, and don't loiter!—

Miss Bacon has fled away to St. Alban's (the Great Bacon's place) five or six months ago; and is there working out her Shakespeare Problem, from the depths of her own mind, disdainful apparently, or desperate and careless, of all evidence from Museums or Archives; I have not had an answer from her since before Christmas, and have now lost her address. Poor Lady: I sometimes silently wish she were safe home again; for truly there can no madder enterprise than her present one be well figured. Adieu, my Friend; I must stop short here. Write soon, if you have any charity. Good be with you ever.

—T. Carlyle

CLVI. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 17 April, 1855

My Dear Friend,—On this delicious spring day, I will obey the beautiful voices of the winds, long disobeyed, and address you; nor cloud the hour by looking at the letters in my drawer to know if a twelvemonth has been allowed to elapse since this tardy writing was due. Mr. Everett sent me one day a letter he had received from you, containing a kind message to me, which gave me pleasure and pain. I returned the letter with thanks, and with promises I would sin no more. Instantly, I was whisked, by "the stormy wing of Fate," out of my chain, and whirled, like a dry leaf, through the State of New York.

Now at home again, I read English Newspapers, with all the world, and claim an imaginary privilege over my compatriots, that I revolve therein my friend's large part. Ward said to me yesterday, that Carlyle's star was daily rising. For C. had said years ago, when all men thought him mad, that which the rest of mortals, including the Times Newspaper, have at last got near enough to see with eyes, and therefore to believe. And one day, in Philadelphia, you should have heard the wise young Philip Randolph defend you against objections of mine. But when I have such testimony, I say to myself, the high-seeing austerely exigent friend whom I elected, and who elected me, twenty years and more ago, finds me heavy and silent, when all the world elects and loves him. Yet I have not changed. I have the same pride in his genius, the same sympathy with the Genius that governs his, the old love with the old limitations, though love and limitation be all untold. And I see well what a piece of Providence he is, how material he is to the times, which must always have a solo Soprano to balance the roar of the Orchestra. The solo sings the theme; the orchestra roars antagonistically but follows.—And have I not put him into my Chapter of "English Spiritual Tendencies," with all thankfulness to the Eternal Creator,—though the chapter lie unborn in a trunk?

'T is fine for us to excuse ourselves, and patch with promises. We shall do as before, and science is a fatalist. I follow, I find, the fortunes of my Country, in my privatest ways. An American is pioneer and man of all work, and reads up his newspaper on Saturday night, as farmers and foresters do. We admire the [Greek], and mean to give our boys the grand habit; but we only sketch what they may do. No leisure except for the strong, the nimble have none.—I ought to tell you what I do, or I ought to have to tell you what I have done. But what can I? the same concession to the levity of the times, the noise of America comes again. I have even run on wrong topics for my parsimonious Muse, and waste my time from my true studies. England I see as a roaring volcano of Fate, which threatens to roast or smother the poor literary Plinys that come too near for mere purpose of reporting.