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 had 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 had only a relative existence."
He was already turning his eyes toward 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 fixt 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[73] From Chapter I of "English Traits," published by Houghton, Mifflin Company. At the time of this visit, Emerson had published none of his books, but Carlyle was known as the author of many of the "Essays" now included among his collected writings, and had published the "Life of Schiller" and his translation of Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister." "Sartor Resartus" in that year was beginning its course through the monthly numbers of Fraser's Magazine.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
Born in Salem, Mass., in 1804; died in 1864; graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825; served in the Custom House in Boston; joined the Brook Farm community in 1841; surveyor of the port of Salem in 1846-49; consul at Liverpool in 1853-57; published "Fanshawe" at his own expense in 1826, "Twice Told Tales" in 1837-42; "Mosses from an Old Manse" in 1846, "The Scarlet Letter" in 1850, "House of the Seven Gables" in 1851, "The Marble Faun" in 1860, "Our Old Home" in 1863.