massive aquiline face, most massive yet most
delicate; of sallow-brown complexion, almost Indian-looking;
clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy;--smokes infinite tobacco.
His voice is musical metallic,--fit for loud laughter and
piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech, and
speculation free and plenteous: I do not meet, in these late
decades, such company over a pipe!--We shall see what he will
grow to. He is often unwell; very chaotic,--his way is through
Chaos and the Bottomless and Pathless; not handy for making out
many miles upon. (O Paper!)

I trust there is now joy in place of pain in the House at
Concord, and a certain Mother grateful again to the Supreme
Powers! We are all in our customary health here, or nearly so;
my Wife has been in Lancashire, among her kindred there, for a
month lately: our swollen City is getting empty and still; we
think of trying an Autumn _here_ this time.--Get your Book ready;
there are readers ready for it! And be busy and victorious!

Ever Yours,
T. Carlyle

My _History_ is frightful! If I live, it is like to be
completed; but whether I shall live, and not rather be buried
alive, broken-hearted, in the Serbonian Quagmires of English
Stupidity, and so sleep beside Cromwell, often seems uncertain.
Erebus has no uglier, brutaler element. Let us say nothing of
it. Let us do it, or leave it to the Devils. _Ay de mi!_

XCIII. Emerson to Carlyle

Boston, 1 September, 1844

My Dear Carlyle,--I have just learned that in an hour Mr.
Wilmer's mail-bag for London, by the "Acadia," closes, and I will
not lose the occasion of sending you a hasty line: though I had
designed to write you from home on sundry matters, which now must
wait. I send by this steamer some sheets, to the bookseller John
Chapman,--proofsheets of my new book of Essays. Chapman wrote to
me by the last steamer, urging me to send him some manuscript
that had not yet been published in America, and he thought he
could make an advantage from printing it, and even, in some
conditions, procure a copyright, and he would publish for me on
the plan of half-profits. The request was so timely, since I was
not only printing a book, but also a pamphlet (an Address to
citizens of some thirteen towns who celebrated in Concord the
negro Emancipation on 1st August last), that I came to town
yesterday, and hastened the printers, and have now sent him
proofs of all the Address, and of more