ree are combining for and against me; at all
events, I am to have my visit. I pray you to cherish your good
nature, your mercy. Let your wife cherish it,--that I may see, I
indolent, this incredible worker, whose toil has been long since
my pride and wonder,--that I may see him benign and unexacting,--
he shall not be at the crisis of some over-labor. I shall not
stay but an hour. What do I care for his fame? Ah! how gladly I
hoped once to see Sterling as mediator and amalgam, when my turn
should come to see the Saxon gods at home: Sterling, who had
certain American qualities in his genius;--and now you send me
his shade. I found at Munroe's shop the effigy, which, he said,
Cunningham, whom I have not seen or heard from, had left there
for me; a front face, and a profile, both--especially the first
--a very welcome satisfaction to my sad curiosity, the face very
national, certainly, but how thoughtful and how friendly! What
more belongs to this print--whether you are editing his books, or
yourself drawing his lineaments--I know not.

I find my friends have laid out much work for me in Yorkshire and
Lancashire. What part of it I shall do, I cannot yet tell. As
soon as I know how to arrange my journey best, I shall write
you again.

Yours affectionately,
R.W. Emerson

CXXIV. Carlyle to Emerson

Rawdon, Near Leeds, Yorkshire
31 August, 1847

Dear Emerson,--Almost ever since your last Letter reached me, I
have been wandering over the country, enveloped either in a
restless whirl of locomotives, view-hunting, &c., or sunk in the
deepest torpor of total idleness and laziness, forgetting, and
striving to forget, that there was any world but that of dreams;
--and though at intervals the reproachful remembrance has arisen
sharply enough on me, that I ought, on all accounts high and low,
to have written you an answer, never till today have I been able
to take pen in hand, and actually begin that operation! Such is
the naked fact. My Wife is with me; we leave no household
behind us but a servant; the face of England, with its mad
electioneerings, vacant tourist dilettantings, with its shady
woods, green yellow harvest-fields and dingy mill-chimneys, so
new and old, so beautiful and ugly, every way so _abstruse_ and
_un_speakable, invites to silence; the whole world, fruitful yet
disgusting to this human soul of mine, invites me to silence; to
sleep, and dreams, and stagnant indiffer