so many years, send me a quiet
line or two now and then to say that you still smoke your pipe in
peace, side by side with wife and brother also well and smoking,
or able to smoke? Now that I have in some measure calmed down
the astonishment and consternation of seeing your dreams change
into realities, I mean, at my next approximation or perihelion,
to behold you with the most serene and sceptical calmness.

So give my thanks and true affectionate remembrance to Jane
Carlyle, and my regards also to Dr. Carlyle, whose precise
address please also to send me.

Ever your loving
R.W.E.

The address at the top of this note is the best for the present,
as I mean to make this my centre.

CXXVIII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 13 November, 1847

Dear Emerson,--Your Book-parcels were faithfully sent off,
directly after your departure: in regard to one of them I had a
pleasant visit from the proprietor in person,--the young
Swedenborgian Doctor, whom to my surprise I found quite an
agreeable, accomplished secular young gentleman, much given to
"progress of the species," &c., &c.; from whom I suppose you have
yourself heard. The wandering umbrella, still short of an owner,
hangs upon its peg here, without definite outlook. Of yourself
there have come news, by your own Letter, and by various excerpts
from Manchester Newspapers. _Gluck zu!_--

This Morning I received the Enclosed, and send it off to you
without farther response. Mudie, if I mistake not, is some small
Bookseller in the Russell-Square region; pray answer him, if you
think him worthy of answer. A dim suspicion haunts me that
perhaps he was the Republisher (or Pirate) of your first set of
_Essays:_ but probably he regards this as a mere office of
untutored friendship on his part. Or possibly I do the poor man
wrong by misremembrance? Chapman could tell.

I am sunk deep here, in effete Manuscripts, in abstruse
meditations, in confusions old and new; sinking, as I may
describe myself, through stratum after stratum of the Inane,--
down to one knows not what depth! I unfortunately belong to
the Opposition Party in many points, and am in a minority of
one. To keep silence, therefore, is among the principal duties
at present.

We had a call from Bancroft, the other evening. A tough Yankee
man; of many worthy qualities more tough than musical; among
which it gratified me to find a certain small under-current of
genial _hu