d good society, wherein her large heart makes a
certain glory and refinement. She is one of nature's ladies, and
when I hear her tell I know not what stories of her friends, or
her children, or her pensioners, I find a pathetic eloquence
which I know not where to match. But I suppose you shall never
hear it. Every American is a little displaced in London, and, no
doubt, her company has grown to her. Her husband is a banker
connected in business with your ---, and is a man of elegant
genius and tastes, and his house is a resort for fine people.
Thorwaldsen distinguished Mrs. --- in Rome, formerly, by his
attentions. Powers the sculptor made an admirable bust of her;
Clough and Thackeray will tell you of her. Jenny Lind, like the
rest, was captivated by her, and was married at her house. Is
not Henry James in London? he knows her well. If Tennyson comes
to London, whilst she is there, he should see her for his "Lays
of Good Women." Now please to read these things to the wise and
kind ears of Jane Carlyle, and ask her if I have done wrong in
giving my friend a letter to her? I could not ask more than that
each of those ladies might appear to the other what each has
appeared to me.

I saw Thackeray, in the winter, and he said he would come and see
me here, in April or May; but he is still, I believe, in the
South and West. Do not believe me for my reticency less hungry
for letters. I grieve at the want and loss, and am about writing
again, that I may hear from you.

Ever affectionately yours,
R.W. Emerson

CLIX. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 20 July, 1856

Dear Emerson;--Welcome was your Letter to me, after the long
interval; as welcome as any human Letter could now well be.
These many months and years I have been sunk in what disastrous
vortexes of foreign wreck you know, till I am fallen sick and
almost broken-hearted, and my life (if it were not this one
interest, of doing a problem which I see to be impossible, and of
smallish value if found doable!) is burdensome and without
meaning to me. It is so rarely I hear the voice of a magnanimous
Brother Man addressing any word to me: ninety-nine hundredths of
the Letters I get are impertinent clutchings of me by the button,
concerning which the one business is, How to get handsomely loose
again; What to say that shall soonest _end_ the intrusion,--if
saying Nothing will not be the best way. Which last I often in
my sorrow