ver perfect, and all Americans have agreed in her praise.
Elizabeth Hoar remembers her with entire sympathy and regard.

I could heartily wish to see you for an hour in these lonely
days. Your friends, I know, will approach you as tenderly as
friends can; and I can believe that labor--all whose precious
secrets you know--will prove a consoler,--though it cannot quite
avail, for she was the rest that rewarded labor. It is good that
you are strong, and built for endurance. Nor will you shun to
consult the awful oracles which in these hours of tenderness are
sometimes vouchsafed. If to any, to you.

I rejoice that she stayed to enjoy the knowledge of your good day
at Edinburgh, which is a leaf we would not spare from your book
of life. It was a right manly speech to be so made, and is a
voucher of unbroken strength,--and the surroundings, as I learn,
were all the happiest,--with no hint of change.

I pray you bear in mind your own counsels. Long years you must
still achieve, and, I hope, neither grief nor weariness will let
you "join the dim choir of the bards that have been," until you
have written the book I wish and wait for,--the sincerest
confessions of your best hours.

My wife prays to be remembered to you with sympathy and affection.

Ever yours faithfully,
R.W. Emerson

CLXXV. Carlyle to Emerson

Mentone, France, Alpes Maritimes
27 January, 1867

My Dear Emerson,--It is along time since I last wrote to you;
and a long distance in space and in fortune,--from the shores of
the Solway in summer 1865, to this niche of the Alps and
Mediterranean today, after what has befallen me in the interim.
A longer interval, I think, and surely by far a sadder, than ever
occurred between us before, since we first met in the Scotch
moors, some five and thirty years ago. You have written me
various Notes, too, and Letters, all good and cheering to me,--
almost the only truly human speech I have heard from anybody
living;--and still my stony silence could not be broken; not
till now, though often looking forward to it, could I resolve on
such a thing. You will think me far gone, and much bankrupt in
hope and heart;--and indeed I am; as good as without hope and
without fear; a gloomily serious, silent, and sad old man;
gazing into the final chasm of things, in mute dialogue with
"Death, Judgment, and Eternity" (dialogue _mute_ on _both_
sides!), not caring to discourse with poor articu