shall overtake Mr. Forbes senior tomorrow at Burlington, Iowa.

The widow of one of the noblest of our young martyrs in the War,
Col. Lowell,* cousin [nephew] of James Russell Lowell, sends me
word that she wishes me to give her a note of introduction to
you, confiding to me that she has once written a letter to you
which procured her the happiest reply from you, and I shall obey
her, and you will see her and own her rights. Still continue to
be magnanimous to your friend,

--R.W. Emerson

---------
* Charles Russell Lowell, to be remembered always with honor in
company with his brother James Jackson Lowell and his cousin
William Lowell Putnam,--a shining group among the youths who have
died for their country.
---------

CLXXXVII. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 4 June, 1871

Dear Emerson,--Your Letter gave me great pleasure. A gleam of
sunshine after a long tract of lowering weather. It is not you
that are to blame for this sad gap in our correspondence; it is
I, or rather it is my misfortunes, and miserable inabilities,
broken resolutions, etc., etc. The truth is, the winter here was
very unfriendly to me; broke ruinously into my sleep; and
through that into every other department of my businesses,
spiritual and temporal; so that from about New-Year's Day last I
have been, in a manner, good for nothing,--nor am yet, though I
do again feel as if the beautiful Summer weather might perhaps do
something for me. This it was that choked every enterprise; and
postponed your Letter, week after week, through so many months.
Let us not speak of it farther!

Note, meanwhile, I have no disease about me; nothing but the
gradual decay of any poor digestive faculty I latterly had,--or
indeed ever had since I was three and twenty years of age. Let
us be quiet with it; accept it as a mode of exit, of which
always there must be _some_ mode.

I have got done with all my press-correctings, editionings, and
paltry bother of that kind: Vol. 30 will embark for you about
the middle of this month; there are then to follow ("uniform,"
as the printers call it, though in smaller type) a little volume
called _General Index;_ and three more volumes of _Translations
from the German;_ after which we two will reckon and count; and
if there is any _lacuna_ on the Concord shelf, at once make it
good. Enough, enough on that score.

The Hotten who has got hold of you here is