n,* who with his bride (sister of the above-mentioned Miss
Peabody) is going to London and so to Prussia. He is little
known to me, but greatly valued as a philanthropist in this
State. I must go to work a little more methodically this summer,
and let something grow to a tree in my wide straggling shrubbery.
With your letters came a letter from Sterling, who was too noble
to allude to his books and manuscript sent hither, and which
Russell all this time has delayed to print; I know not why, but
discouraged, I suppose, in these times by booksellers. I must
know precisely, and write presently to J.S.

Farewell.
R.W. Emerson**

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* The late Horace Mann.

** The following passages from Emerson's Diary relating to _Past
and Present_ seem to have been written a few days after the
preceding letter:--"How many things this book of Carlyle gives us
to think! It is a brave grappling with the problem of the times,
no luxurious holding aloof, as is the custom of men of letters,
who are usually bachelors and not husbands in the state, but
Literature here has thrown off his gown and descended into the
open lists. The gods are come among us in the likeness of men.
An honest Iliad of English woes. Who is he that can trust
himself in the fray? Only such as cannot be familiarized, but
nearest seen and touched is not seen and touched, but remains
inviolate, inaccessible, because a higher interest, the politics
of a higher sphere, bring him here and environ him, as the
Ambassador carries his country with him. Love protects him from
profanation. What a book this in its relation to English
privileged estates! How shall Queen Victoria read this? how the
Primate and Bishops of England? how the Lords? how the Colleges?
how the rich? and how the poor? Here is a book as full of
treason as an egg is full of meat, and every lord and lordship
and high form and ceremony of English conservatism tossed like a
football into the air, and kept in the air with merciless
rebounds and kicks, and yet not a word in the book is punishable
by statute. The wit has eluded all official zeal, and yet these
dire jokes, these cunning thrusts,--this flaming sword of
cherubim waved high in air illuminates the whole horizon and
shows to the eyes of the Universe every wound it inflicts. Worst
of all for the party attacked, it bereaves them beforehand of
all sympathy by anticipating the plea of poetic and humane
conservation and impressing