c.; which may be less untrue,
though not more proper to be published of a clever, useful, and amiable
man, now living.

_To C. E. Norton_.

WOODBRIDGE. _May_ 12/83.

MY DEAR NORTON,

Your Emerson-Carlyle of course interested me very much, as I believe a
large public also. I had most to learn of Emerson, and that all good:
but Carlyle came out in somewhat of a new light to me also. Now we have
him in his Jane's letters, as we had seen something of him before in the
Reminiscences: but a yet more tragic Story; so tragic that I know not if
it ought not to have been withheld from the Public: assuredly, it seems
to me, ought to have been but half of the whole that now is. But I do
not the less recognize Carlyle for more admirable than before--if for no
other reason than his thus furnishing the world with weapons against
himself which the World in general is glad to turn against him. . . .

And, by way of finishing what I have to say on Carlyle for the present, I
will tell you that I had to go up to our huge, hideous, London a week
ago, on disagreeable business; which Business, however, I got over in
time for me to run to Chelsea before I returned home at Evening. I
wanted to see the Statue on the Chelsea Embankment which I had not yet
seen: and the old No. 5 of Cheyne Row, which I had not seen for five and
twenty years. The Statue I thought very good, though looking somewhat
small and ill set-off by its dingy surroundings. And No. 5 (now 24),
which had cost her so much of her Life, one may say, to make habitable
for him, now all neglected, unswept, ungarnished, uninhabited

'TO LET'

I cannot get it out of my head, the tarnished Scene of the Tragedy (one
must call it) there enacted.

Well, I was glad to get away from it, and the London of which it was a
small part, and get down here to my own dull home, and by no means sorry
not to be a Genius at such a Cost. 'Parlons d'autres choses.'

I got our Woodbridge Bookseller to enquire for your Mr. Child's Ballad-
book; but could only hear, and indeed be shown a specimen, of a large
Quarto Edition, _de luxe_ I believe, and would not meddle with that. I
do not love any unwieldy Book, even a Dictionary; and I believe that I am
contented enough with such Knowledge as I have of the old Ballads in many
a handy Edition. Not but I admire Mr. Child for such an undertaking as
his; but I think his Book will be more for Great Libraries, Public or
Private, than for my scant