at home and at leisure, for I have just been
reading the _History_ again with many, many thoughts, and I
revere, wonder at, and love you.

--R. Waldo Emerson

XXII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 16 March, 1838

My Dear Emerson,--Your letter through Sumner was sent by him from
Paris about a month ago; the man himself has not yet made his
appearance, or been heard of in these parts: he shall be very
welcome to me, arrive when he will. The February letter came
yesterday, by direct conveyance from Dartmouth. I answer it
today rather than tomorrow; I may not for long have a day freer
than this. _Fronte capillata, post est occasio calva:_ true
either in Latin or English!

You send me good news, as usual. You have been very brisk and
helpful in this business of the _Revolution_ Book, and I give you
many thanks and commendations. It will be a very brave day when
cash actually reaches me, no matter what the _number_ of the
coins, whether seven or seven hundred, out of Yankee-land; and
strange enough, what is not unlikely, if it be the _first_ cash I
realize for that piece of work,--Angle-land continuing still
_in_solvent to me! Well, it is a wide Motherland we have here,
or are getting to have, from Bass's Straits all round to Columbia
River, already almost circling the Globe: it must be hard with a
man if somewhere or other he find not some one or other to take
his part, and stand by him a little! Blessings on you, my
brother: nay, your work is already twice blessed.--I believe
after all, with the aid of my Scotch thrift, I shall not be
absolutely thrown into the streets here, or reduced to borrow,
and become the slave of somebody, for a morsel of bread. Thank
God, no! Nay, of late I begin entirely to despise that whole
matter, so as I never hitherto despised it: "Thou beggarliest
Spectre of Beggary that hast chased me ever since I was man, come
on then, in the Devil's name, let us see what is in thee! Will
the Soul of a man, with Eternity within a few years of it, quail
before _thee?_" Better, however, is my good pious Mother's
version of it: "They cannot take God's Providence from thee;
thou hast never wanted yet."*

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* In his Diary, May 9, 1838, Emerson wrote: "A letter this
morning from T. Carlyle. How should he be so poor? It is the
most creditable poverty I know of."
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But to go on with business; and the republication of