well not written. O that I did see you
face to face! But the time shall come, if Heaven will. Why not
you come over, since I cannot? There is a room here, there is
welcome here, and two friends always. It must be done one way or
the other. I will take, care of your messages to Sterling. He
is in Florence; he was the Author of _Montaigne._* The _Foreign
Quarterly_ Reviewer of _Strauss_ I take to be one Blackie, an
Advocate in Edinburgh, a frothy, semi-confused disciple of mine
and other men's; I guess this, but I have not read the Article:
the man Blackie is from Aberdeen, has been roaming over Europe,
and carries more sail than ballast. Brother John, spoken of
above, is knocking at the door even now; he is for Italy again,
we expect, in few days, on a better appointment: know that you
have a third friend in him under this roof,--a man who quarrels
with me all day in a small way, and loves me with the whole soul
of him. My Wife demanded to have "room for one line." What she
is to write I know not, except it be what she has said, holding
up the pamphlet, "Is it not a noble thing? None of them all but
he," &c., &c. I will write again without delay when the stray
volumes arrive; before that if they linger. Commend me to all
the kind household of Concord: Wife, Mother, and Son.

Ever yours,
T. Carlyle

---------
* See _ante,_ p. 184. Sterling's essay on Montaigne was his
first contribution, in 1837, to the _London and Westminster
Review._ It is reprinted in "Essays and Tales, by John Sterling,
collected and edited, with a Memoir of his Life, by Julius
Charles Hare," London, 1848, Vol. I. p. 129.
----------

_"Forgotten you?"_ O, no indeed! If there were nothing else to
remember you by, I should never forget the Visitor, who years ago
in the Desert descended on us, out of the clouds as it were, and
made one day there look like enchantment for us, and left me
weeping that it was only _one_ day. When I think of America, it
is of you,--neither Harriet Martineau nor any one else succeeds
in giving me a more extended idea of it. When I wish to see
America it is still you, and those that are yours. I read all
that you write with an interest which I feel in no other writing
but my Husband's,--or it were nearer the truth to say there is no
other writing of living men but yours and his that I _can_ read.
God Bless you and Weib and Kind. Surely I shall some day see you
all.

Your affect