his wants to the next house. But here are thousands of acres
which might give them all meat, and nobody to bid these poor
Irish go to the moor and till it. They burned the stacks, and so
found a way to force the rich people to attend to them.'

"We went out to walk over long hills, and looked at Criffel, then
without his cap, and down into Wordsworth's country. There we
sat down and talked of the immortality of the soul. It was not
Carlyle's fault that we talked on that topic, for he has the
natural disinclination of every nimble spirit to bruise itself
against walls, and did not like to place himself where no step
can be taken. But he was honest and true, and cognizant of the
subtile links that bind ages together, and saw how every event
affects all the future. 'Christ died on the tree that built
Dunscore kirk yonder: that brought you and me together. Time
has only a relative existence.'

"He was already turning his eyes towards London with a scholar's
appreciation. London is the heart of the world, he said,
wonderful only from the mass of human beings. He liked the huge
machine. Each keeps its own round. The baker's boy brings
muffins to the window at a fixed hour every day, and that is all
the Londoner knows or wishes to know on the subject. But it
turned out good men. He named certain individuals, especially
one man of letters, his friend, the best mind he knew, whom
London had well served."

Such is the record of the beginnings of the friendship between
Carlyle and Emerson. What place this friendship held in the
lives of both, the following Correspondence shows.

---------

I. Emerson to Carlyle

Boston, Massachusetts, 14 May, 1884

My Dear Sir,--There are some purposes we delay long to execute
simply because we have them more at heart than others, and such
an one has been for many weeks, I may say months, my design of
writing you an epistle.

Some chance wind of Fame blew your name to me, perhaps two years
ago, as the author of papers which I had already distinguished
(as indeed it was very easy to do) from the mass of English
periodical criticism as by far the most original and profound
essays of the day,--the works of a man of Faith as well as
Intellect, sportive as well as learned, and who, belonging to the
despairing and deriding class of philosophers, was not ashamed to
hope and to speak sincerely. Like somebody in _Wilhelm Meister_,
I said: This person has come under obligati