th his best blessing.
Your friend,
R. Waldo Emerson
II. Carlyle to Emerson
5 Great Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London
12 August, 1834
My Dear Sir,--Some two weeks ago I received your kind gift from
Fraser. To say that it was welcome would be saying little: is
it not as a voice of affectionate remembrance, coming from beyond
the Ocean waters, first decisively announcing for me that a whole
New Continent _exists,_--that I too have part and lot there!
"Not till we can think that here and there one is thinking of us,
one is loving us, does this waste Earth become a peopled Garden."
Among the figures I can recollect as visiting our Nithsdale
hermitage,--all like _Apparitions_ now, bringing with them airs
from Heaven or else blasts from the other region,--there is
perhaps not one of a more undoubtedly supernal character than
yourself: so pure and still, with intents so charitable; and
then vanishing too so soon into the azure Inane, as an Apparition
should! Never has your Address in my Notebook met my eye but
with a friendly influence. Judge if I am glad to know that
there, in Infinite Space, you still hold by me.
I have read in both your books at leisure times, and now nearly
finished the smaller one. He is a faithful thinker, that
Swedenborgian Druggist of yours, with really deep ideas, who
makes me too pause and think, were it only to consider what
manner of man he must be, and what manner of thing, after all,
Swedenborgianism must be. "Through the smallest window look
well, and you can look out into the Infinite." Webster also I
can recognize a sufficient, effectual man, whom one must wish
well to, and prophesy well of. The sound of him is nowise
poetic-rhythmic; it is clear, one-toned, you might say metallic,
yet distinct, significant, not without melody. In his face,
above all, I discern that "indignation" which, if it do not make
"verses," makes _useful_ way in the world. The higher such a man
rises, the better pleased I shall be. And so here, looking
over the water, let me repeat once more what I believe is
already dimly the sentiment of all Englishmen, Cisoceanic and
Transoceanic, that we and you are not two countries, and cannot
for the life of us be; but only two _parishes_ of one country,
with such wholesome parish hospitalities, and dirty temporary
parish feuds, as we see; both of which brave parishes _Vivant!
vivant!_ And among the glories of _both_ be Yankee-doodle-doo,
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