th
and love are apt to be spasmodic in the best minds: Men live on
the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which yet they never
enter, and with their hand on the door-latch they die outside.
Always excepting my wonderful Professor, who among the living has
thrown any memorable truths into circulation? So live and
rejoice and work, my friend, and God you aid, for the profit of
many more than your mortal eyes shall see. Especially seek with
recruited and never-tired vision to bring back yet higher and
truer report from your Mount of Communion of the Spirit that
dwells there and creates all. Have you received a letter from me
with a pamphlet sent in December? Fail not, I beg of you, to
remember me to Mrs. Carlyle.

Can you not have some _Sartors_ sent? Hilliard, Gray, & Co. are
the best publishers in Boston. Or Mr. Rich has connections with
Burdett in Boston.

Yours with respect and affection,
R. Waldo Emerson

VI. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 30 April, 1835

My Dear Sir,--I received your letter of the 3d of February on the
20th instant, and am sorry that hitherto we have not been able to
command a more mercantile promptitude in the transmission of
these light sheets. If desire of a letter before it arrived, or
gladness when it came, could speed its journey, I should have it
the day it was written. But, being come, it makes me sad and
glad by turns. I admire at the alleged state of your English
reading public without comprehending it, and with a hoping
scepticism touching the facts. I hear my Prophet deplore, as his
predecessors did, the deaf ear and the gross heart of his people,
and threaten to shut his lips; but, happily, this he cannot do,
any more than could they. The word of the Lord _will_ be spoken.
But I shall not much grieve that the English people and you are
not of the same mind if that apathy or antipathy can by any means
be the occasion of your visiting America. The hope of this is so
pleasant to me, that I have thought of little else for the week
past, and having conferred with some friends on the matter, I
shall try, in obedience to your request, to give you a statement
of our capabilities, without indulging my penchant for the
favorable side. Your picture of America is faithful enough: yet
Boston contains some genuine taste for literature, and a good
deal of traditional reverence for it. For a few years past, we
have had, every winter, seve