I rejoice in what you say of better health and better prospects.  I was glad to hear of Milnes, whose Poems already lay on my table when your letter came.  Since the little Nature book is not quite dead, I have sent you a few copies, and wish you would offer one to Mr. Milnes with my respects.  I hope before a great while I may have somewhat better to send him.  I am ashamed that my little books should be “quoted” as you say.

My affectionate salutations to Mrs. Carlyle, who is to sanction and enforce all I have written on the migration.  In the prospect of your coming I feel it to be foolish to write.  I have very much to say to you.  But now only Good Bye.

—­R.W.  Emerson

XLII.  Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 29 May, 1839

My Dear Emerson,—­Your Letter, dated Boston, 20th April, has been here for some two weeks.  Miss Sedgwick, whom it taught us to expect in “about a fortnight,” has yet given no note of herself, but shall be right welcome whenever she appears.  Miss Martineau’s absence (she is in Switzerland this summer) will probably be a loss to the fair Pilgrim;—­which of course the rest of us ought to exert ourselves to make good....  My Lectures are happily over ten days ago; with “success” enough, as it is called; the only valuable part of which is some L200, gained with great pain, but also with great brevity:—­economical respite for another solar year!  The people were boundlessly tolerant; my agitation beforehand was less this year, my remorse afterwards proportionally greater.  There was but one moderately good Lecture, the last,—­on Sausculottism, to an audience mostly Tory, and rustling with the beautifulest quality silks!  Two things I find:  first that I ought to have had a horse; I had only three incidental rides or gallops, hired rides; my horse Yankee is never yet purchased, but it shall be, for I cannot live, except in great pain, without a horse.  It was sweet beyond measure to escape out of the dustwhirlpool here, and fly, in solitude, through the ocean of verdure and splendor, as far as Harrow and back again; and one’s nerves were clear next day, and words lying in one like water in a well.  But the second thing I found was, that extempore speaking, especially in the way of Lecture, is an art or craft, and requires an apprenticeship, which I have never served.  Repeatedly it has come into my head that I should go to America, this very Fall, and belecture you from North to South till I learn it!  Such a thing does lie in the bottom-scenes, should hard come to hard; and looks pleasant enough.—­On the whole, I say sometimes, I must either begin a Book, or do it.  Books are the lasting thing; Lectures are like corn ground into flour; there are loaves for today, but no wheat harvests for next year.  Rudiments of a new Book (thank Heaven!)