do sometimes disclose themselves in me. Festina lente. It ought to be better than the French Revolution; I mean better written.  The greater part of that Book, as I read proof-sheets of it in these weeks, does nothing but disgust me.  And yet it was, as nearly as was good, the utmost that lay in me.  I should not like to be nearer killed with any other Book!—­Books too are a triviality.  Life alone is great; with its infinite spaces, its everlasting times, with its Death, with its Heaven and its Hell.  Ah me!

Wordsworth is here at present; a garrulous, rather watery, not wearisome old man.  There is a freshness as of brooks and mountain breezes in him; one says of him:  Thou art not great, but thou art genuine; well speed thou. Sterling is home from Italy, recovered in health, indeed very well could he but sit still. He is for Clifton, near Bristol, for the next three months.  I hear him speak of some sonnet or other he means to address to you:  as for me he knows well that I call his verses timber toned, without true melody either in thought, phrase or sound.  The good John!  Did you ever see such a vacant turnip-lantern as that Walsingham Goethe?  Iconoclast Collins strikes his wooden shoe through him, and passes on, saying almost nothing.—­My space is done!  I greet the little maidkin, and bid her welcome to this unutterable world.  Commend her, poor little thing, to her little Brother, to her Mother and Father;—­ Nature, I suppose, has sent her strong letters of recommendation, without our help, to them all.  Where I shall be in six weeks is not very certain; likeliest in Scotland, whither our whole household, servant and all, is pressingly invited, where they have provided horses and gigs.  Letters sent hither will still find me, or lie waiting for me, safe:  but perhaps the speediest address will be “Care of Fraser, 215 Regent Street.”  My Brother wants me to the Tyrol and Vienna; but I think I shall not go.  Adieu, dear friend.  It is a great treasure to me that I have you in this world.  My Wife salutes you all.—­

Yours ever and ever,
               T. Carlyle

XLIII.  Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 24 June, 1833

Dear Friend,—­Two Letters from you were brought hither by Miss Sedgwick last week.  The series of post Letters is a little embroiled in my head; but I have a conviction that all hitherto due have arrived; that up to the date of my last despatch (a Proof-sheet and a Letter), which ought to be getting into your hands in these very days, our correspondence is clear.  That Letter and Proof-sheet, two separate pieces, were sent to Liverpool some three weeks ago, to be despatched by the first conveyance thence; as I say, they are probably in Boston about this time.  The Proof-sheet was one of the forty-seven such which the new French Revolution is to consist of:  with this, as with a correct sample, you were to act upon some Boston Bookseller, and make a bargain for me,—­or at least report that none was to be made.  A bad bargain will content me now, my hopes are not at all high.