Such press-correctings and arrangings waste my time here, not in the agreeablest way.  I begin, though in as sulky a state of health as ever, to look again towards some new kind of work.  I have often thought of Cromwell and Puritans; but do not see how the subject can be presented still alive.  A subject dead is not worth presenting.  Meanwhile I read rubbish of Books; Eichhorn, Grimm, &c.; very considerable rubbish; one grain in the cart load worth pocketing.  It is pity I have no appetite for lecturing!  Many applications have been made to me here;—­none more touching to me than one, the day before yesterday, by a fine, innocent-looking Scotch lad, in the name of himself and certain other Booksellers’ shopmen eastward in the City!  I cannot get them out of my head.  Poor fellows! they have nobody to say an honest word to them, in this articulate-speaking world, and they apply to me.—­For you, good friend, I account you luckier; I do verily:  lecture there what innumerable things you have got to say on “The Present Age";—­yet withal do not forget to write either, for that is the lasting plan after all.  I have a curious Note, sent me for inspection the other day; it is addressed to a Scotch Mr. Erskine (famed among the saints here) by a Madame Necker, Madame de Stael’s kinswoman, to whom he, the said Mr. Erskine, had lent your first Pamphlet at Geneva.  She regards you with a certain love, yet a shuddering love.  She says, “Cela sent l’Americain qui apres avoir abattu les forets a coup de hache, croit qu’on doit de meme conquerir le monde intellectuel”!  What R.M.  Milnes will say of you we hope also to see.—­I know both Heraud and Landor; but alas, what room is here!  Another sheet with less of “Arithmetic” in it will soon be allowed me.  Adieu, dear friend.

Yours, ever and ever,
                T. Carlyle

LI.  Emerson to Carlyle*

New York, 18 March, 1840

My Dear Friend,—­I have just seen the steamer “British Queen” enter the harbor from sea, and here lies the “Great Western,” to sail tomorrow.  I will not resist hints so broad upon my long procrastinations.  You shall have at least a tardy acknowledgment that I received in January your letter of December, which I should have answered at once had it not found me absorbed in writing foolish lectures which were then in high tide.  I had written you, a little earlier, tidings of the receipt of your French Revolution. Your letter was very welcome, as all your letters are.  I have since seen tidings of the Essay on Chartism in an English periodical, but have not yet got my proof-sheets.  They are probably still rolling somewhere outside of this port, for all our packetships have had the longest passages:  only one has come in for many a week.  We will be as patient as we can.