hallucinations, excitations, tempestuous confusions, I can see he has.  Enough of him!  Me he likes well enough, more thanks to him; but two hours of such speech as his leave me giddy and undone.  I have seen some other Lions, and Lion’s-providers; but consider them a worthless species.—­When will you write, then?  Consider my frightful outlook with a Course of Lectures to give “On Heroes and Hero-worship,”—­from Odin to Robert Burns!  My Wife salutes you all.  Good be in the Concord Household!

Yours ever,
         T. Carlyle

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* There is an account of Heraud by an admirer in the Dial for
October, 1842, p. 241.   It contrasts curiously and instructively
with Carlyle’s sketch.
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LIII.  Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 21 April, 1840

My Dear Friend,—­Three weeks ago I received a letter from you following another in the week before, which I should have immediately acknowledged but that I was promised a private opportunity for the 25th of April, by which time I promised myself to send you sheets of accounts.  I had also written you from New York about the middle of March.  But now I suppose Mr. Grinnell—­a hospitable, humane, modest gentleman in Providence, R.I., a merchant, much beloved by all his townspeople, and, though no scholar, yet very fond of silently listening to such—­ is packing his trunk to go to England.  He offered to carry any letters for me, and as at his house during my visit to Providence I was eagerly catechised by all comers concerning Thomas Carlyle, I thought it behoved me to offer him for his brethren, sisters, and companions’ sake, the joy of seeing the living face of that wonderful man.  Let him see thy face and pass on his way.  I who cannot see it, nor hear the voice that comes forth of it, must even betake me to this paper to repay the best I can the love of the Scottish man, and in the hope to deserve more.

Your letter announces Wilhelm Meister, Sterling’s Poems, and Chartism. I am very rich, or am to be.  But Kennet is no Mercury. Wilhelm and Sterling have not yet made their appearance, though diligently inquired after by Stearns Wheeler and me.  Little and Brown now correspond with Longman, not with Kennet.  But they will come soon, perhaps are already arrived.

Chartism arrived at Concord by mail not until one of the last days of March, though dated by you, I think, the 21st of December.  I returned home on the 3d of April, and found it waiting.  All that is therein said is well and strongly said, and as the words are barbed and feathered the memory of men cannot choose but carry them whithersoever men go.  And yet I thought the book itself instructed me to look for more.  We seemed to have a right to an answer less concise to a question so grave and humane, and put with energy and eloquence.  I mean that whatever probabilities or possibilities