Richard Milnes had a Letter from you, one morning lately, when I met him at old Rogers’s.  He is brisk as ever; his kindly Dilettantism looking sometimes as if it would grow a sort of Earnest by and by.  He has a new volume of Poems out:  I advised him to try Prose; he admitted that Poetry would not be generally read again in these ages,—­but pleaded, “It was so convenient for veiling commonplace!” The honest little heart!—­We did not know what to make of the bright Miss —–­ here; she fell in love with my wife;—­the contrary, I doubt, with me:  my hard realism jarred upon her beautiful rose-pink dreams.  Is not all that very morbid,—­unworthy the children of Odin, not to speak of Luther, Knox, and the other Brave?  I can do nothing with vapors, but wish them condensed. Kennet had a copy of the English Miscellanies for you a good many weeks ago:  indeed, it was just a day or two before your advice to try Green henceforth.  Has the Meister ever arrived?  I received a Controversial Volume from Mr. Ripley:  pray thank him very kindly.  Somebody borrowed the Book from me; I have not yet read it.  I did read a Pamphlet which seems now to have been made part of it.  Norton* surely is a chimera; but what has the whole business they are jarring about become?  As healthy worshiping Paganism is to Seneca and Company, so is healthy worshiping Christianity to—­I had rather not work the sum!—­Send me some swift news of yourself, dear Emerson.  We salute you and yours, in all heartiness of brotherhood.

Yours ever and always—­
                  T. Carlyle

---------
* Professor Andrews Norton.   The controversy was that occasioned
by Professor Norton’s Discourse on “The Latest Form of
Infidelity.”
---------

LVI.  Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 30 August, 1840

My Dear Carlyle,—­I fear, nay I know, that when I wrote last to you, about the 1st of July, I promised to follow my sheet immediately with a bookseller’s account.  The bookseller did presently after render his account, but on its face appeared the fact—­which with many and by me unanswerable reasons they supported—­that the balance thereon credited to you was not payable until the 1st of October.  The account is footed “Net sales of French Revolution to 1 July, 1840, due October 1, $249.77.”  Let us hope then that we shall get, not only a new page of statement, but also some small payment in money a month hence.  Having no better story to tell, I told nothing.

But I will not let the second of the Cunard boats leave Boston without a word to you.  Since I wrote by Calvert came your letter describing your lectures and their success:  very welcome news, for a good London newspaper, which I consulted, promised reports, but gave none.  I have heard so oft of your projected trip to America, that my ear would now be dull, and my faith cold, but that I wish it so much.  My friend, your audience still waits for you here willing and eager, and greatly larger no doubt than it would have been when the matter was first debated.