Now as to the welcome hint that you might come to America, it shall be to me a joyful hope.  Come and found a new Academy that shall be church and school and Parnassus, as a true Poet’s house should be.  I dare not say that wit has better chance here than in England of winning world-wages, but it can always live, and it can scarce find competition.  Indeed, indeed, you shall have the continent to yourself were it only as Crusoe was king.  If you cared to read literary lectures, our people have vast curiosity, and the apparatus is very easy to set agoing.  Such ‘pulpit’ as you pleased to erect would at least find no hindrance in the building.  A friend of mine and of yours remarked, when I expressed the wish that you would come here, “that people were not here, as in England, sacramented to organized schools of opinion, but were a far more convertible audience.”  If at all you can think of coming here, I would send you any and all particulars of information with cheerfulest speed.

I have written a very long letter, yet have said nothing of much that I would say upon chapters of the Sartor. I must keep that, and the thoughts I had upon ‘poetry in history’,’ for another letter, or (might it be!) for a dialogue face to face.

Let me not fail of The Diamond Necklace. I found three greedy receivers of Teufelsdrockh, who also radiate its light.  For the sake of your knowing what manner of men you move, I send you two pieces writ by one of them, Frederic Henry Hedge, the article on Swedenborg and that on Phrenology.  And as you like Sampson Reed, here are one or two more of his papers.  Do read them.  And since you study French history do not fail to look at our Yankee portrait of Lafayette.  Present my best remembrances to Mrs. Carlyle, whom that stern and blessed solitude has armed and sublimed out of all reach of the littleness and unreason of London.  If I thought we could win her to the American shore, I would send her the story of those godly women, the contemporaries of John Knox’s daughter, who came out hither to enjoy the worship of God amidst wild men and wild beasts.

Your friend and servant,
                    R. Waldo Emerson

IV.  Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London 3 February, 1835

My Dear Sir,—­I owe you a speedy answer as well as a grateful one; for, in spite of the swift ships of the Americans, our communings pass too slowly.  Your letter, written in November, did not reach me till a few days ago; your Books or Papers have not yet come,—­though the ever-punctual Rich, I can hope, will now soon get them for me.  He showed me his way-bill or invoice, and the consignment of these friendly effects “to another gentleman,” and undertook with an air of great fidelity to bring all to a right bearing.  On the whole, as the Atlantic is so broad and deep, ought we not rather to esteem it a beneficent miracle that