who accept thoughts of this vein so readily now, that, if you were speaking on this shore, you would not feel that emphasis you use to be necessary.  I have been feeble and almost sick during all the spring, and have been in Boston but once or twice, and know nothing of the reception the book meets from the Catholic Carlylian Church.  One reader and friend of yours dwells now in my house, and, as I hope, for a twelvemonth to come,—­Henry Thoreau,—­a poet whom you may one day be proud of;—­a noble, manly youth, full of melodies and inventions.  We work together day by day in my garden, and I grow well and strong.  My mother, my wife, my boy and girl, are all in usual health, and according to their several ability salute you and yours.  Do not cease to tell me of the health of your wife and of the learned and friendly physician.

Yours,
   R.W.  Emerson

LXVI.  Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 25 June, 1841

Dear Emerson,—­Now that there begins again to be some program possible of my future motions for some time, I hastily despatch you some needful outline of the same.

After infinite confused uncertainty, I learn yesternight that there has been a kind of country-house got for us, at a place called Annan, on the north shore of the Solway Frith, in my native County of Dumfries.  You passed through the little Burgh, I suppose, in your way homeward from Craigenputtock:  it stands about midway, on the great road, between Dumfries and Carlisle.  It is the place where I got my schooling;—­consider what a preternatural significance such a scene has now got for me!  It is within eight miles of my aged Mother’s dwelling-place; within riding distance, in fact, of almost all the Kindred I have in the world.—­The house, which is built since my time, and was never yet seen by me, is said to be a reasonable kind of house.  We get it for a small sum in proportion to its value (thanks to kind accident); the three hundred miles of travel, very hateful to me, will at least entirely obliterate all traces of this Dust-Babel; the place too being naturally almost ugly, as far as a green leafy place in sight of sea and mountains can be so nicknamed, the whole gang of picturesque Tourists, Cockney friends of Nature, &c., &c., who penetrate now by steam, in shoals every autumn, into the very centre of the Scotch Highlands, will be safe over the horizon!  In short, we are all bound thitherward in few days; must cobble up some kind of gypsy establishment; and bless Heaven for solitude, for the sight of green fields, heathy moors; for a silent sky over one’s head, and air to breathe which does not consist of coal-smoke, finely powdered flint, and other beautiful etceteras of that kind among others!  God knows I have need enough to be left altogether alone for some considerable while (forever, as it at present seems to me), to get my inner world, and my poor bodily nerves,