I had begun to write some Book on Cromwell:  I have often begun, but know not how to set about it; the most unutterable of all subjects I ever felt much meaning to lie in.  There is risk yet that, with the loss of still farther labor, I may have to abandon it;—­and then the great dumb Oliver may lie unspoken forever; gathered to the mighty Silent of the Earth; for, I think, there will hardly ever live another man that will believe in him and his Puritanism as I do.  To him small matter.

Adieu, my good kind Friend, ever dear to me, dearer now in sorrow.  My Wife when she hears of your affliction will send a true thought over to you also.  The poor Lidian!—­John Sterling is driven off again, setting out I think this very day for Gibraltar, Malta, and Naples.  Farewell, and better days to us.

Your affectionate
            T. Carlyle

LXXV.  Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 81 March, 1842

My Dear Carlyle,—­I wrote you a letter from my brother’s office in New York nearly a month ago to tell you how hardly it had fared with me here at home, that the eye of my home was plucked out when that little innocent boy departed in his beauty and perfection from my sight.  Well, I have come back hither to my work and my play, but he comes not back, and I must simply suffer it.  Doubtless the day will come which will resolve this, as everything gets resolved, into light, but not yet.

I write now to tell you of a piece of life.  I wish you to know that there is shortly coming to you a man by the name of Bronson Alcott.  If you have heard his name before, forget what you have heard.  Especially if you have ever read anything to which this name was attached, be sure to forget that; and, inasmuch as in you lies, permit this stranger when he arrives at your gate to make a new and primary impression.  I do not wish to bespeak any courtesies or good or bad opinion concerning him.  You may love him, or hate him, or apathetically pass by him, as your genius shall dictate; only I entreat this, that you do not let him go quite out of your reach until you are sure you have seen him and know for certain the nature of the man.  And so I leave contentedly my pilgrim to his fate.

I should tell you that my friend Margaret Fuller, who has edited our little Dial with such dubious approbation on the part of you and other men, has suddenly decided a few days ago that she will edit it no more.  The second volume was just closing; shall it live for a third year?  You should know that, if its interior and spiritual life has been ill fed, its outward and bibliopolic existence has been worse managed.  Its publishers failed, its short list of subscribers became shorter, and it has never paid its laborious editor, who has been very generous of her time and labor, the smallest remuneration.  Unhappily, to me alone could the