The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 316 pages of information about The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I.

The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 316 pages of information about The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I.

This I suggest if you too must feel the vulgar necessity of doing; but if you will be governed by your friend, you shall come into the meadows, and rest and talk with your friend in my country pasture.  If you will come here like a noble brother, you shall have your solid day undisturbed, except at the hours of eating and walking; and as I will abstain from you myself, so I will defend you from others.  I entreat Mrs. Carlyle, with my affectionate remembrances, to second me in this proposition, and not suffer the wayward man to think that in these space-destroying days a prayer from Boston, Massachusetts, is any less worthy of serious and prompt granting than one from Edinburgh or Oxford.

I send you a little book I have just now published, as an entering wedge, I hope, for something more worthy and significant.* This is only a naming of topics on which I would gladly speak and gladlier hear.  I am mortified to learn the ill fate of my former packet containing the Sartor and Dr. Channing’s work.  My mercantile friend is vexed, for he says accurate orders were given to send it as a packet, not as a letter.  I shall endeavor before despatching this sheet to obtain another copy of our American edition.

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* This was Nature, the first clear manifesto of Emerson’s
genius.
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I wish I could come to you instead of sending this sheet of paper.  I think I should persuade you to get into a ship this Autumn, quit all study for a time, and follow the setting sun.  I have many, many things to learn of you.  How melancholy to think how much we need confession!...* Yet the great truths are always at hand, and all the tragedy of individual life is separated how thinly from that universal nature which obliterates all ranks, all evils, all individualities.  How little of you is in your will! Above your will how intimately are you related to all of us!  In God we meet.  Therein we are, thence we descend upon Time and these infinitesimal facts of Christendom, and Trade, and England Old and New.  Wake the soul now drunk with a sleep, and we overleap at a bound the obstructions, the griefs, the mistakes, of years, and the air we breathe is so vital that the Past serves to contribute nothing to the result.

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** Some words appear to be lost here.
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I read Goethe, and now lately the posthumous volumes, with a great interest.  A friend of mine who studies his life with care would gladly know what records there are of his first ten years after his settlement at Weimar, and what Books there are in Germany about him beside what Mrs. Austin has collected and Heine.  Can you tell me?

Write me of your health, or else come.

Yours ever,
      R.W.  Emerson.

P.S.—­I learn that an acquaintance is going to England, so send the packet by him.

XIII.  Carlyle to Emerson

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The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.