—­T.  Carlyle

We send our felicitation to the Mother and little Boy; which latter you had better tell us the name of.

XV.  Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, Mass., 31 March, 1837

My Dear Friend,—­Last night, I said I would write to you forthwith.  This morning I received your letter of February 13th, and with it the Diamond Necklace, the Mirabeau, and the olive leaf of a proof-sheet.  I write out the sum of my debt as the best acknowledgment I can make.  I had already received, about New-Year’s-Day, the preceding letter.  It came in the midst of my washbowl-storm of a course of Lectures on the Philosophy of History.  For all these gifts and pledges,—­thanks.  Over the finished History, joy and evergreen laurels.  I embrace you with all my heart.  I solace myself with the noble nature God has given you, and in you to me, and to all.  I had read the Diamond Necklace three weeks ago at the Boston Athenaeum, and the Mirabeau I had just read when my copy came.  But the proof-sheet was virgin gold.  The Mirabeau I forebode is to establish your kingdom in England.  That is genuine thunder, which nobody that wears ears can affect to mistake for the rumbling of cart-wheels.  I please myself with thinking that my Angelo has blocked a Colossus which may stand in the public square to defy all competitors.  To be sure, that is its least merit,—­that nobody can do the like,—­yet is it a gag to Cerberus.  Its better merit is that it inspires self-trust, by teaching the immense resources that are in human nature; so I sent it to be read by a brave man who is poor and decried.  The doctrine is indeed true and grand which you preach as by cannonade, that God made a man, and it were as well to stand by and see what is in him, and, if he act ever from his impulses, believe that he has his own checks, and, however extravagant, will keep his orbit, and return from far; a faith that draws confirmation from the sempiternal ignorance and stationariness of society, and the sempiternal growth of all the individuals.

The Diamond Necklace I read with joy, whilst I read with my own eyes.  When I read with English or New-English eyes, my joy is marred by the roaring of the opposition.  I doubt not the exact story is there told as it fell out, and told for the first time; but the eye of your readers, as you will easily guess, will be bewildered by the multitude of brilliant-colored hieroglyphics whereby the meaning is conveyed.  And for the Gig,—­the Gig,—­it is fairly worn out, and such a cloud-compeller must mock that particular symbol no more.