begin working.  Harriet Martineau is coming hither this evening; with beautiful enthusiasm for the Blacks and others.  She is writing a Novel.  The first American book proved generally rather wearisome, the second not so; we have since been taught (not I) “How to observe.”  Suppose you and I promulgate a treatise next, “How to see”?  The old plan was, to have a pair of eyes first of all, and then to open them:  and endeavor with your whole strength to look. The good Harriet!  But “God,” as the Arabs say, “has given to every people a Prophet (or Poet) in its own speech”:  and behold now Unitarian mechanical Formalism was to have its Poetess too; and stragglings of genius were to spring up even through that like grass through a Macadam highway!—­Adieu, my Friend, I wait still for your heterodox Speech; and love you always.

—­T.  Carlyle

An English Sartor goes off to you this day; through Kennet, to C.C.  Little and J. Brown of Boston; the likeliest conveyance.  It is correctly printed, and that is all.  Its fate here (the fate of the publication, I mean) remains unknown; “unknown and unimportant.”

XXXI.  Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 2 December, 1838

My Dear Emerson,—­Almost the very day after my last Letter went off, the long-expected two volumes of Miscellanies arrived.  The heterodox pamphlet has never yet come to hand.  I am now to write you again about that Miscellany concern the fourth letter, I do believe; but it is confirmatory of the foregoing three, and will be the last, we may hope.

Fraser is charmed with the look of your two volumes; declares them unsurpassable by art of his; and wishes (what is the main part of this message) that you would send his cargo in the bound state, bound and lettered as these are, with the sole difference that the leaves be not cut, or shaved on the sides, our English fashion being to have them rough. He is impatient that the Book were here; desires further that it be sent to the Port of London rather than another Port, and that it be packed in boxes “to keep the covers of the volumes safe,”—­all which I doubt not the Packers and the Shippers of New England have dexterity enough to manage for the best, without desire of his.  If you have printed off nothing yet, I will desire for my own behoof that Two hundred and Sixty be the number sent; I find I shall need some ten to give away:  if your first sheet is printed off, let the number stand as it was.  It would be an improvement if you could print our title-pages on paper a little stronger; that would stand ink, I mean:  the fly leaves in the same, if you have such paper convenient; if not, not.  Farther as to the matter of the title-page, it seems to me your Printer might give a bolder and a broader type to the words “Critical and Miscellaneous,”