noblest self-assertion, and believing originality, which is like sacred fire, the beginning of whatsoever is to flame and work; and for young men especially one sees not what could be more vivifying.  Speak, therefore, while you feel called to do it; and when you feel called.  But for yourself, my friend, I prophesy it will not do always:  a faculty is in you for a sort of speech which is itself action, an artistic sort.  You tell us with piercing emphasis that man’s soul is great; show us a great soul of a man, in some work symbolic of such:  this is the seal of such a message, and you will feel by and by that you are called to this.  I long to see some concrete Thing, some Event, Man’s Life, American Forest, or piece of Creation, which this Emerson loves and wonders at, well Emersonized, depictured by Emerson, filled with the life of Emerson, and cast forth from him then to live by itself.  If these Orations balk me of this, how profitable soever they be for others.  I will not love them.—­And yet, what am I saying?  How do I know what is good for you, what authentically makes your own heart glad to work in it?  I speak from without, the friendliest voice must speak from without; and a man’s ultimate monition comes only from within. Forgive me, and love me, and write soon. A Dieu!

—­T.  Carlyle

My Wife, very proud of your salutation, sends a sick return of greeting.  After a winter of unusual strength, she took cold the other day, and coughs again; though she will not call it serious yet.  One likes none of these things.  She has a brisk heart and a stout, but too weak a frame for this rough life of mine.  I will not get sad about it.

One of the strangest things about these New England Orations is a fact I have heard, but not yet seen, that a certain W. Gladstone, an Oxford crack Scholar, Tory M.P., and devout Churchman of great talent and hope, has contrived to insert a piece of you (first Oration it must be) in a work of his on Church and State, which makes some figure at present!  I know him for a solid, serious, silent-minded man; but how with his Coleridge Shovel-Hattism he has contrived to relate himself to you, there is the mystery.  True men of all creeds, it would seem, are Brothers.

To write soon!

XXXIV.  Emerson to Carlyle*

Concord, 15 March, 1839

My Dear Friend,—­I will spare you my apologies for not writing, they are so many.  You have been very generous, I very promising and dilatory.  I desired to send you an Account of the sales of the History, thinking that the details might be more intelligible to you than to me, and might give you some insight into literary and social, as well as bibliopolical relations.  But many details of this account will not yet settle themselves into