and Literary Gazettes of our improved Epoch?—­I did not leave London, except for fourteen days in August, to a fine and high old Lady-friend’s in Kent; where, riding about the woods and by the sea-beaches and chalk cliffs, in utter silence, I felt sadder than ever, though a little less miserably so, than in the intrusive babblements of London, which I could not quite lock out of doors.  We read, at first, Tennyson’s Idyls, with profound recognition of the finely elaborated execution, and also of the inward perfection of vacancy,—­and, to say truth, with considerable impatience at being treated so very like infants, though the lollipops were so superlative.  We gladly changed for one Emerson’s English Traits; and read that, with increasing and ever increasing satisfaction every evening; blessing Heaven that there were still Books for grown-up people too!  That truly is a Book all full of thoughts like winged arrows (thanks to the Bowyer from us both):—­my Lady-friend’s name is Miss Davenport Bromley; it was at Wooton, in her Grandfather’s House, in Staffordshire, that Rousseau took shelter in 1760; and one hundred and six years later she was reading Emerson to me with a recognition that would have pleased the man, had he seen it.

About that same time my health and humors being evidently so, the Dowager Lady Ashburton (not the high Lady you saw, but a Successor of Mackenzie-Highland type), who wanders mostly about the Continent since her widowhood, for the sake of a child’s health, began pressing and inviting me to spend the blade months of Winter here in her Villa with her;—­all friends warmly seconding and urging; by one of whom I was at last snatched off, as if by the hair of the head, (in spite of my violent No, no!) on the eve of Christmas last, and have been here ever since,—­ really with improved omens.  The place is beautiful as a very picture, the climate superlative (today a sun and sky like very June); the hospitality of usage beyond example.  It is likely I shall be here another six weeks, or longer.  If you please to write me, the address is on the margin; and I will answer.  Adieu.

—­T.  Carlyle

CLXXVI.  Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 18 November, 1869

Dear Emerson,—­It is near three years since I last wrote to you; from Mentone, under the Ligurian Olive and Orange trees, and their sombre foreign shadows, and still more sombre suggestings and promptings; the saddest, probably, of all living men.  That you made no answer I know right well means only, “Alas, what can I say to him of consolatory that he does not himself know!” Far from a fault, or perhaps even a mistake on your part;—­nor have I felt it otherwise.  Sure enough, among the lights that have gone out for me, and are still going, one after one, under the inexorable Decree, in this now dusky and lonely world, I count with frequent regret that our Correspondence (not by absolute hest of Fate) should have fallen extinct, or into such abeyance:  but I interpret it as you see; and my love and brotherhood to you remain alive, and will while I myself do.  Enough of this.  By lucky chance, as you perceive, you are again to get one written Letter from me, and I a reply from you, before the final Silence come.  The case is this.