I hope you penetrated the Armida Palace, and did your devoir to the sublime Duchess and her Luncheon yesterday!  I cannot without a certain internal amusement (foreign enough to my present humor) represent to myself such a conjunction of opposite stars!  But you carry a new image off with you, and are a gainer, you. Allons.

My Papers here are in a state of distraction, state of despair!  I see not what is to become of them and me.

Yours ever truly,
            T. Carlyle

My Wife arose without headache on Monday morning; but feels still a good deal beaten;—­has not had “such a headache” for several years.

CXXXVII.  Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, Friday [23 June, 1848]

Dear Emerson,—­I forgot to say, last night, that you are to dine with us on Sunday; that after our call on the Lady Harriet* we will take a stroll through the Park, look at the Sunday population, and find ourselves here at five o’clock for the above important object.  Pray remember, therefore, and no excuse!  In haste.

Yours ever truly,
             T. Carlyle

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* Lady Ashburton
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CXXXVIII.  Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 6 December, 1848

Dear Emerson,—­We received your Letter* duly, some time ago, with many welcomes; and have as you see been too remiss in answering it.  Not from forgetfulness, if you will take my word; no, but from many causes, too complicated to articulate, and justly producing an indisposition to put pen to paper at all!  Never was I more silent than in these very months; and, with reason too, for the world at large, and my own share of it in small, are both getting more and more unspeakable with any convenience!  In health we of this household are about as well as usual;—­and look across to the woods of Concord with more light than we had, realizing for ourselves a most mild and friendly picture there.  Perhaps it is quite as well that you are left alone of foreign interference, even of a Letter from Chelsea, till you get your huge bale of English reminiscences assorted a little.  Nobody except me seems to have heard from you; at least the rest, in these parts, all plead destitution when I ask for news.  What you saw and suffered and enjoyed here will, if you had once got it properly warehoused, be new wealth to you for many years.  Of one impression we fail not here:  admiration of your pacific virtues, of gentle and noble tolerance, often sorely tried in this place!  Forgive me my ferocities; you do not quite know what I suffer in these latitudes, or perhaps it would be even easier for you.  Peace for me, in a Mother of Dead Dogs like this, there is not, was not, will not be,—­till the battle itself end; which, however, is a sure outlook, and daily growing a nearer one.