Your affectionate,
             T. Carlyle

CXLIV.  Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 8 July, 1851

Dear Emerson,—­Don’t you still remember very well that there is such a man?  I know you do, and will do.  But it is a ruinously long while since we have heard a word from each other;—­a state of matters that ought immediately to cease. It was your turn, I think, to write?  It was somebody’s turn!  Nay I heard lately you complained of bad eyes; and were grown abstinent of writing.  Pray contradict me this.  I cannot do without some regard from you while we are both here.  Spite of your many sins, you are among the most human of all the beings I now know in the world;—­ who are a very select set, and are growing ever more so, I can inform you!

In late months, feeling greatly broken and without heart for anything weighty, I have been upon a Life of John Sterling; which will not be good for much, but will as usual gratify me by taking itself off my hands:  it was one of the things I felt a kind of obligation to do, and so am thankful to have done.  Here is a patch of it lying by me, if you will look at a specimen.  There are four hundred or more pages (prophesies the Printer), a good many Letters and Excerpts in the latter portion of the volume.  Already half printed, wholly written; but not to come out for a couple of months yet,—­all trade being at a stand till this sublime “Crystal Palace” go its ways again.—­And now since we are upon the business, I wish you would mention it to E.P.  Clark (is not that the name?) next time you go to Boston:  if that friendly clear-eyed man have anything to say in reference to it and American Booksellers, let him say and do; he may have a Copy for anybody in about a month:  if he have nothing to say, then let there be nothing anywhere said.  For, mark O Philosopher, I expressly and with emphasis prohibit you at this stage of our history, and henceforth, unless I grow poor again.  Indeed, indeed, the commercial mandate of the thing (Nature’s little order on that behalf) being once fulfilled (by speaking to Clark), I do not care a snuff of tobacco how it goes, and will prefer, here as elsewhere, my night’s rest to any amount of superfluous money.

This summer, as you may conjecture, has been very noisy with us, and productive of little,—­the “Wind-dust-ry of all Nations” involving everything in one inane tornado.  The very shopkeepers complain that there is no trade.  Such a sanhedrim of windy fools from all countries of the Globe were surely never gathered in one city before.  But they will go their ways again, they surely will!  One sits quiet in that faith;—­nay, looks abroad with a kind of pathetic grandfatherly feeling over this universal Children’s Ball which the British Nation in these extraordinary circumstances is giving it self!  Silence above all, silence