Having got so far in my writing to you, I do not know but I shall gain heart, and write more letters over sea.  You will think my sloth suicidal enough.  So many men as I learned to value in your country,—­so many as offered me opportunities of intercourse,—­ and I lose them all by silence.  Arthur Helps is a chief benefactor of mine.  I wrote him a letter by Ward,—­who brought the letter back.  I ought to thank John Carlyle, not only for me, but for a multitude of good men and women here who read his Inferno duly.  W.E.  Forster sent me his Penn Pamphlet; I sent it to Bancroft, who liked it well, only he thought Forster might have made a still stronger case.  Clough I prize at a high rate, the man and his poetry, but write not.  Wilkinson I thought a man of prodigious talent, who somehow held it and so taught others to hold it cheap, as we do one of those bushel-basket memories which school-boys and school-girls often show,—­and we stop their mouths lest they be troublesome with their alarming profusion.  But there is no need of beginning to count the long catalogue.  Kindest, kindest remembrance to my benefactress, also in your house, and health and strength and victory to you.

Your affectionate,
             Waldo Emerson

CXLVI.  Carlyle to Emerson

Great Malvern, Worcestershire, 25 August, 1851

Dear Emerson,—­Many thanks for your Letter, which found me here about a week ago, and gave a full solution to my bibliopolic difficulties.  However sore your eyes, or however taciturn your mood, there is no delay of writing when any service is to be done by it!  In fact you are very good to me, and always were, in all manner of ways; for which I do, as I ought, thank the Upper Powers and you.  That truly has been and is one of the possessions of my life in this perverse epoch of the world....

I have sent off by John Chapman a Copy of the Life of Sterling, which is all printed and ready, but is not to appear till the first week of October....  Along with the Sheets was a poor little French Book for you,—­Book of a poor Naval Mississippi Frenchman, one “Bossu,” I think; written only a Century ago, yet which already seemed old as the Pyramids in reference to those strange fast-growing countries.  I read it as a kind of defaced romance; very thin and lean, but all true, and very marvelous as such.

It is above three weeks since my Wife and I left London, (the Printer having done,) and came hither with the purpose of a month of what is called “Water Cure”; for which this place, otherwise extremely pleasant and wholesome, has become celebrated of late years.  Dr. Gully, the pontiff of the business in our Island, warmly encouraged my purpose so soon as he heard of it; nay, urgently offered at once that both of us should become his own guests till the experiment were tried:  and here accordingly