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* Partner in the firm of J. Munroe & Co.
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I received by the “Acadia” a letter from you, which I acknowledge now, lest I should not answer it more at large on another sheet, which I think to do.  If you do not despair of American booksellers send the new proofs of the Lectures when they are in type to me by John Green, 121 Newgate Street (I believe), to the care of J. Munroe & Co.  He sends a box to Munroe by every steamer.  I sent a Dial, No. 2, for you, to Green.  Kennet, I hear, has failed.  I hope he did not give his creditors my Miscellanies, which you told me were there.  I shall be glad if you will draw Cromwell, though if I should choose it would be Carlyle.  You will not feel that you have done your work until those devouring eyes and that portraying hand have achieved England in the Nineteenth Century.  Perhaps you cannot do it until you have made your American visit.  I assure you the view of Britain is excellent from New England.

We are all a little wild here with numberless projects of social reform.  Not a reading man but has a draft of a new Community in his waistcoat pocket.  I am gently mad myself, and am resolved to live cleanly.  George Ripley is talking up a colony of agriculturists and scholars, with whom he threatens to take the field and the book.* One man renounces the use of animal food; and another of coin; and another of domestic hired service; and another of the State; and on the whole we have a commendable share of reason and hope.

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* Preliminary to the experiment of Brook Farm, in 1841.
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I am ashamed to tell you, though it seems most due, anything of my own studies, they seem so desultory, idle, and unproductive.  I still hope to print a book of essays this winter, but it cannot be very large.  I write myself into letters, the last few months, to three or four dear and beautiful persons, my country-men and women here.  I lit my candle at both ends, but will now be colder and scholastic.  I mean to write no lectures this winter.  I hear gladly of your wife’s better health; and a letter of Jane Tuckerman’s, which I saw, gave the happiest tidings of her.  We do not despair of seeing her yet in Concord, since it is now but twelve and a half days to you.

I had a letter from Sterling, which I will answer.  In all love and good hope for you and yours, your affectionate

—­R.W.  Emerson

LIX.  Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 9 December, 1840