And so my dear brother has quitted the roaring city, and gone back in peace to his own land,—not the man he left it, but richer every way, chiefly in the sense of having done something valiantly and well, which the land, and the lands, and all that wide elastic English race in all their dispersion, will know and thank him for. The holy gifts of nature and solitude be showered upon you! Do you not believe that the fields and woods have their proper virtue, and that there are good and great things which will not be spoken in the city? I give you joy in your new and rightful home, and the same greetings to Jane Carlyle! with thanks and hopes and loves to you both.
—R.W. Emerson
As usual at this season of the year, I, incorrigible spouting Yankee, am writing an oration to deliver to the boys in one of our little country colleges, nine days hence.* You will say I do not deserve the aid of any Muse. O but if you knew how natural it is to me to run to these places! Besides, I always am lured on by the hope of saying something which shall stick by the good boys. I hope Brown did not fail to find you, with thirty-eight sovereigns (I believe) which he should carry you.
---------- * “The Method of Nature. An Address to the Society of the Adelphi, in Waterville College, Maine, August 11, 1841.” ----------
LXVIII. Carlyle to Emerson
Newby, Annan, Scotland, 18 August, 1841
My Dear Emerson,—Two days ago your Letter, direct from Liverpool, reached me here; only fifteen days after date on the other side of the Ocean: one of the swiftest messengers that have yet come from you. Steamers have been known to come, they say, in nine days. By and by we shall visibly be, what I always say we virtually are, members of neighboring Parishes; paying continual visits to one another. What is to hinder huge London from