one complete week!  And so it lies, under lock and key.  I have digested the whole misery; I say, if thou canst never write this thing, why then never do write it:  God’s Universe will go along better—­without it.  My Belief in a special Providence grows yearly stronger, unsubduable, impregnable:  however, you see all the mad increase of entanglement I have got to strive with, and will pity me in it.  Bodily exhaustion (and “Diana in the shape of bile")* I will at least try to exclude from the controversy.  By God’s blessing, perhaps the Book shall yet be written; but I find it will not do, by sheer direct force; only by gentler side-methods.  I have much else to write too:  I feel often as if with one year of health and peace I could write something considerable;—­the image of which sails dim and great through my head.  Which year of health and peace, God, if He see meet, will give me yet; or withhold from me, as shall be for the best.

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* This allusion to Diana as an obstruction was a favorite one
with Carlyle.  “Sir Hudibras, according to Butler, was about to do
a dreadful homicide,—­an all-important catastrophe,—­and had
drawn his pistol with that full intent, and would decidedly have
done it, had not, says Butler, ‘Diana in the shape of rust’
imperatively intervened.   A miracle she has occasionally wrought
upon me in other shapes.”   So wrote Carlyle in a letter in 1874.
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I have dwelt and swum now for about a year in this World-Maelstrom of London; with much pain, which however has given me many thoughts, more than a counterbalance for that.  Hitherto there is no outlook, but confusion, darkness, innumerable things against which a man must “set his face like a flint.”  Madness rules the world, as it has generally done:  one cannot, unhappily, without loss, say to it, Rule then; and yet must say it.—­However, in two months more I expect my good Brother from Italy (a brave fellow, who is a great comfort to me); we are then for Scotland to gather a little health, to consider ourselves a little.  I must have this Book done before anything else will prosper with me.

Your American Pamphlets got to hand only a few days ago; worthy old Rich had them not originally; seemed since to have been oblivious, out of Town, perhaps unwell.  I called one day, and unearthed them.  Those papers you marked I have read.  Genuine endeavor; which may the Heavens forward!—­In this poor Country all is swallowed up in the barren Chaos of Politics:  Ministries tumbled out, Ministries tumbled in; all things (a fearful substratum of “Ignorance and Hunger” weltering and heaving under them) apparently in rapid progress towards—­the melting-pot.  There will be news from England by and by:  many things have reached their term; Destiny “with lame foot” has overtaken them, and there will be a reckoning.  O blessed are you where, what jargoning soever there be at Washington, the poor man (ungoverned can govern himself) shoulders his age, and walks into the Western Woods, sure of a nourishing Earth and an overarching Sky!  It is verily the Door of Hope to distracted Europe; which otherwise I should see crumbling down into blackness of darkness.—­That too shall be for good.