beautiful genius, born to speak well, and whose conversation for these last years has treated every grave question of humanity, and has been my daily bread.  I have put so much dependence on his gifts that we made but one man together; for I needed never to do what he could do by noble nature much better than I. He was to have been married in this month, and at the time of his sickness and sudden death I was adding apartments to my house for his permanent accommodation.  I wish that you could have known him.  At twenty-seven years the best life is only preparation.  He built his foundation so large that it needed the full age of man to make evident the plan and proportions of his character.  He postponed always a particular to a final and absolute success, so that his life was a silent appeal to the great and generous.  But some time I shall see you and speak of him.

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* Charles Chauncy Emerson,—­died May 9, 1836,—­whose memory still
survives fresh and beautiful in the hearts of the few who remain
who knew him in life.   A few papers of his published in the
Dial show to others what he was and what he might have become.
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We want but two or three friends, but these we cannot do without, and they serve us in every thought we think.  I find now I must hold faster the remaining jewels of my social belt.  And of you I think much and anxiously since Mrs. Channing, amidst her delight at what she calls the happiest hour of her absence, in her acquaintance with you and your family, expresses much uneasiness respecting your untempered devotion to study.  I am the more disturbed by her fears, because your letters avow a self-devotion to your work, and I know there is no gentle dulness in your temperament to counteract the mischief.  I fear Nature has not inlaid fat earth enough into your texture to keep the ethereal blade from whetting it through.  I write to implore you to be careful of your health.  You are the property of all whom you rejoice in art and soul, and you must not deal with your body as your own.  O my friend, if you would come here and let me nurse you and pasture you in my nook of this long continent, I will thank God and you therefor morning and evening, and doubt not to give you, in a quarter of a year, sound eyes, round cheeks, and joyful spirits.  My wife has been lately an invalid, but she loves you thoroughly, and hardly stores a barrel of flour or lays her new carpet without some hopeful reference to Mrs. Carlyle.  And in good earnest, why cannot you come here forthwith, and deliver in lectures to the solid men of Boston the History of the French Revolution before it is published,—­or at least whilst it is publishing in England, and before it is published here.  There is no doubt of the perfect success of such a course now that the five hundred copies of the Sartor are all sold, and read with great delight by many persons.