And so now by a direct transition I am got to the Oration. My friend! you know not what you have done for me there.  It was long decades of years that I had heard nothing but the infinite jangling and jabbering, and inarticulate twittering and screeching, and my soul had sunk down sorrowful, and said there is no articulate speaking then any more, and thou art solitary among stranger-creatures? and lo, out of the West comes a clear utterance, clearly recognizable as a man’s voice, and I have a kinsman and brother:  God be thanked for it!  I could have wept to read that speech; the clear high melody of it went tingling through my heart;—­I said to my wife, “There, woman!” She read; and returned, and charges me to return for answer, “that there had been nothing met with like it since Schiller went silent.”  My brave Emerson!  And all this has been lying silent, quite tranquil in him, these seven years, and the “vociferous platitude” dinning his ears on all sides, and he quietly answering no word; and a whole world of Thought has silently built itself in these calm depths, and, the day being come, says quite softly, as if it were a common thing, “Yes, I am here too.”  Miss Martineau tells me, “Some say it is inspired, some say it is mad.”  Exactly so; no say could be suitabler.  But for you, my dear friend, I say and pray heartily:  May God grant you strength; for you have a fearful work to do!  Fearful I call it; and yet it is great, and the greatest.  O for God’s sake keep yourself still quiet! Do not hasten to write; you cannot be too slow about it.  Give no ear to any man’s praise or censure; know that that is not it:  on the one side is as Heaven if you have strength to keep silent, and climb unseen; yet on the other side, yawning always at one’s right-hand and one’s left, is the frightfulest Abyss and Pandemonium!  See Fenimore Cooper;—­poor Cooper, he is down in it; and had a climbing faculty too.  Be steady, be quiet, be in no haste; and God speed you well!  My space is done.

And so adieu, for this time.  You must write soon again.  My copy of the Oration has never come:  how is this?  I could dispose of a dozen well.—­They say I am to lecture again in Spring, Ay de mi! The “Book” is babbled about sufficiently in several dialects:  Fraser wants to print my scattered Reviews and Articles; a pregnant sign.  Teufelsdrockh to precede.  The man “screamed” once at the name of it in a very musical manner.  He shall not print a line; unless he give me money for it, more or less.  I have had enough of printing for one while,—­thrown into “magnetic sleep” by it!  Farewell my brother.

—­T.  Carlyle

O. Rich, it seems, is in Spain.  His representative assured me, some weeks since, that the Account was now sent.  There is an Article on Sir W. Scott:  shocking; invitissima Minerva!*