Today I get answer about Alfred Tennyson:  all is right on that side.  Moxon informs me that the Russell Books and Letter arrived duly, and were duly forwarded and safely received; nay, farther, that Tennyson is now in Town, and means to come and see me.  Of this latter result I shall be very glad:  Alfred is one of the few British or Foreign Figures (a not increasing number I think!) who are and remain beautiful to me;—­a true human soul, or some authentic approximation thereto, to whom your own soul can say, Brother!—­However, I doubt he will not come; he often skips me, in these brief visits to Town; skips everybody indeed; being a man solitary and sad, as certain men are, dwelling in an element of gloom,—­carrying a bit of Chaos about him, in short, which he is manufacturing into Cosmos!

Alfred is the son of a Lincolnshire Gentleman Farmer, I think; indeed, you see in his verses that he is a native of “moated granges,” and green, fat pastures, not of mountains and their torrents and storms.  He had his breeding at Cambridge, as if for the Law or Church; being master of a small annuity on his Father’s decease, he preferred clubbing with his Mother and some Sisters, to live unpromoted and write Poems.  In this way he lives still, now here, now there; the family always within reach of London, never in it; he himself making rare and brief visits, lodging in some old comrade’s rooms.  I think he must be under forty, not much under it.  One of the finest-looking men in the world.  A great shock of rough dusty-dark hair; bright-laughing hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massive yet most delicate; of sallow-brown complexion, almost Indian-looking; clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy;—­smokes infinite tobacco.  His voice is musical metallic,—­fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech, and speculation free and plenteous:  I do not meet, in these late decades, such company over a pipe!—­We shall see what he will grow to.  He is often unwell; very chaotic,—­his way is through Chaos and the Bottomless and Pathless; not handy for making out many miles upon. (O Paper!)

I trust there is now joy in place of pain in the House at Concord, and a certain Mother grateful again to the Supreme Powers!  We are all in our customary health here, or nearly so; my Wife has been in Lancashire, among her kindred there, for a month lately:  our swollen City is getting empty and still; we think of trying an Autumn here this time.—­Get your Book ready; there are readers ready for it!  And be busy and victorious!

Ever Yours,
        T. Carlyle

My History is frightful!  If I live, it is like to be completed; but whether I shall live, and not rather be buried alive, broken-hearted, in the Serbonian Quagmires of English Stupidity, and so sleep beside Cromwell, often seems uncertain.  Erebus has no uglier, brutaler element.  Let us say nothing of it.  Let us do it, or leave it to the Devils. Ay de mi!