My brother William was here this week from New York, and will come again to carry my mother home with him for the winter; my wife and children three are combining for and against me; at all events, I am to have my visit.  I pray you to cherish your good nature, your mercy.  Let your wife cherish it,—­that I may see, I indolent, this incredible worker, whose toil has been long since my pride and wonder,—­that I may see him benign and unexacting,—­ he shall not be at the crisis of some over-labor.  I shall not stay but an hour.  What do I care for his fame?  Ah! how gladly I hoped once to see Sterling as mediator and amalgam, when my turn should come to see the Saxon gods at home:  Sterling, who had certain American qualities in his genius;—­and now you send me his shade.  I found at Munroe’s shop the effigy, which, he said, Cunningham, whom I have not seen or heard from, had left there for me; a front face, and a profile, both—­especially the first —­a very welcome satisfaction to my sad curiosity, the face very national, certainly, but how thoughtful and how friendly!  What more belongs to this print—­whether you are editing his books, or yourself drawing his lineaments—­I know not.

I find my friends have laid out much work for me in Yorkshire and Lancashire.  What part of it I shall do, I cannot yet tell.  As soon as I know how to arrange my journey best, I shall write you again.

Yours affectionately,
                 R.W.  Emerson

CXXIV.  Carlyle to Emerson

Rawdon, Near Leeds, Yorkshire
31 August, 1847

Dear Emerson,—­Almost ever since your last Letter reached me, I have been wandering over the country, enveloped either in a restless whirl of locomotives, view-hunting, &c., or sunk in the deepest torpor of total idleness and laziness, forgetting, and striving to forget, that there was any world but that of dreams; —­and though at intervals the reproachful remembrance has arisen sharply enough on me, that I ought, on all accounts high and low, to have written you an answer, never till today have I been able to take pen in hand, and actually begin that operation!  Such is the naked fact.  My Wife is with me; we leave no household behind us but a servant; the face of England, with its mad electioneerings, vacant tourist dilettantings, with its shady woods, green yellow harvest-fields and dingy mill-chimneys, so new and old, so beautiful and ugly, every way so abstruse and unspeakable, invites to silence; the whole world, fruitful yet disgusting to this human soul of mine, invites me to silence; to sleep, and dreams, and stagnant indifference, as if for the time one had got into the country of the Lotos-Eaters, and it made no matter what became of anything and all things.  In good truth, it is a wearied man, at least a dreadfully slothful and slumberous man, eager for sleep in any quantity, that now addresses you!  Be thankful for a few half-dreaming words, till we awake again.