“In Carlyle as in Byron, one is more struck with the rhetoric than with the matter.  He has manly superiority rather than intellectuality, and so makes good hard hits all the time.  There is more character than intellect in every sentence, herein strongly resembling Samuel Johnson.”

“England makes what a step from Dr. Johnson to Carlyle! what wealth of thought and science, what expansion of views and profounder resources does the genius and performance of this last imply!  If she can make another step as large, what new ages open!”

CXXVII.  Emerson to Carlyle

Mrs. Massey’s, Manchester, 2 Fenny Place, Fenny St.
November 5, 1847

Ah! my dear friend, all these days have gone, and you have had no word from me, when the shuttles fly so swiftly in your English loom, and in so few hours we may have tidings of the best that live.  At last, and only this day for the first day, I am stablished in my own lodgings on English ground, and have a fair parlor and chamber, into both of which the sun and moon shine, into which friendly people have already entered.

Hitherto I have been the victim of trifles,—­which is the fate and the chief objection to traveling.  Days are absorbed in precious nothings.  But now that I am in some sort a citizen, of Manchester, and also of Liverpool (for there also I am to enter on lodgings tomorrow, at 56 Stafford Street, Islington), perhaps the social heart of this English world will include me also in its strong and healthful circulations.  I get the best letters from home by the last steamers, and was much occupied in Liverpool yesterday in seeing Dr. Nichol of Glasgow, who was to sail in the “Acadia,” and in giving him credentials to some Americans.  I find here a very kind reception from your friends, as they emphatically are,—­Ireland, Espinasse, Miss Jewsbury, Dr. Hodgson, and a circle expanding on all sides outward,—­and Mrs. Paulet at Liverpool.  I am learning there also to know friendly faces, and a certain Roscoe Club has complimented me with its privileges.  The oddest part of my new position is my alarming penny correspondence, which, what with welcomes, invitations to lecture, proffers of hospitality, suggestions from good Swedenborgists and others for my better guidance touching the titles of my discourses, &c., &c., all requiring answers, threaten to eat up a day like a cherry.  In this fog and miscellany, and until the heavenly sun shall give me one beam, will not you, friend and joy of so many years, send me a quiet line or two now and then to say that you still smoke your pipe in peace, side by side with wife and brother also well and smoking, or able to smoke?  Now that I have in some measure calmed down the astonishment and consternation of seeing your dreams change into realities, I mean, at my next approximation or perihelion, to behold you with the most serene and sceptical calmness.