My Dear Emerson,--Your last letter found me on the southern
border of Yorkshire, whither Richard Milnes had persuaded me with
him, for the time they call "Easter Holidays" here. I was to
shake off the remnants of an ugly _Influenza_ which still hung
about me; my little portmanteau, unexpectedly driven in again by
perverse accidents, had stood packed, its cowardly owner, the
worst of all travelers, standing dubious the while, for two weeks
or more; Milnes offering to take me as under his cloak, I went
with Milnes. The mild, cordial, though something dilettante
nature of the man distinguishes him for me among men, as men go.
For ten days I rode or sauntered among Yorkshire fields and
knolls; the sight of the young Spring, new to me these seven
years, was beautiful, or better than beauty. Solitude itself,
the great Silence of the Earth, was as balm to this weary, sick
heart of mine; not Dragons of Wantley (so they call Lord
Wharncliffe, the wooden Tory man), not babbling itinerant
Barrister people, fox-hunting Aristocracy, nor Yeomanry Captains
cultivating milk-white mustachios, nor the perpetual racket, and
"dinner at eight o'clock," could altogether countervail the fact
that green Earth was around one and unadulterated sky overhead,
and the voice of waters and birds,--not the foolish speech of
Cockneys at _all_ times!--On the last morning, as Richard and I
drove off towards the railway, your Letter came in, just in time;
and Richard, who loves you well, hearing from whom it was, asked
with such an air to see it that I could not refuse him. We
parted at the "station," flying each his several way on the wings
of Steam; and have not yet met again. I went over to Leeds,
staid two days with its steeple-chimneys and smoke-volcano still
in view; then hurried over to native Annandale, to see my aged
excellent Mother yet again in this world while she is spared to
me. My birth-land is always as the Cave of Trophonius to me; I
return from it with a haste to which the speed of Steam is slow,
--with no smile on my face; avoiding all speech with men! It is
not yet eight-and-forty hours since I got back; your Letter is
among the first I answer, even with a line; your new Book--But
we will not yet speak of that....
My Friend, I _thank_ you for this Volume of yours; not for the
copy alone which you send to me, but for writing and printing
such a Book. _Euge!_ say I, from afar. The voice of one crying
in the desert;--it is once more the voice of a _man._ Ah me! I
feel as if in the wide world there were still but this one voice
that responded intelligently to my own; as if the rest were all
hearsays, melodious or unmelodious echoes; as if this alone were
true and alive. My blessing on you, good Ralph Waldo! I read
the Book all yesterday; my Wife scarcely yet done with telling
me her news. It has rebuked me, it has aroused and comforted me.
Objections of all kinds I might make, how many objections to
superficies and detail, to a dialect of thought and speech as yet
imperfect enough, a hundred-fold too narrow for the Infinitude it
strives to speak: but what were all that? It is an Infinitude,
the real vision and belief of one, seen face to face: a "voice
of the heart of Nature" is here once more. This is the one fact
for me, which absorbs all others whatsoever. Persist, persist;
you have much to say and to do. These voices of yours which I
likened to unembodied souls, and censure sometimes for having no
body,--how can they have a body? They are light-rays darting
upwards in the East; they will yet make much and much to have a
body! You are a new era, my man, in your new huge country: God
give you strength, and speaking and silent faculty, to do such a
work as seems possible now for you! And if the Devil will be
pleased to set all the Popularities _against_ you and evermore
against you,--perhaps that is of all things the very kindest any
_Angel_ could do.
Of myself I have nothing good to report. Years of sick idleness
and barrenness have grown wearisome to me. I do nothing. I
waver and hover, and painfully speculate even now as to health,
and where I shall spend the summer out of London! I am a very
poor fellow;--but hope to grow better by and by. Then this
_alluvies_ of foul lazy stuff that has long swum over me may
perhaps yield the better harvest. _Esperons!_--Hail to all of
you from both of us.
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle