Dear Emerson,--Though I wrote to you very lately, and am in great
haste today, I must lose no time in announcing that the Letter
with the L40 draught came to hand some mornings ago; and now,
this same morning, a second Letter round by Dumfriesshire, which
had been sent as a duplicate, or substitute in case of accident,
for the former. It is all right, my friend ----'s paper has got
itself changed into forty gold sovereigns, and lies here waiting
use; thanks, many thanks! Sums of that kind come always upon me
like manna out of the sky; surely they, more emphatically than
any others, are the gift of Heaven. Let us receive, use, and be
thankful. I am not so poor now at all; Heaven be praised:
indeed, I do not know, now and then when I reflect on it, whether
being rich were not a considerably harder problem. With the
wealth of Rothschild what farther good thing could one get,--if
not perhaps some but to live in, under free skies, in the
country, with a horse to ride and have a little less pain on?
_Angulus ille ridet!_--I will add, for practical purposes in the
future, that it is in general of little or no moment whether an
American Bill be at sight or after a great many days; that the
paper can wait as conveniently here as the cash can,--if your New
England House and Baring of Old England will forbear bankruptcy
in the mean while. By the bye, will you tell me some time or
other in _what_ American funds it is that your funded money, you
once gave me note of, now lies? I too am creditor to America,--
State of Illinois or some such State: one thousand dollars of
mine, which some years ago I had no use for, now lies there,
paying I suppose for canals, in a very obstructed condition! My
Brother here is continually telling me that I shall lose it all,
--which is not so bad; but lose it all by my own unreason,--which
is very bad. It struck me I would ask where Emerson's money
lies, and lay mine there too, let it live or perish as it likes!
Your _Adelphi_ went straightway off to Miss Martineau with a
message. Richard Milnes has another; John Sterling is to have a
third,--had certain other parties seen it first. For the man
Emerson is become a person to be _seen_ in these times. I also
gave a _Morning-Chronicle_ Editor your brave eulogy on Landor,
with instructions that it were well worth publishing there, for
Landor's and others' sake. Landor deserves more praise than he
gets at present; the world too, what is far more, should hear of
him oftener than it does. A brave man after his kind,--though
considerably "flamed on from the Hell beneath." He speaks
notable things; and at lowest and worst has the faculty too of
holding his peace.
The "Lectures on the Times" are even now in progress? Good speed
to the Speaker, to the Speech. Your Country is luckier than most
at this time; it has still real Preaching; the tongue of man is
not, whensoever it begins wagging, entirely sure to emit
babblement, twaddlement, sincere--cant, and other noises which
awaken the passionate wish for silence! That must alter
everywhere the human tongue is no wooden watchman's-rattle or
other _obsolete_ implement; it continues forever new and useful,
nay indispensable.