Dear Emerson, Some ten days ago came your Letter with a new Draft
of L32 and odd money in it: all safe; the Draft now gone into
the City to ripen into gold and silver, the Letter to be
acknowledged by some hasty response now and here. America, I say
to myself looking at these money drafts, is a strange place; the
highest comes out of it and the lowest! Sydney Smith is singing
dolefully about doleful American repudiation, "_dis_owning of the
soft impeachment"; and here on the other hand is an American
man, in virtue of whom America has become definable withal as a
place from which fall heavenly manna-showers upon certain men, at
certain seasons of history, when perhaps manna-showers were not
the unneedfulest things!--We will take the good and the evil,
here as elsewhere, and heartily bless Heaven.
But now for the Draft at the top of this leaf. One Colman,* a
kind of Agricultural Missionary, much in vogue here at present,
has given it me; it is Emerson's, the net produce hitherto (all
but two cents) of _Emerson's Essays._ I enclose farther the
Bookseller's hieroglyph papers; unintelligible as all such are;
but sent over to you for scrutiny by the expert. I gather only
that there are some Five Hundred and odd of the dear-priced
edition sold, some Two Hundred and odd still to sell, which the
Bookseller says are (in spite of pirates) slowly selling; and
that the half profit upon the whole adventure up to this date has
been L24 15s. 11d. sterling,--equal, as I am taught, at $4.88 per
pound sterling, to $121.02, for which, all but the cents, here is
a draft on Boston, payable at sight. Pray have yourself
straightway _paid;_ that if there be any mistake or delay I may
rectify it while time yet is.--I add, for the intelligence of the
Bookseller-Papers, that Fraser, with whom the bargain originally
stood, was succeeded by Nickerson; these are the names of the
parties. And so, dear Friend; accept this munificent sum of
Money; and expect a blessing with it if good wishes from the
heart of man can give one. So much for that.
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* The Reverend Henry Colman.
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Did you receive a Dumfries Newspaper with a criticism in it? The
author is one Gilfillan, a young Dissenting Minister in Dundee;
a person of great talent, ingenuousness, enthusiasm, and other
virtues; whose position as a Preacher of bare old Calvinism
under penalty of death sometimes makes me tremble for him. He
has written in that same Newspaper about all the notablest men of
his time; Godwin, Corn-law Elliott and I know not all whom: if
he publish the Book, I will take care to send it you.* I saw the
man for the first time last autumn, at Dumfries; as I said, his
being a Calvinist Dissenting Minister, economically fixed, and
spiritually with such germinations in him, forces me to be very
reserved to him.
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* The sketches were published the next year in a volume under
the title of _The Gallery of Literary Portraits._
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John Sterling's _Dial_ shall be forwarded to Ventnor in the Isle
of Wight, whenever it arrives. He was here, as probably I told
you, about two months ago, the old unresting brilliantly
radiating man. He is now much richer in money than he was, and
poorer by the loss of a good Mother and good Wife: I understand
he is building himself a brave house, and also busy writing a
poem. He flings too much "sheet-lightning" and unrest into me
when we meet in these low moods of mine; and yet one always
longs for him back again: "No doing with him or without him,"
the dog!
My thrice unfortunate Book on Cromwell,--it is a real descent to
Hades, to Golgotha and Chaos! I feel oftenest as if it were
possibler to die one's self than to bring it into life. Besides,
my health is in general altogether despicable, my "spirits" equal
to those of the ninth part of a dyspeptic tailor! One needs to
be able to go on in all kinds of spirits, in climate sunny or
sunless, or it will never do. The planet Earth, says Voss,--take
four hexameters from Voss:
Journeys this Earth, her eye on a Sun, through the heavenly spaces;
Joyous in radiance, or joyless by fits and swallowed in tempests;
Falters not, alters not, equal advancing, home at the due hour:
So thou, weather-proof, constant, may, equal with day, March!
I have not a moment more tonight;--and besides am inclined to
write unprofitables if I persist. Adieu, my friend; all
blessings be with you always.
Yours ever truly,
T. Carlyle