My Dear Carlyle,--I received by the last steamer your letter, and
its prefixed order for one hundred and twenty-one dollars, which
order I sent to Ward, who turned it at once into money. Thanks,
dear friend, for your care and activity, which have brought me
this pleasing and most unlooked for result. And I beg you, if
you know any family representative of Mr. Fraser, to express my
sense of obligation to that departed man. I feel a kindness not
without some wonder for those good-natured five hundred
Englishmen who could buy and read my miscellany. I shall not
fail to send them a new collection, which I hope they will like
better. My faith in the Writers, as an organic class, increases
daily, and in the possibility to a faithful man of arriving at
statements for which he shall not feel responsible, but which
shall be parallel with nature. Yet without any effort I fancy I
make progress also in the doctrine of Indifferency, and am
certain and content that the truth can very well spare me, and
have itself spoken by another without leaving it or me the worse.
Enough if we have learned that music exists, that it is proper to
us, and that we cannot go forth of it. Our pipes, however shrill
and squeaking, certify this our faith in Tune, and the eternal
Amelioration may one day reach our ears and instruments. It is a
poor second thought, this literary activity.
Perhaps I am not made obnoxious to much suffering, but I have had
happy hours enough in gazing from afar at the splendors of the
Intellectual Law, to overpay me for any pains I know. Existence
may go on to be better, and, if it have such insights, it never
can be bad. You sometimes charge me with I know not what sky-
blue, sky-void idealism. As far as it is a partiality, I fear I
may be more deeply infected than you think me. I have very
joyful dreams which I cannot bring to paper, much less to any
approach to practice, and I blame myself not at all for my
reveries, but that they have not yet got possession of my house
and barn. But I shall not lose my love for books. I only
worship Eternal Buddh in the retirements and intermissions of
Brahma.--But I must not egotize and generalize to the end of my
sheet, as I have a message or two to declare.
I enclose a bill of exchange on the Barings for thirty-six
pounds; which is the sum of two recent payments of Munroe and of
Little and Brown, whereof I do not despair you shall yet have
some account in booksellers' figures. I have got so far with
Clark as to have his consent to audit the accounts when I shall
get energy and time enough to compile them out of my ridiculous
Journal. Munroe begs me to say what possibly I have already
asked for him, that, when the _History of Cromwell_ is ready to
be seen of men, you will have an entire copy of the Manuscript
taken, and sent over to us. Then will he print a cheap edition
such as no one will undersell, and secure such a share of profit
to the author as the cheap press allows. Perhaps only thirty or
forty pounds would make it worth while to take the trouble. A
valued friend of mine wishes to know who wrote (perhaps three
years ago) a series of metaphysical articles in _Blackwood_ on
Consciousness. Can you remember and tell me? And now I commend
you to the good God, you and your History, and the true kind wife
who is always good to the eager Yankees, and am yours heartily,
--R.W. Emerson