Dear Emerson,--I was delighted at the sight of your hand again.
My manifold sins against you, involuntary all of them I may well
say, are often enough present to my sad thoughts; and a kind of
remorse is mixed with the other sorrow,--as if I could have
_helped_ growing to be, by aid of time and destiny, the grim
Ishmaelite I am, and so shocking your serenity by my ferocities!
I admit you were like an angel to me, and absorbed in the
beautifulest manner all thunder-clouds into the depths of your
immeasurable a ether;--and it is indubitable I love you very
well, and have long done, and mean to do. And on the whole you
will have to rally yourself into some kind of Correspondence with
me again; I believe you will find that also to be a commanded
duty by and by! To me at any rate, I can say, it is a great
want, and adds perceptibly to the sternness of these years: deep
as is my dissent from your Gymnosophist view of Heaven and Earth,
I find an agreement that swallows up all conceivable dissents;
in the whole world I hardly get, to my spoken human word, any
other word of response which is authentically _human._ God help
us, this is growing a very lonely place, this distracted dog-
kennel of a world! And it is no joy to me to see it about to
have its throat cut for its immeasurable devilries; that is not
a pleasant process to be concerned in either more or less,--
considering above all how many centuries, base and dismal all of
them, it is like to take! Nevertheless _Marchons,_--and swift
too, if we have any speed, for the sun is sinking.... Poor
Margaret, that is a strange tragedy that history of hers; and
has many traits of the Heroic in it, though it is wild as the
prophecy of a Sibyl. Such a predetermination to _eat_ this big
Universe as her oyster or her egg, and to be absolute empress of
all height and glory in it that her heart could conceive, I have
not before seen in any human soul. Her "mountain me" indeed:--
but her courage too is high and clear, her chivalrous nobleness
indeed is great; her veracity, in its deepest sense, _a toute
epreuve._--Your Copy of the Book* came to me at last (to my joy):
I had already read it; there was considerable notice taken of it
here; and one half-volume of it (and I grieve to say only one,
written by a man called Emerson) was completely approved by me
and innumerable judges. The rest of the Book is not without
considerable geniality and merits; but one wanted a clear
concise Narrative beyond all other merits; and if you ask here
(except in that half-volume) about any fact, you are answered (so
to speak) not in words, but by a symbolic tune on the bagpipe,
symbolic burst of wind-music from the brass band;--which is not
the plan at all!--What can have become of Mazzini's Letter, which
he certainly did write and despatched to you, is not easily
conceivable. Still less in the case of Browning: for Browning
and his Wife did also write; I myself in the end of last July,
having heard him talk kindly and well of poor Margaret and her
Husband, took the liberty on your behalf of asking him to put
something down on paper; and he informed me, then and repeatedly
since, he had already done it,--at the request of Mrs. Story, I
think. His address at present is, "No. 138 Avenue des Champs
Elysees, a Paris," if your American travelers still thought of
inquiring.--Adieu, dear Emerson, till next week.
Yours ever,
T. Carlyle
--------
* "The Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli."
--------