Dear Carlyle,--Your friend, young Stanley, brought me your letter
now too many days ago. It contained heavy news of your
household,--yet such as in these our autumnal days we must await
with what firmness we can. I hear with pain that your Wife, whom
I have only seen beaming goodness and intelligence, has suffered
and suffers so severely. I recall my first visit to your house,
when I pronounced you wise and fortunate in relations wherein
best men are often neither wise nor fortunate. I had already
heard rumors of her serious illness. Send me word, I pray you,
that there is better health and hope. For the rest, the Colonna
motto would fit your letter, "Though sad, I am strong."
I had received in July, forwarded by Stanley, on his flight
through Boston, the fourth Volume of _Friedrich,_ and it was my
best reading in the summer, and for weeks my only reading: One
fact was paramount in all the good I drew from it, that
whomsoever many years had used and worn, they had not yet broken
any fibre of your force:--a pure joy to me, who abhor the inroads
which time makes on me and on my friends. To live too long is
the capital misfortune, and I sometimes think, if we shall not
parry it by better art of living, we shall learn to include in
our morals some bolder control of the facts. I read once, that
Jacobi declared that he had some thoughts which--if he should
entertain them--would put him to death: and perhaps we have
weapons in our intellectual armory that are to save us from
disgrace and impertinent relation to the world we live in. But
this book will excuse you from any unseemly haste to make up your
accounts, nay, holds you to fulfil your career with all amplitude
and calmness. I found joy and pride in it, and discerned a
golden chain of continuity not often seen in the works of men,
apprising me that one good head and great heart remained in
England,--immovable, superior to his own eccentricities and
perversities, nay, wearing these, I can well believe, as a jaunty
coat or red cockade to defy or mislead idlers, for the better
securing his own peace, and the very ends which the idlers fancy
he resists. England's lease of power is good during his days.
I have in these last years lamented that you had not made the
visit to America, which in earlier years you projected or
favored. It would have made it impossible that your name should
be cited for one moment on the side of the enemies of mankind.
Ten days' residence in this country would have made you the organ
of the sanity of England and of Europe to us and to them, and
have shown you the necessities and aspirations which struggle up
in our Free States, which, as yet, have no organ to others, and
are ill and unsteadily articulated here. In our today's division
of Republican and Democrat, it is certain that the American
nationality lies in the Republican party (mixed and multiform
though that party be); and I hold it not less certain, that,
viewing all the nationalities of the world, the battle for
Humanity is, at this hour, in America. A few days here would
show you the disgusting composition of the Party which within the
Union resists the national action. Take from it the wild Irish
element, imported in the last twenty-five year's into this
country, and led by Romish Priests, who sympathize, of course,
with despotism, and you would bereave it of all its numerical
strength. A man intelligent and virtuous is not to be found on
that side. Ah! how gladly I would enlist you, with your
thunderbolt, on our part! How gladly enlist the wise,
thoughtful, efficient pens and voices of England! We want
England and Europe to hold our people stanch to their best
tendency. Are English of this day incapable of a great
sentiment? Can they not leave caviling at petty failures, and
bad manners, and at the dunce part (always the largest part in
human affairs), and leap to the suggestions and finger-pointings
of the gods, which, above the understanding, feed the hopes and
guide the wills of men? This war has been conducted over the
heads of all the actors in it; and the foolish terrors, "What
shall we do with the negro?" "The entire black population is
coming North to be fed," &c., have strangely ended in the fact
that the black refuses to leave his climate; gets his living and
the living of his employers there, as he has always done; is the
natural ally and soldier of the Republic, in that climate; now
takes the place of two hundred thousand white soldiers; and will
be, as the conquest of the country proceeds, its garrison, till
peace, without slavery, returns. Slaveholders in London have
filled English ears with their wishes and perhaps beliefs; and
our people, generals, and politicians have carried the like, at
first, to the war, until corrected by irresistible experience. I
shall always respect War hereafter. The cost of life, the dreary
havoc of comfort and time, are overpaid by the vistas it opens of
Eternal Life, Eternal Law, reconstructing and uplifting Society,
--breaks up the old horizon, and we see through the rifts a wider.
The dismal Malthus, the dismal DeBow, have had their night.
Our Census of 1860, and the War, are poems, which will, in the
next age, inspire a genius like your own. I hate to write you a
newspaper, but, in these times, 't is wonderful what sublime
lessons I have once and again read on the Bulletin-boards in the
streets. Everybody has been wrong in his guess, except good
women, who never despair of an Ideal right.
I thank you for sending to me so gracious a gentleman as Mr.
Stanley, who interested us in every manner, by his elegance, his
accurate information of that we wished to know, and his
surprising acquaintance with the camp and military politics on
our frontier. I regretted that I could see him so little. He
has used his time to the best purpose, and I should gladly have
learned all his adventures from so competent a witness. Forgive
this long writing, and keep the old kindness which I prize above
words. My kindest salutations to the dear invalid!
--R.W. Emerson