t no serious word at all that I
hear, except what reaches me from Concord at intervals. Forward,
forward! And you do not know what I mean by calling you
"unpractical," "theoretic." _0 caeca corda!_ But I have no room
for such a theme at present.

----------
* "A new Spirit of the Age. Edited by R.H. Horne." In Two
Volumes. London, 1844.
----------

The reason I tell you nothing about Cromwell is, alas, that there
is nothing to be told. I am day and night, these long months and
years, very miserable about it,--nigh broken-hearted often. Such
a scandalous accumulation of Human Stupidity in every form never
lay before on such a subject. No history of it can be written to
this wretched, fleering, sneering, canting, twaddling, God-
forgetting generation. How can you explain men to Apes by the
Dead Sea?* And I am very sickly too, and my Wife is ill all this
cold weather,--and I am sunk in the bowels of Chaos, and scarce
once in the three months or so see so much as a possibility of
ever getting out! Cromwell's own _Letters and Speeches_ I have
gathered together, and washed clean from a thousand ordures:
these I do sometimes think of bringing out in a legible shape;--
perhaps soon. Adieu, dear friend, with blessings always.

--T. Carlyle

Poor Sydney Smith is understood to be dying; water on the chest;
past hope of Doctors. Alas!

---------
* The dwellers by the Dead Sea who were changed to apes are
referred to in various places by Carlyle. He tells the story of
the metamorphosis, which he got from the introduction to Sale's
Koran, in _Past and Present,_ Book III. Ch. 3.
---------

C. Emerson to Carlyle*

Concord, June 29, 1845

My Dear Friend,--I grieve to think of my slackness in writing,
which suffers steamer after steamer to go without a letter. But
I have still hoped, before each of the late packets sailed, that
I should have a message to send that would enforce a letter. I
wrote you some time ago of Mr. Carey's liberal proposition in
relation to your _Miscellanies._ I wrote, of course, to Furness,
through whom it was made to me, accepting the proposition; and I
forwarded to Mr. Carey a letter from me to be printed at the
beginning of the book, signifying your good-will to the edition,
and acknowledging the justice and liberality of the publishers.
I have heard no more from them, and now, a fortnight since, the
newspaper announces the death of Mr. Carey