get the best accounts from home of wife and
babes and friends. I am seeing this England more thoroughly than
I had thought was possible to me. I find this lecturing a key
which opens all doors. I have received everywhere the kindest
hospitality from a great variety of persons. I see many
intelligent and well-informed persons, and some fine geniuses. I
have every day a better opinion of the English, who are a very
handsome and satisfactory race of men, and, in the point of
material performance, altogether incomparable. I have made some
vain attempts to end my lectures, but must go on a little longer.
With kindest regards to the Lady Jane,

Your friend,
R.W.E.

Margaret Fuller's address, if anything is to be written, is, Care
of Maquay, Pakenham & Co., Rome.

CXXXI. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 30 December, 1847

My Dear Emerson,--We are very glad to see your handwriting again,
and learn that you are well, and doing well. Our news of you
hitherto, from the dim Lecture-element, had been satisfactory
indeed, but vague. Go on and prosper.

I do not much think Miss Fuller would do any great good with the
Pepolis,--even if they are still in Rome, and not at Bologna as
our advices here seemed to indicate. Madam Pepoli is an elderly
Scotch lady, of excellent commonplace vernacular qualities,
hardly of more; the Count, some years younger, and a much airier
man, is on all sides a beautiful _Dilettante,_--little suitable,
I fear, to the serious mind that can recognize him as such!
However, if the people are still in Rome, Miss Fuller can easily
try: Bid Miss Fuller present my Wife's compliments, or mine, or
even _yours_ (for they know all our domesticities here, and are
very intimate, especially Madam with _My_ dame); upon which the
acquaintance is at once made, and can be continued if useful.

This morning Richard Milnes writes to me for your address; which
I have sent. He is just returned out of Spain; home swiftly to
"vote for the Jew Bill"; is doing hospitalities at Woburn Abbey;
and I suppose will be in Yorkshire (home, near Pontefract) before
long. See him if you have opportunity: a man very easy to _see_
and get into flowing talk with; a man of much sharpness of
faculty, well tempered by several inches of "Christian _fat_" he
has upon his ribs for covering. One of the idlest, cheeriest,
most gifted of fat little men.

Tennyson has been here for three weeks; dining daily till