hitherto.

CXLII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 19 July, 1850

My Dear Emerson, My Friend, my Friend,--You behold before you a
remorseful man! It is well-nigh a year now since I despatched
some hurried rag of paper to you out of Scotland, indicating
doubtless that I would speedily follow it with a longer letter;
and here, when gray Autumn is at hand again, I have still written
nothing to you, heard nothing from you! It is miserable to think
of:--and yet it is a fact, and there is no denying of it; and so
we must let it lie. If it please Heaven, the like shall not
occur again. "Ohone Arooh!" as the Irish taught me to say,
"Ohone Arooh!"

The fact is, my life has been black with care and toil,--labor
above board and far worse labor below;--I have hardly had a
heavier year (overloaded too with a kind of "health" which may be
called frightful): to "burn my own smoke" in some measure, has
really been all I was up to; and except on sheer immediate
compulsion I have not written a word to any creature.--
Yesternight I finished the last of these extraordinary
_Pamphlets;_ am about running off somewhither into the deserts,
of Wales or Scotland, Scandinavia or still remoter deserts;--and
my first signal of revived reminiscence is to you.

Nay I have not at any time forgotten you, be that justice done
the unfortunate: and though I see well enough what a great deep
cleft divides us, in our ways of practically looking at this
world,--I see also (as probably you do yourself) where the rock-
strata, miles deep, unite again; and the two poor souls are at
one. Poor devils!--Nay if there were no point of agreement at
all, and I were more intolerant "of ways of thinking" than I even
am,--yet has not the man Emerson, from old years, been a Human
Friend to me? Can I ever forget, or think otherwise than
lovingly of the man Emerson? No more of this. Write to me in
your first good hour; and say that there is still a brother-soul
left to me alive in this world, and a kind thought surviving far
over the sea!--Chapman, with due punctuality at the time of
publication, sent me the _Representative Men;_ which I read in
the becoming manner: you now get the Book offered you for a
shilling, at all railway stations; and indeed I perceive the
word "representative man"' (as applied to the late tragic loss we
have had in Sir Robert Peel) has been adopted by the Able-
Editors, and circulates through Newspapers as an appropriat