, nations of readers sometimes,--but I
heap them all as style, and read them as I read Rabelais's
gigantic humors which astonish in order to force attention, and
by and by are seen to be the rhetoric of a highly virtuous
gentleman who _swears._ I have been quite too busy with fast
succeeding _jobs_ (I may well call them), in the last year, to
have read much in these proud books; but I begin to see daylight
coming through my fogs, and I have not lost in the least my
appetite for reading,--resolve, with my old Harvard professor,
"to retire and read the Authors."

I am impatient to deserve your grand Volumes by reading in them
with all the haughty airs that belong to seventy years which I
shall count if I live till May, 1873. Meantime I see well that
you have lost none of your power, and I wish that you would let
in some good Eckermann to dine with you day by day, and competent
to report your opinions,--for you can speak as well as you can
write, and what the world to come should know...

Affectionately,
R.W. Emerson

CXCI. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 2 April, 1872

Dear Emerson,--I am covered with confusion, astonishment, and
shame to think of my long silence. You wrote me two beautiful
letters; none friendlier, brighter, wiser could come to me from
any quarter of the world; and I have not answered even by a
sign. Promptly and punctually my poor heart did answer; but to
do it outwardly,--as if there had lain some enchantment on me,--
was beyond my power. The one thing I can say in excuse or
explanation is, that ever since Summer last, I have been in an
unusually dyspeptic, peaking, pining, and dispirited condition;
and have no right hand of my own for writing, nor, for several
months, had any other that was altogether agreeable to me. But
in fine I don't believe you lay any blame or anger on me at all;
and I will say no more about it, but only try to repent and do
better next time.

Your letter from the Far West was charmingly vivid and free; one
seemed to attend you personally, and see with one's own eyes the
_notabilia,_ human and other, of those huge regions, in your
swift flight through them to and from. I retain your little
etching of Brigham Young as a bit of real likeness; I have often
thought of your transit through Chicago since poor Chicago itself
vanished out of the world on wings of fire. There is something
huge, painful, and almost appalling to me in