except at the hours of
eating and walking; and as I will abstain from you myself,
so I will defend you from others. I entreat Mrs. Carlyle,
with my affectionate remembrances, to second me in this
proposition, and not suffer the wayward man to think that in
these space-destroying days a prayer from Boston, Massachusetts,
is any less worthy of serious and prompt granting than one
from Edinburgh or Oxford.

I send you a little book I have just now published, as
an entering wedge, I hope, for something more worthy and
significant.* This is only a naming of topics on which I would
gladly speak and gladlier hear. I am mortified to learn the ill
fate of my former packet containing the _Sartor_ and Dr.
Channing's work. My mercantile friend is vexed, for he says
accurate orders were given to send it as a packet, not as a
letter. I shall endeavor before despatching this sheet to obtain
another copy of our American edition.

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* This was _Nature,_ the first clear manifesto of Emerson's
genius.
-----------

I wish I could come to you instead of sending this sheet of
paper. I think I should persuade you to get into a ship this
Autumn, quit all study for a time, and follow the setting sun. I
have many, many things to learn of you. How melancholy to think
how much we need confession!...* Yet the great truths are always
at hand, and all the tragedy of individual life is separated how
thinly from that universal nature which obliterates all ranks,
all evils, all individualities. How little of you is in your
_will!_ Above your will how intimately are you related to all of
us! In God we meet. Therein we _are,_ thence we descend upon
Time and these infinitesimal facts of Christendom, and Trade, and
England Old and New. Wake the soul now drunk with a sleep, and
we overleap at a bound the obstructions, the griefs, the
mistakes, of years, and the air we breathe is so vital that the
Past serves to contribute nothing to the result.

-----------
** Some words appear to be lost here.
-----------

I read Goethe, and now lately the posthumous volumes, with a
great interest. A friend of mine who studies his life with care
would gladly know what records there are of his first ten years
after his settlement at Weimar, and what Books there are in
Germany about him beside what Mrs. Austin has collected and
Heine. Can you tell me?

Write me of your health, or else come.

Yours ever,
R.W. Emerson.

P.S.--