n any strength is left in me for working, which is the
only use I can see in myself,--too rare a case of late. The
ground of my existence is black as Death; too black, when all
void too but at times there paint themselves on it pictures of
gold and rainbow and lightning; all the brighter for the black
ground, I suppose. Withal I am very much of a fool.--Some people
will have me write on _Cromwell,_ which I have been talking
about. I do read on that and English subjects, finding that I
know nothing and that nobody knows anything of that: but whether
anything will come of it remains to be seen. Mill, the
_Westminster_ friend, is gone in bad health to the Continent, and
has left a rude Aberdeen Longear, a great admirer of mine too,
with whom I conjecture I cannot act at all: so good-bye to that.
The wisest of all, I do believe, were that I bought my nag
_Yankee_ and set to galloping about the elevated places here! A
certain Mr. Coolidge,** a Boston man of clear iron visage and
character, came down to me the other day with Sumner; he left
a newspaper fragment, containing "the Socinian Pope's denunciation
of Emerson."

---------
* The beginning of the London Library, a most useful institution,
from which books may be borrowed. It served Carlyle well in
later years, and for a long time he was President of it.

** The late Mr. Joseph Coolidge.
---------

The thing denounced had not then arrived, though often asked for
at Kennet's; it did not arrive till yesterday, but had lain buried
in bales of I know not what. We have read it only once, and are
not yet at the bottom of it. Meanwhile, as I judge, the Socinian
"tempest in a washbowl" is all according to nature, and will be
profitable to you, not hurtful. A man is called to let his light
shine before men; but he ought to understand better and better
what medium it is through, what retinas it falls on: wherefore
look _there._ I find in this, as in the two other Speeches, that
noblest self-assertion, and believing originality, which is like
sacred fire, the _beginning_ of whatsoever is to flame and work;
and for young men especially one sees not what could be more
vivifying. Speak, therefore, while you feel called to do it;
and when you feel called. But for yourself, my friend, I
prophesy it will not do always: a faculty is in you for a _sort_
of speech which is itself _action,_ an artistic sort. You _tell_
us with piercing emphasis that man's soul