said he had never
personally met with Emerson. My Wife recalled to him the story
of the Scotch Traveler on the top of Vesuvius: "Never saw so
beautiful a scene in the world!"--"Nor I," replied a stranger
standing there, "except once; on the top of Dunmiot, in the
Ochil Hills in Scotland."--"Good Heavens! That is a part of my
Estate, and I was never there! I will go thither." Yes, do!--We
have seen no other Transoceanic that I remember. We expect your
_Book_ soon! We know the subject of your Winter Lectures too;
at least Miss Martineau thinks she does, and makes us think so.
Heaven speed the work! Heaven send my good Emerson a clear
utterance, in all right ways, of the nobleness that dwells in
him! He knows what silence means; let him know speech also, in
its season the two are like canvas and pigment, like darkness and
light-image painted thereon; the one is essential to the other,
not possible without the other.

Poor Miss Martineau is in Newcastle-on-Tyne this winter; sick,
painfully not dangerously; with a surgical brother-in-law. Her
meagre didacticalities afflict me no more; but also her blithe
friendly presence cheers me no more. We wish she were back.
This silence, I calculate, forced silence, will do her much good.
If I were a Legislator, I would order every man, once a week or
so, to lock his lips together, and utter no vocable at all
for four-and-twenty hours: it would do him an immense benefit,
poor fellow. Such racket, and cackle of mere hearsay and
sincere-cant, grows at last entirely deafening, enough to drive
one mad, --like the voice of mere infinite rookeries answering
your voice! Silence, silence! Sterling sent you a Letter from
Clifton, which I set under way here, having added the address.
He is not well again, the good Sterling; talks of Madeira this
season again: but I hope otherwise. You of course read his
sublime "article"? I tell him it was--a thing untellable!

Mr. Southey has fallen, it seems, into a mournful condition:
oblivion, mute hebetation, loss of all faculty. He suffered
greatly, nursing his former wife in her insanity, for years till
her relief by death; suffered, worked, and made no moan; the
brunt of the task over, he sank into collapse in the hands of a
new wife he had just wedded. What a lot for him; for her
especially! The most excitable but most methodic man I have ever
seen. [Greek] that is a word that awaits us all.--I have my
brother here