londom New Zealand, under the Tropics and in
part of Flanders,--would he not rather answer: Thank you; but
in a few years I shall be dead, twelve Centuries will have become
Eternity; part of Flanders Immensity: we will sit still here if
you please, and consider what quieter thing we can do! Enough
of this.

Richard Milnes had a Letter from you, one morning lately, when I
met him at old Rogers's. He is brisk as ever; his kindly
_Dilettantism_ looking sometimes as if it would grow a sort of
Earnest by and by. He has a new volume of Poems out: I advised
him to try Prose; he admitted that Poetry would not be generally
read again in these ages,--but pleaded, "It was so convenient for
veiling commonplace!" The honest little heart!--We did not know
what to make of the bright Miss --- here; she fell in love with
my wife;--the _contrary,_ I doubt, with me: my hard realism
jarred upon her beautiful rose-pink dreams. Is not all that very
morbid,--unworthy the children of Odin, not to speak of Luther,
Knox, and the other Brave? I can do nothing with vapors, but
wish them _condensed._ Kennet had a copy of the English
_Miscellanies_ for you a good many weeks ago: indeed, it was
just a day or two _before_ your advice to try Green henceforth.
Has the _Meister_ ever arrived? I received a Controversial
Volume from Mr. Ripley: pray thank him very kindly. Somebody
borrowed the Book from me; I have not yet read it. I did read a
Pamphlet which seems now to have been made part of it. Norton*
surely is a chimera; but what has the whole business they are
jarring about become? As healthy _worshiping_ Paganism is to
Seneca and Company, so is healthy worshiping Christianity to--I
had rather not work the sum!--Send me some swift news of
yourself, dear Emerson. We salute you and yours, in all
heartiness of brotherhood.

Yours ever and always--
T. Carlyle

---------
* Professor Andrews Norton. The controversy was that occasioned
by Professor Norton's Discourse on "The Latest Form of
Infidelity."
---------

LVI. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 30 August, 1840

My Dear Carlyle,--I fear, nay I know, that when I wrote last to
you, about the 1st of July, I promised to follow my sheet
immediately with a bookseller's account. The bookseller did
presently after render his account, but on its face appeared the
fact--which with many and by me unanswerable reasons they
supported--that the balance th