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I wish you to know that we do not depend for your _eclat_ on your
being already known to rich men here. You are not. Nothing has
ever been published here designating you by name. But Dr.
Channing reads and respects you. That is a fact of importance to
our project. Several clergymen, Messrs. Frothingham, Ripley,
Francis, all of them scholars and Spiritualists, (some of them,
unluckily, called Unitarian,) love you dearly, and will work
heartily in your behalf. Mr. Frothing ham, a worthy and
accomplished man, more like Erasmus than Luther, said to me on
parting, the other day, "You cannot express in terms too
extravagant my desire that he should come." George Ripley,
having heard, through your letter to me, that nobody in England
had responded to the _Sartor,_ had secretly written you a most
reverential letter, which, by dint of coaxing, be read to me,
though he said there was but one step from the sublime to the
ridiculous. I prayed him, though I thought the letter did him no
justice, save to his heart, to send you it or another; and he
says he will. He is a very able young man, even if his letter
should not show it.* He said he could, and would, bring many
persons to hear you, and you should be sure of his utmost aid.
Dr. Bradford, a medical man, is of good courage. Mr. Loring,** a
lawyer, said,"--Invite Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle to spend a couple of
months at my house," (I assured him I was too selfish for that,)
"and if our people," he said, "cannot find out his worth, I will
subscribe, with, others, to make him whole of any expense he
shall incur in coming." Hedge promised more than he ought.
There are several persons beside, known to me, who feel a warm
interest in this thing. Mr. Furness, a popular and excellent
minister in Philadelphia, at whose house Harriet Martineau was
spending a few days, I learned the other day "was feeding Miss
Martineau with the _Sartor._" And here some of the best women I
know are warm friends of yours, and are much of Mrs. Carlyle's
opinion when she says, Your books shall prosper.

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* Emerson's estimate of Mr. Ripley was justified as the years
went on. His _Life,_ by Mr. Octavius Frothingham,--like his
father, "a worthy and accomplished, man," but more like Luther
than Erasmus,--forms one of the most attractive volumes of the
series of _Lives of American Men of Letters._

** The late Ellis Gray Loring, a man of high character, well
esteemed in his profe