a day or two sooner, that it might go by
the packet of the 1st of May from New York. Now it will go by
that of the 8th, and ought to reach you in thirty days. Send me
your thoughts upon it as soon as you can. I _jalouse_ of that
new book. I fear its success may mar my project.

Yours affectionately,
R. Waldo Emerson

VII. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London
13 May, 1835

Thanks, my kind friend, for the news you again send me. Good
news, good new friends; nothing that is not good comes to me
across these waters. As if the "Golden West" seen by Poets were
no longer a mere optical phenomenon, but growing a reality, and
coining itself into solid blessings! To me it seems very
strange; as indeed generally this whole Existence here below
more and more does.

We have seen your Barnard: a most modest, intelligent, compact,
hopeful-looking man, who will not revisit you without conquests
from his expedition hither. We expect to see much more of
him; to instruct him, to learn of him: especially about that
real-imaginary locality of "Concord," where a kindly-speaking
voice lives incarnated, there is much to learn.

That you will take to yourself a wife is the cheerfulest tidings
you could send us. It is in no wise meet for man to be alone;
and indeed the beneficent Heavens, in creating Eve, did
mercifully guard against that. May it prove blessed, this new
arrangement! I delight to prophesy for you peaceful days in it;
peaceful, not idle; filled rather with that best activity which
is the stillest. To the future, or perhaps at this hour actual
Mrs. Emerson, will you offer true wishes from two British
Friends; who have not seen her with their eyes, but whose
thoughts need not be strangers to the Home she will make for you.
Nay, you add the most chivalrous summons: which who knows but
one day we may actually stir ourselves to obey! It may hover for
the present among the gentlest of our day-dreams; mild-lustrous;
an impossible possibility. May all go well with you, my worthy
Countryman, Kinsman, and brother Man!

This so astonishing reception of Teufelsdrockh in your
New England circle seems to me not only astonishing, but
questionable; not, however, to be quarreled with. I may say:
If the New. England cup is dangerously sweet, there are here in
Old England whole antiseptic floods of good _hop_-decoction;
therein let it mingle; work wholesomely towards what clea