The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I · Thomas Carlyle
XLII. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, London, 29 May, 1839 My Dear Emerson,--Your Letter, dated Boston, 20th April, has been here for some two weeks. Miss Sedgwick, whom it taught us to expect in "about a fortnight," has yet given no note of herself, but shall be right welcome whenever she appears. Miss Martineau's absence (she is in Switzerland this summer) will probably be a loss to the fair Pilgrim;--which of course the rest of us ought to exert ourselves to make good.... My Lectures are happily over ten days ago; with "success" enough, as it is called; the only _valuable_ part of which is some L200, gained with great pain, but also with great brevity:--economical respite for another solar year! The people were boundlessly tolerant; my agitation beforehand was less this year, my remorse afterwards proportionally greater. There was but one moderately good Lecture, the last,--on Sausculottism, to an audience mostly Tory, and rustling with the beautifulest quality silks! Two things I find: first that _I ought to have had a horse;_ I had only three incidental rides or gallops, hired rides; my horse _Yankee_ is never yet purchased, but it shall be, for I cannot live, except in great pain, without a horse.
It was sweet beyond measure to escape out of the dustwhirlpool here, and _fly,_ in solitude, through the ocean of verdure and splendor, as far as Harrow and back again; and one's nerves were _clear_ next day, and words lying in one like water in a well. But the _second_ thing I found was, that extempore speaking, especially in the way of Lecture, is an _art_ or craft, and requires an apprenticeship, which I have never served. Repeatedly it has come into my head that I should go to America, this very Fall, and belecture you from North to South till I learn it! Such a thing does lie in the bottom-scenes, should hard come to hard; and looks pleasant enough.--On the whole, I say sometimes, I must either begin a Book, or do it. Books are the lasting thing; Lectures are like corn ground into flour; there are loaves for today, but no wheat harvests for next year. Rudiments of a new Book (thank Heaven!) do sometimes disclose themselves in me. _Festina lente._ It ought to be better than the _French Revolution;_ I mean better written. The greater part of that Book, as I read proof-sheets of it in these weeks, does nothing but _disgust_ me. And yet it was, as nearly as was good, the utmost that lay in me. I should not like to be nearer killed with any other Book!--Books too are a triviality. Life alone is great; with its infinite spaces, its everlasting times, with its Death, with its Heaven and its Hell. Ah me!
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