gibbets when they are necessary, you will say to him, next time, "Macte virtute, my man."

All is in a whirl with me here today; no other topic but this very poor one can be entered upon. I hope for a letter from your own hand soon, and some news about still more interesting matters.

Adieu, my Friend; I feel still as if, in several senses, you stood alone with me under the sky at present!*

—————- * The signature to this letter has been cut off. —————-

LXXXIII. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 29 April, 1843

My Dear Carlyle,—It is a pleasure to set your name once more at the head of a sheet. It signifies how much gladness, how much wealth of being, that the good, wise, man-cheering, man-helping friend, though unseen, lives there yonder, just out of sight. Your star burns there just below our eastern horizon, and fills the lower and upper air with splendid and splendescent auroras. By some refraction which new lenses or else steamships shall operate, shall I not yet one day see again the disk of benign Phosphorus? It is a solid joy to me, that whilst you work for all, you work for me and with me, even if I have little to write, and seldom write your name.

Since I last wrote to you, I found it needful, if only for the household's sake, to set some new lectures in order, and go to new congregations of men. I live so much alone, shrinking almost cowardly from the contact of worldly and public men, that I need more than others to quit home sometimes, and roll with the river of travelers, and live in hotels. I went to Baltimore, where I had an invitation, and read two lectures on New England. On my return, I stopped at Philadelphia, and, my Course being now grown to four lectures, read them there. At New York, my snowball was larger, and I read five lectures on New England. 1. Religion; 2. Trade; 3. Genius, Manners and Customs; 4. Recent literary and spiritual influences from abroad; 5. Domestic spiritual history.—Perhaps I have not quite done with them yet, but may make them the block of a new and somewhat larger structure for Boston, next winter. The newspaper reports of them in New York were such offensive misstatements, that I could not send you, as I wished, a sketch. Between my two speeches at Baltimore, I went to Washington, thirty-seven miles, and spent four days. The two poles of an enormous political battery, galvanic coil on coil, self-increased by series on series of plates from Mexico to Canada, and from the sea westward to the Rocky Mountains, here meet and play, and make the air electric and violent. Yet one feels how little, more than how much, man is represented there. I think, in the higher societies of the Universe, it will turn out that the angels are molecules, as the devils were always Titans, since the dulness of the world needs such mountainous demonstration, and the virtue is so modest and concentrating.

But I must not delay to acknowledge the arrival of your Book. It came ten or eleven days ago, in the "Britannia," with the three letters of different dates announcing it.—I have read the superfluous hundred pages of manuscript, and find it only too popular. Beside its abundance of brilliant points and proverbs, there is a deep, steady tide taking in, either by hope or by fear, all the great classes of society,—and the philosophic minority also, by the powerful lights which are shed on the phenomenon. It is true contemporary history, which other books are not, and you have fairly set solid London city aloft, afloat in bright mirage in the air. I quarrel only with the popular assumption, which is perhaps a condition of the Humor itself, that the state of society is a new state, and was not the same thing in the days of Rabelais and of Aristophanes, as of Carlyle. Orators always allow something to masses, out of love to their own art, whilst austere philosophy will only know the particles. This were of no importance, if the historian did not so come to mix himself in some manner with his erring and grieving nations, and so saddens the picture; for health is always private and original, and its essence is in its unmixableness.—But this Book, with all its affluence of wit, of insight, and of daring hints, is born for a longevity which I will not now compute.—In one respect, as I hinted above, it is only too good, so sure of success, I mean, that you are no longer secure of any respect to your property in our freebooting America.

You must know that the cheap press has, within a few months, made a total change in our book markets. Every English book of any name or credit is instantly converted into a newspaper or coarse pamphlet, and hawked by a hundred boys in the streets of all of our cities for 25, 18, or 12 cents; Dickens's Notes for 12 cents, Blackwood's Magazine for 18 cents, and so on. Three or four great New York and Philadelphia printing-houses do this work, with hot competition. One prints Bulwer's novel yesterday, for 35 cents; and already, in twenty-four hours, another has a coarser edition of it for 18 cents, in all thoroughfares.—What to do with my sealed parcel of manuscripts and proofs? No bookseller would in these perilous circumstances offer a dollar for my precious parcel. I inquired of the lawyers whether I could not by a copyright protect my edition from piracy until an English copy arrived, and so secure a sale of a few weeks. They said, no; yet advised the taking a certificate of copyright, that we might try the case if we wished. After much consulting and balancing for a few hours, I decided to print, as heretofore, on our own account, an edition, but cheap, to make the temptation less, to retail at seventy-five cents. I print fifteen hundred copies, and announce to the public that it is your edition, and all good men must buy this. I have written to the great Reprinters, namely to Park Benjamin, and to the Harpers, of New York, to request their forbearance; and have engaged Little and Brown to publish, because, I think, they have something more of weight with Booksellers, and are a little less likely to be invaded than Munroe. If we sell a thousand copies at seventy-five cents, it will only yield you about two hundred dollars; if we should be invaded, we can then afford to sell the other five hundred copies at twenty-five cents, without loss. In thus doing, I involve you in some risk; but it was the best course that occurred.—Hitherto, the Miscellanies have not been reprinted in the cheap forms; and in the last year, James Munroe & Co. have sold few copies; all books but the cheapest being unsold in the hard times; something has however accrued to your credit there. J.M. & Co. fear that, if the new book is pirated at New York and the pirate prospers, instantly the Miscellanies will be plundered. We will hope better, or at least exult in that which remains, to wit, a Worth unplunderable, yet infinitely communicable.

I have hardly space left to say what I would concerning the Dial. I heartily hoped I had done with it, when lately our poor, good, publishing Miss Peabody,… wrote me that its subscription would not pay its expenses (we all writing for love). But certain friends are very unwilling it should die, and I a little unwilling, though very unwilling to be the life of it, as editor. And now that you are safely through your book, and before the greater Sequel rushes to its conclusion, send me, I pray you, that short chapter which hovers yet in the limbo of contingency, in solid letters and points. Let it be, if that is readiest, a criticism on the Dial, and this too Elysian race, not blood, and yet not ichor.—Let Jane Carlyle be on my part, and, watchful of his hours, urge the poet in the golden one. I think to send you a duplicate of the last number of the Dial by Mr. Mann,* who with his bride (sister of the above-mentioned Miss