The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. CLI. Emerson to Carlyle
by John Stuart Mill
Concord, 19 April, 1853
My Dear Friend,--As I find I never write a letter except at the
dunning of the Penny Post,--which is the pest of the century,--I
have thought lately of crossing to England to excuse to you my
negligence of your injunction, which so flattered me by its
affectionateness a year ago. I was to write once a month. My
own disobedience is wonderful, and explains to me all the sins of
omission of the whole world. The levity with which we can let
fall into disuse such a sacrament as the exchange of greeting at
short periods, is a kind of magnanimity, and should be an
astonishing argument of the "Immortality"; and I wonder how it
has escaped the notice of philosophers. But what had I, dear
wise man, to tell you? What, but that life was still tolerable;
still absurdly sweet; still promising, promising, to credulous
idleness;--but step of mine taken in a true direction, or clear
solution of any the least secret,--none whatever. I scribble
always a little,--much less than formerly,--and I did within a
year or eighteen months write a chapter on Fate, which--if we all
live long enough, that is, you, and I, and the chapter--I hope to
send you in fair print. Comfort yourself--as you will--you will
survive the reading, and will be a sure proof that the nut is not
cracked. For when we find out what Fate is, I suppose, the
Sphinx and we are done for; and Sphinx, Oedipus, and world
ought, by good rights, to roll down the steep into the sea.
But I was going to say, my neglect of your request will show you
how little saliency is in my weeks and months. They are hardly
distinguished in memory other than as a running web out of a
loom, a bright stripe for day, a dark stripe for night, and, when
it goes faster, even these run together into endless gray... I
went lately to St. Louis and saw the Mississippi again. The
powers of the River, the insatiate craving for nations of men to
reap and cure its harvests, the conditions it imposes,--for it
yields to no engineering,--are interesting enough. The Prairie
exists to yield the greatest possible quantity of adipocere. For
corn makes pig, pig is the export of all the land, and you shall
see the instant dependence of aristocracy and civility on the fat
four legs. Workingmen, ability to do the work of the River,
abounded. Nothing higher was to be thought of. America is
incomplete. Room for us all, since it has not ended, nor given
sign of ending, in bard or hero. 'T is a wild democracy, the
riot of mediocrities, and none of your selfish Italies and
Englands, where an age sublimates into a genius, and the whole
population is made into Paddies to feed his porcelain veins, by
transfusion from their brick arteries. Our few fine persons are
apt to die. Horatio Greenough, a sculptor, whose tongue was far
cunninger in talk than his chisel to carve, and who inspired
great hopes, died two months ago at forty-seven years. Nature
has only so much vital force, and must dilute it, if it is to be
multiplied into millions. "The beautiful is never plentiful."
On the whole, I say to myself, that our conditions in America are
not easier or less expensive than the European. For the poor
scholar everywhere must be compromise or alternation, and, after
many remorses, the consoling himself that there has been
pecuniary honesty, and that things might have been worse. But
no; we must think much better things than these. Let Lazarus
believe that Heaven does not corrupt into maggots, and that
heroes do not succumb.
Clough is here, and comes to spend a Sunday with me, now and
then. He begins to have pupils, and, if his courage holds out,
will have as many as he wants.... I have written hundreds of
pages about England and America, and may send them to you
in print. And now be good and write me once more, and I think
I will never cease to write again. And give my homage to
Jane Carlyle.
