The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872 Volume II Part 21

I should tell you that my friend Margaret Fuller, who has edited our little _Dial_ with such dubious approbation on the part of you and other men, has suddenly decided a few days ago that she will edit it no more. The second volume was just closing; shall it live for a third year? You should know that, if its interior and spiritual life has been ill fed, its outward and bibliopolic existence has been worse managed. Its publishers failed, its short list of subscribers became shorter, and it has never paid its laborious editor, who has been very generous of her time and labor, the smallest remuneration. Unhappily, to me alone could the question be put whether the little aspiring starveling should be reprieved for another year. I had not the cruelty to kill it, and so must answer with my own proper care and nursing for its new life. Perhaps it is a great folly in me who have little adroitness in turning off work to a.s.sume this sure vexation, but the _Dial_ has certain charms to me as an opportunity, which I grudge to destroy. Lately at New York I found it to be to a certain cla.s.s of men and women, though few, an object of tenderness and religion. You cannot believe it?

Mr. Lee,* who brings you this letter, is the son of one of the best men in Ma.s.sachusetts, a man whose name is a proverb among merchants for his probity, for his sense and his information.

The son, who bears his father's name, is a favorite among all the young people for his sense and spirit, and has lived always with good people.

* Mr. Henry Lee.

I have read at New York six out of eight lectures on the Times which I read this winter in Boston. I found a very intelligent and friendly audience. The penny papers reported my lectures, somewhat to my chagrin when I tried to read them; many persons came and talked with me, and I felt when I came away that New York is open to me henceforward whenever my Boston parish is not large enough. This summer, I must try to set in order a few more chapters from these rambling lectures, one on "The Poet" and one on "Character" at least. And now will you not tell me what you read and write? Is it Cromwell still? For I supposed from the _Westminster_ piece that the laborer must be in that quarter.

I send herewith a new _Dial,_ No. 8, and the last of this dispensation. I hope you have received every number. They have been sent in order. I have written no line in this Number. I send a letter for Sterling, as I do not know whether his address is still at Falmouth. Is he now a preacher? By the "Acadia" you should have received a letter of exchange on the Barings, and another on James Fraser's estate.

With constant good hope for yourself and for your wife, I am your friend,

--R.W. Emerson

End of Vol. I.