high melody of it went tingling through my heart; I said to my wife, "There, woman!" She read; and returned, and charges me to return for answer, "that there had been nothing met with like it since Schiller went silent." My brave Emerson! And all this has been lying silent, quite tranquil in him, these seven years, and the "vociferous platitude' dinning his ears on all sides, and he quietly answering no word; and a whole world of Thought has silently built itself in these calm depths, and, the day being come, says quite softly, as if it were a common thing, "Yes, I am here too." Miss Martineau tells me, "Some say it is inspired, some say it is mad." Exactly so; no say could be suitabler. But for you, my dear friend, I say and pray heartily: May God grant you strength; for you have a fearful work to do! Fearful I call it; and yet it is great, and the greatest. O for God's sake keep yourself still quiet! Do not hasten to write; you cannot be too slow about it. Give no ear to any man's praise or censure; know that that is not it on the one side is as Heaven if you have strength to keep silent, and climb unseen; yet on the other side, yawning always at one's right-hand and one's left, is the frightfulest Abyss and Pandemonium! See Fenimore Cooper;-poor Cooper, he is down in it; and had a climbing faculty too. Be steady, be quiet, be in no haste; and God speed you well! My space is done.

And so adieu, for this time. You must write soon again. My copy of the Oration has never come: how is this? I could dispose of a dozen well. They say I am to lecture again in Spring, Ay de mi! The "Book" is babbled about sufficiently in several dialects. Fraser wants to print my scattered Reviews and Articles; a pregnant sign. Teufelsdröckh to precede. The man "screamed" once at the name of it in a very musical manner. He shall not print a line; unless he gives me money for it, more or less. I have had enough of printing for one while, thrown into "magnetic sleep" by it! Farewell my brother. T. CARLYLE.

CHARLES DICKENS

To MISS DICKENS

PARKER HOUSE, BOSTON, Sunday, First December, 1867.

I RECEIVED yours of the Eighteenth November, yesterday. As I left Halifax in the Cuba that very day, you probably saw us telegraphed in The Times on the Nineteenth.

I think you had best in future (unless I give you intimation to the contrary) address your letters to me, at the Westminster Hotel, Irving Place, New York City. It is a more central position than this, and we are likely to be much more there than here. I am going to set up a brougham in New York, and keep my rooms at that hotel.

They are said to be a very quiet audience here, appreciative but not demonstrative. I shall try to change their character a little.

A

I have been going on very well. horrible custom obtains in these parts of asking you to dinner somewhere at half-past two, and to supper somewhere else about eight. I have run this gauntlet more than once, and its effect is, that there is no day for any useful purpose, and that the length of the evening is multiplied by a hundred. Yesterday I dined with a club at half-past two, and came back here at half-past eight with a general impression that it was at least two o'clock in the morning. Two days before I dined with Longfellow at half-past two, and came back at eight, supposing it to be midnight. To-day we have a state dinner-party in our rooms at six. Mr. and Mrs. Fields, and Mr. and Mrs. Bigelow. (He is a friend of Forster's, and was American Minister in Paris.) There are no negro waiters here, all the servants are Irish willing, but not able. The dinners and wines are very good. I keep our own rooms well ventilated by opening the windows, but no window is ever opened in the halls or passages, and they are so overheated by a great furnace, that they make me

faint and sick. The air is like that of a pre-Adamite ironing-day in full blast. Your respected parent is immensely popular in Boston society, and its cordiality and unaffected heartiness are charming. I wish I could carry it with me.

The leading New York papers have sent men over for to-morrow night with instructions to telegraph columns of descriptions. Great excitement and expectation everywhere. Fields says he has looked forward to it so long that he knows that he will die at five minutes to eight.

At the New York barriers, where the tickets are on sale and the people ranged as at the Paris theatres, speculators went up and down offering "twenty dollars for anybody's place." The money was in

the idea of next month is now impracticable. Which of two other months do you think would be preferable for your Birmingham objects? Next May, or next December?

Having already read two Christmas books at Birmingham, I should like to get out of that restriction, and have a swim in the broader waters of one of my long books. I have been poring over "Copperfield" (which is my favourite), with the idea of getting a reading out of it, to be called by some such name as 'Young Housekeeping and Little Emily." But there is still the huge difficulty that I constructed the whole with immense pains, and have so woven it up and blended it together, that I cannot yet so separate the parts as to tell the story of David's married life with Dora, and the story of Mr. Peggotty's search for his niece, within the time. This is my object. If I could possibly bring it to bear, it would make a very attractive reading, with a strong interest in it, and a certain completeness.

This is exactly the state of the case. I don't mind confiding to you, that I never can approach the book with perfect composure (it had such perfect possession of me when I wrote it), and that I no sooner begin to try to get it into this form, than I begin to read it all, and to feel that I cannot disturb it. I have not been unmindful of the agreement we made at parting, and I have sat staring at the backs of my books for an inspiration. This project is the only one that I have constantly reverted to, and yet I have made no progress in it!

Faithfully yours always,
CHARLES DICKENS.

To W. M. THACKERAY TAVISTOCK HOUSE, Friday Evening, Twenty-third March, 1855.

My dear Thackeray,

I have read in The Times to-day an account of your last night's lecture, and cannot refrain from assuring you in all truth and earnestness that I am pro

Is it pouring with rain at Park Lodge, and the most dismal, wretched, cat and dog day ever seen? O! it's gloomy at 13 Young Street! I have been labouring all day drawing that is, and doing my plates, till my &s are ready to drop off for weariness. But they must not stop for yet a little while, and until I have said how do you do to my dear lady and the young folks at Southampton. I hardly had time to know I was gone, and that happy fortnight was over, till this morning. At the train, whom do you think I found? Miss G who says she is Blanche Amory, and I think she is Blanche Amory; amiable at times, amusing, clever, and depraved. We talked and persiflated all the way to London, and the idea of her will help me to a good chapter, in which I will make Pendennis and Blanche play at being in love, such a wicked false humbugging London love, as two blasé London people might act, and half deceive themselves that they were in earnest. That will complete the cycle of Mr. Pen's worldly experiences, and then we will make, or try and make, a good man of him. O me, we are wicked worldlings most of us, may God better us and cleanse us!

I wonder whether ever again, I shall have such a happy peaceful fortnight as that last! How sunshiny the landscape remains in my mind, I hope for always;

and the smiles of dear children. . . . I can hardly see as I write for the eye-water, but it isn't with grief, but for the natural pathos of the thing. How happy your dear regard makes me, how it takes off the solitude and eases it; may it continue, pray God, till your head is white as mine, and our children have children of their own. Instead of being unhappy because that delightful holiday is over or all but over, I intend that the thoughts of it should serve to make me only the more cheerful and help me, please God, to do my duty better. All such pleasures ought to brace and strengthen one against work days, and lo, here they are. I hope you will be immensely punctual at breakfast and dinner, and do all your business of life with cheerfulness and briskness, after the example of holy Philip Neri, whom you wot of; that is your duty, Madame, and mine is “ mine is" to pursue my high calling"; and so I go back to it with a full grateful heart, and say God bless all. If it hadn't been pouring-o'-rain so, I think I should have gone off to His Reverence at Brighton; so I send him my very best regards, and a whole box full of kisses to the children. Farewell.

TO MRS. BROOKFIELD

Wednesday, 1849.

What have I been doing since these many days? I hardly know. I have written such a stupid number of Pendennis in consequence of not seeing you, that I shall be ruined if you are to stay away much longer. . . . Has William written to you about our trip to Hampstead on Sunday? It was very pleasant. We went first to St. Mark's church, where I always thought you went, but where the pew-opener had never heard of such a person as Mrs. J. O. B.; and having heard a jolly and perfectly stupid sermon, walked over Primrose Hill to the Crowes', where His Reverence gave Mrs. Crowe half an hour's private talk, whilst I was talking under the blossoming apple tree about newspapers to Monsieur Crowe. Well, Mrs. Crowe was delighted with William

and his manner of discoorsing her; and indeed, though I say it that shouldn't, from what he said afterwards, and from what we have talked over pipes in private, that is a pious and kind soul. I mean his, and calculated to soothe and comfort and appreciate and elevate so to speak out of despair, many a soul that your more tremendous, rigorous divines would leave on the wayside, where sin, that robber, had left them half killed. I will have a Samaritan parson when I fall among thieves. You, dear lady, may send for an ascetic if you like; what is he to find wrong in you?

I have talked to my mother about her going to Paris with the children; she is very much pleased at the notion, and it won't be very lonely to me. I shall be alone for some months at any rate, and vow and swear I'll save money. . . . Have you read Dickens? Oh! it is charming! brave Dickens! It has some of his very prettiest touches those inimitable Dickens touches which make such a great man of him; and the reading of the book has done another author a great deal of good. In the first place it pleases the other author to see that Dickens, who has long left off alluding to the A.'s works, has been copying the O. A., and greatly simplifying his style, and overcoming the use of fine words. By this the public will be the gainer and David Copperfield will be improved by taking a lesson from Vanity Fair. Secondly it has put me upon my metal; for ah! Madame, all the metal was out of me and I have been dreadfully and curiously cast down this. month past. I say, secondly, it has put me on my metal and made me feel I must do something; that I have fame and name and family to support.

EDWARD FITZGERALD
TO BERNARD BARTON

19 CHARLOTTE ST., April 11, '44. Dear Barton,

I am still indignant at this nasty place London. Thackeray, whom I came up

to see, went off to Brighton the night after I arrived, and has not reappeared: but I must wait some time longer for him. Thank Miss Barton much for the kit; if it is but a kit: my old woman is a great lover of cats, and hers has just kitted, and a wretched little blind puling tabby lizard of a thing was to be saved from the pail for me: but if Miss Barton's is a kit, I will gladly have it: and my old lady's shall be disposed of not to the pail. Oh rus, quando te aspiciam? Construe that, Mr. Barton. I am going to send down my pictures to Boulge, if I can secure them: they are not quite secure at present. If they vanish, I snap my fingers at them, Magi and all-there is a world (alas!) elsewhere beyond pictures Oh, oh, oh, oh

I smoked a pipe with Carlyle yesterday. We ascended from his dining room carrying pipes and tobacco up through two stories of his house, and got into a little dressing room near the roof: there we sat down the window was open and looked out on nursery gardens, their almond trees in blossom, and beyond, bare walls of houses, and over these, roofs and chimneys, and roofs and chimneys, and here and there a steeple, and whole London crowned with darkness gathering behind like the illimitable resources of a dream. I tried to persuade him to leave the accursed den, and he wished but but — perhaps he didn't wish on the whole.

When I get back to Boulge I shall recover my quietude, which is now all in a ripple. But it is a shame to talk of such things. So Churchyard has caught another Constable. Did he get off our Debach boy that set the shed on fire? Ask him that. Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased &c.

A cloud comes over Charlotte Street and seems as if it were sailing softly on the April wind to fall in a blessed shower upon the lilac buds and thirsty anemones somewhere in Essex; or, who knows? perhaps at Boulge. Out will run Mrs. Faiers, and with red arms and face of woe haul in the struggling windows of the cottage,

and make all tight. Beauty Bob will cast a bird's eye out at the shower, and bless the useful wet. Mr. Loder will observe to the farmer for whom he is doing up a dozen of Queen's Heads that it will be of great use: and the farmer will agree that his young barleys wanted it much. The German Ocean will dimple with innumerable pin points, and porpoises rolling near the surface sneeze with unusual pellets of fresh water

Can such things be,

And overcome us like a summer cloud,
Without our special wonder?

Oh this wonderful wonderful world, and we who stand in the middle of it are all in a maze, except poor Matthews of Bedford, who fixes his eyes upon a wooden Cross and has no misgiving whatever. When I was at his chapel on Good Friday, he called at the end of his grand sermon on some of the people to say merely this, that they believed Christ had redeemed them and first one got up and in sobs declared she believed it: and then another, and then another I was quite overset: all poor people: how much richer than all who fill the London Churches. Theirs is the kingdom of Heaven!

This is a sad farrago. Farewell.

TO FREDERIC TENNYSON

BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE, May 24, '44. My dear Frederic,

I think you mean never to write to me again. But you should, for I enjoy your letters much for years after I have got them. They tell me all I should know of Italy, besides many other good things. I received one letter from you from Florence, and as you gave me no particular direction, I wrote to you at the Poste Restante there. I am now inditing this letter on the same venture.

As my location is much more permanent, I command you to respond to me the very day you get this, warmed into such faint

inspiration as my turnip radiance can kindle. You have seen a turnip lantern perhaps. Well, here I continue to exist: have broken my rural vegetation by one month in London, where I saw all the old faces some only in passing, however -saw as few sights as possible, leaving London two days before the Exhibition opened. This is not out of moroseness or love of singularity: but I really supposed there could be nothing new and therefore the best way would be to come new to it oneself after three or four years absence. I see in Punch a humorous catalogue of supposed pictures; Prince Albert's favorite spaniel and bootjack, the Queen's Macaw with a Muffin &c., by Landseer &c., in which I recognize Thackeray's fancy. He is in full vigour play and pay in London, writing in a dozen reviews, and a score of newspapers: and while health lasts he sails before the wind. I have not heard of Alfred since March. . . . Spedding devotes his days to Lord Bacon in the British Museum: his nights to the usual profligacy. . . . My dear Frederic, you must select some of your poems and publish them we want some bits of strong genuine imagination to help put to flight these &c. Publish a book of fragments, if nothing else but single lines, or else the whole poems. When will you come to England and do it? I dare say I should have stayed longer in London had you been there: but the wits were too much for me. Not Spedding, mind: who is a dear fellow. But one finds few in London serious men: I mean serious even in fun with a true purpose and character whatsoever it may be. London melts away all individuality into a common lump of cleverness. I am amazed at the humour and worth and noble feeling in the country, however much railroads have mixed us up with metropolitan civilisation. I can still find the heart of England beating healthily down here though no one will believe it.

You know my way of life so well that I need not describe it to you, as it has undergone no change since I saw you. I