The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I | Page 4

hand of a master, and a spirit in full sympathy
with the hitherto unexpressed tendencies and aspirations of its time, and capable of giving
them expression. Here was a writer whose convictions were based upon principles, and
whose words stood for realities. His power was slowly acknowledged. As yet Carlyle had
received hardly a token of recognition from his contemporaries.
He was living solitary, poor, independent, in "desperate hope," at Craigenputtock. On
August 24,1833, he makes entry in his Journal as follows: "I am left here the solitariest,
stranded, most helpless creature that I have been for many years..... Nobody asks me to
work at articles. The thing I want to write is quite other than an article... In all times there
is a word which spoken to men; to the actual generation of men, would thrill their inmost
soul. But the way to find that word? The way to speak it when found?" The next entry in
his Journal shows that Carlyle had found the word. It is the name "Ralph Waldo
Emerson," the record of Emerson's unexpected visit. "I shall never forget the visitor,"
wrote Mrs. Carlyle, long afterwards, "who years ago, in the Desert, descended on us, out
of the clouds as it were, and made one day there look like enchantment for us, and left me
weeping that it was only one day."
At the time of this memorable visit Emerson was morally not less solitary than Carlyle;
he was still less known; his name had been unheard by his host in the desert. But his
voice was soon to become also the voice of a leader. With temperaments sharply
contrasted, with traditions, inheritances, and circumstances radically different, with views
of life and of the universe widely at variance, the souls of these two young men were yet
in sympathy, for their characters were based upon the same foundation of principle. In
their independence and their sincerity they were alike; they were united in their faith in
spiritual truth, and their reverence for it. Their modes of thought of expression were not

merely dissimilar, but divergent, and yet, though parted by an ever widening cleft of
difference, they knew, as Carlyle said, that beneath it "the rock-strata, miles deep, united
again, and their two souls were at one"
Two days after Emerson's visit Carlyle wrote to his mother:--
"Three little happinesses have befallen us: first, a piano-tuner, procured for five shillings
and sixpence, has been here, entirely reforming the piano, so that I can hear a little music
now, which does me no little good. Secondly, Major Irving, of Gribton, who used at this
season of the year to live and shoot at Craigenvey, came in one day to us, and after some
clatter offered us a rent of five pounds for the right to shoot here, and even tabled the
cash that moment, and would not pocket it again. Money easilier won never sat in my
pocket; money for delivering us from a great nuisance, for now I will tell every gunner
applicant, 'I cannot, sir; it is let.' Our third happiness was the arrival of a certain young
unknown friend, named Emerson, from Boston, in the United States, who turned aside so
far from his British, French, and Italian travels to see me here! He had an introduction
from Mill, and a Frenchman (Baron d'Eichthal's nephew) whom John knew at Rome. Of
course we could do no other than welcome him; the rather as he seemed to be one of the
most lovable creatures in himself we had ever looked on. He stayed till next day with us,
and talked and heard talk to his heart's content, and left us all really sad to part with him.
Jane says it is the first journey since Noah's Deluge undertaken to Craigenputtock for
such a purpose. In any case, we had a cheerful day from it, and ought to be thankful."
On the next Sunday, a week after his visit, Emerson wrote the following account of it to
his friend, Mr. Alexander Ireland.
"I found him one of the most simple and frank of men, and became acquainted with him
at once. We walked over several miles of hills, and talked upon all the great questions
that interest us most. The comfort of meeting a man is that he speaks sincerely; that he
feels himself to be so rich, that he is above the meanness of pretending to knowledge
which he has not, and Carlyle does not pretend to have solved the great problems, but
rather to be an observer of their solution as it goes forward in the world. I asked him at
what religious development the concluding passage in his piece in the Edinburgh Review
upon German literature (say five years ago), and some passages