MY DEAR SIR,—­As the day approaches when Mr. Lewis should leave Boston, I seize a few moments in a friendly house in the first of towns, to thank you heartily for your kindness in lending me the valued manuscripts which I return.  The translations excited me much, and who can estimate the value of a good thought?  I trust I am to learn much more from you hereafter of your German studies, and much I hope of your own.  You asked in your note concerning Carlyle.  My recollections of him are most pleasant, and I feel great confidence in his character.  He understands and recognizes his mission.  He is perfectly simple and affectionate in his manner, and frank, as he can well afford to be, in his communications.  He expressed some impatience of his total solitude, and talked of Paris as a residence.  I told him I hoped not; for I should always remember him with respect, meditating in the mountains of Nithsdale.  He was cheered, as he ought to be, by learning that his papers were read with interest by young men unknown to him in this continent; and when I specified a piece which had attracted warm commendation from the New Jerusalem people here, his wife said that is always the way; whatever he has writ that he thinks has fallen dead, he hears of two or three years afterward.—­He has many, many tokens of Goethe’s regard, miniatures, medals, and many letters.  If you should go to Scotland one day, you would gratify him, yourself, and me, by your visit to Craigenputtock, in the parish of Dunscore, near Dumfries.  He told me he had a book which he thought to publish, but was in the purpose of dividing into a series of articles for “Fraser’s Magazine.”  I therefore subscribed for that book, which he calls the “Mud Magazine,” but have seen nothing of his workmanship in the two last numbers.  The mail is going, so I shall finish my letter another time.

    Your obliged friend and servant,

    R. WALDO EMERSON.

    CONCORD, MASS., November 25, 1834.

MY DEAR SIR,—­Miss Peabody has kindly sent me your manuscript piece on Goethe and Carlyle.  I have read it with great pleasure and a feeling of gratitude, at the same time with a serious regret that it was not published.  I have forgotten what reason you assigned for not printing it; I cannot think of any sufficient one.  Is it too late now?  Why not change its form a little and annex to it some account of Carlyle’s later pieces, to wit:  “Diderot,” and “Sartor Resartus.”  The last is complete, and he has sent it to me in a stitched pamphlet.  Whilst I see its vices (relatively to the reading public) of style, I cannot but esteem it a noble philosophical poem, reflecting the ideas, institutions, men of this very hour.  And it seems to me that it has so much wit and other secondary graces as must strike a class who would not care for its primary merit, that of being a sincere exhortation to seekers of truth.  If you still retain your interest