I received last week, made a bright light in a solitary and saddened
place. I had quite recently received the news of the death of a brother
in the island of Porto Rico, whose loss to me will be a lifelong
sorrow." It was of him that Emerson wrote the lines "In Memoriam," in
which he says,--

"There is no record left on earth
Save on tablets of the heart,
Of the rich, inherent worth,
Of the grace that on him shone
Of eloquent lips, of joyful wit;
He could not frame a word unfit,
An act unworthy to be done."

Another bereavement was too soon to be recorded. On the 7th of October,
1835, he says in a letter to Carlyle:--

"I was very glad to hear of the brother you describe, for I have one
too, and know what it is to have presence in two places. Charles
Chauncy Emerson is a lawyer now settled in this town, and, as I
believe, no better Lord Hamlet was ever. He is our Doctor on
all questions of taste, manners, or action. And one of the pure
pleasures I promise myself in the months to come is to make you two
gentlemen know each other."

Alas for human hopes and prospects! In less than a year from the date of
that letter, on the 17th of September, 1836, he writes to Carlyle:--

"Your last letter, dated in April, found me a mourner, as did your
first. I have lost out of this world my brother Charles, of whom I