"He was already turning his eyes towards London with a scholar's
appreciation. London is the heart of the world, he said,
wonderful only from the mass of human beings. He liked the huge
machine. Each keeps its own round. The baker's boy brings
muffins to the window at a fixed hour every day, and that is all
the Londoner knows or wishes to know on the subject. But it
turned out good men. He named certain individuals, especially
one man of letters, his friend, the best mind he knew, whom
London had well served."

Such is the record of the beginnings of the friendship between
Carlyle and Emerson. What place this friendship held in the
lives of both, the following Correspondence shows.

---------


I. Emerson to Carlyle

Boston, Massachusetts, 14 May, 1884

My Dear Sir,--There are some purposes we delay long to execute
simply because we have them more at heart than others, and such
an one has been for many weeks, I may say months, my design of
writing you an epistle.

Some chance wind of Fame blew your name to me, perhaps two years
ago, as the author of papers which I had already distinguished
(as indeed it was very easy to do) from the mass of English