In this last Number of the _Dial_ which by the bye your
Bookseller never forwarded to me, I found one little Essay, a
criticism on myself,* which, if it should do me mischief, may the
gods forgive you for! It is considerably the most dangerous
thing I have read for some years. A decided likeness of myself
recognizable in it, as in the celestial mirror of a friend's
heart; but so enlarged, exaggerated, all _transfigured,_--the
most delicious, the most dangerous thing! Well, I suppose I must
try to assimilate it also, to turn it also to good, if I be able.
Eulogies, dyslogies, in which one finds no features of one's own
natural face, are easily dealt with; easily left unread, as
stuff for lighting fires, such is the insipidity, the wearisome
_non_entity of pabulum like that: but here is another sort of
matter! "The beautifulest piece of criticism I have read for
many a day," says every one that speaks of it. May the gods
forgive you!--I have purchased a copy for three shillings, and
sent it to my Mother: one of the _indubitablest_ benefits I
could think of in regard to it.

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* A criticism by Emerson of _Past and Present,_ in the _Dial_
for July, 1843. It embodies a great part of the extract
from Emerson's Diary given in a preceding note, and is well
worth reading in full for its appreciation of Carlyle's powers
and defects.
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There have been two friends of yours here in these very days:
Dr. Russell, just returning from Paris; Mr. Parker, just bound
thither.* We have seen them rather oftener than common, Sterling