Page 391, note 1. In sending this book to Emerson, Carlyle wrote: "I have finished a book, … one solid volume; … it is a somewhat fiery and questionable 'Tract for the Times,' not by a Puseyite, which the terrible aspect of things here has forced from me." Mr. Emerson in his reply praised "the deep, steady tide taking in, either by hope or by fear, all the great classes of society,—and the philosophic minority also, by the powerful lights which are shed on the phenomenon. It is true contemporary history, which other books are not, and you have fairly set solid London city aloft, afloat, in bright mirage of the air. I quarrel only with the popular assumption, which is perhaps a condition of the Humor itself, that the state of society is a new state, and was not the same thing in the days of Rabelais and Aristophanes as of Carlyle. Orators always allow something to masses, out of love to their own art, whilst austere philosophy will only know the particles. This were of no importance if the historian did not so come to mix himself in some manner with his erring and grieving nations, and so saddens the picture; for health is always private and original, and its essence is in its unmixableness."
Five months later, October 31, 1843, Carlyle wrote:—
"In this last number of the Dial, … 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
