CLVII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 18 May, 1855

Dear Emerson,--Last Sunday, Clough was here; and we were
speaking about you, (much to your discredit, you need not doubt,)
and how stingy in the way of Letters you were grown; when, next
morning, your Letter itself made its appearance. Thanks, thanks.
You know not in the least, I perceive, nor can be made to
understand at all, how indispensable your Letters are to me. How
you are, and have for a long time been, the one of all the sons
of Adam who, I felt, completely understood what I was saying;
and answered with a truly _human_ voice,--inexpressibly
consolatory to a poor man, in his lonesome pilgrimage, towards
the evening of the day! So many voices are not human; but more
or less bovine, porcine, canine; and one's soul dies away in
sorrow in the sound of them, and is reduced to a dialogue with
the "Silences," which is of a very abstruse nature!--Well,
whether you write to me or not, I reserve to myself the privilege
of writing to you, so long as we both continue in this world! As
the beneficent Presences vanish from me, one after the other,
those that remain are the more precious, and I will not part with
them, not with the chief of them, beyond all.

This last year has been a grimmer lonelier one with me than any I
can recollect for a long time. I did not go to the Country at
all in summer or winter; refused even my Christmas at The Grange
with the Ashburtons,--it was too sad an anniversary for me;--I