There is also much writing, on both sides, of Carlyle's coming to America. For years this was the most enchanting topic, of which they never grew weary. In one of his saddest moods, while yet almost unknown and very poor, Carlyle wrote:-- "In joy, in grief, a voice says to me, 'Behold, there is one that loves thee; in thy loneliness, in thy darkness, see how a hospitable candle shines from far over seas, how a friendly heart watches!' It is very good and precious to me." There is, of course, a great deal of mutual admiration of each other's work, very genuine, ever pleasant to hear about, expressed in the warmest language,--even in those superlatives which Emerson derided. There are also lovely bits of home life upon both sides,--faultless interiors over which the mind will linger with delight in times far away from these, when the students of another age strive to make to themselves a picture of what sort of men these the great of the nineteenth century really were. There is nothing told in these volumes that will detract from the fame of either, but much that will add to the kindly impression which they have made upon their time. One cannot but think, as the letters grow more infrequent, and are written with greater labor, of how old age was a weariness to these great men as to others,--how the very grasshopper became a burden, and how inexpressibly sad was the decay of their great powers. Emerson begins to lag first, although a few years younger than Carlyle, and Carlyle implores him, almost piteously, to write. There is an interval of one, two, and even three years in the correspondence toward the end; and after Emerson's last visit to England they wrote no more. Carlyle's gentleness and tenderness show themselves very beautifully in these last letters to his one best friend. When he finds that it has become hard for Emerson to write, he begs at first that he be not forsaken, but after a little says in effect: Never mind, my friend, if it wearies you to write, write to me no more. I will still write to you, and thus our friendship shall not lack for a voice. When the sweet bells had become a little jangled in Emerson's brain, when memory had left him or played him false, and there was a weakening of all his powers,--he sat still in his own home among his friends and kindred, his household intact, and surrounded by the fondest care and affection; while his old friend over the seas--the broken giant, the god of thunder, now grown silent--sat in utter desolation in the home he had reared after infinite struggle and endeavor, and wrapped in a solitude so utter and so black that the heart which can look upon it without pity must be a heart of stone. Carlyle died on the 5th of April, 1881, being eighty-five years old. Emerson died on the 27th of April, 1882, at the age of seventy-nine. In death they were not long divided. [Illustration] [Illustration] THOMAS CARLYLE.