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"The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II."

The two
poles of an enormous political battery, galvanic coil on coil,
self-increased by series on series of plates from Mexico to
Canada, and from the sea westward to the Rocky Mountains, here
meet and play, and make the air electric and violent. Yet one
feels how little, more than how much, man is represented there.
I think, in the higher societies of the Universe, it will turn
out that the angels are molecules, as the devils were always
Titans, since the dulness of the world needs such mountainous
demonstration, and the virtue is so modest and concentrating.
But I must not delay to acknowledge the arrival of your Book. It
came ten or eleven days ago, in the "Britannia," with the three
letters of different dates announcing it.--I have read the
superfluous hundred pages of manuscript, and find it only too
popular. Beside its abundance of brilliant points and proverbs,
there is a 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.


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