Letter of Charles Eliot Norton to J. R. Lowell
33 Cleveland Square W. [London], April 20, 1873:
"[Emerson] dined with us on Thursday, and seemed in excellent health and spirits. Years but make him sweeter and finer. Few men keep so steadily at their best as he. I fear he finds less satisfaction than he hoped for in seeing Carlyle. They have grown apart; content with the world is the humor of one, discontent with it that of the other. Both, however, are alike in the underlying tenderness and sweetness of their souls. Emerson finds Carlyle too cynical, Carlyle find Emerson too transcendental; daily intercourse is not delightful, but each recognizes in the other the highest gifts of nature...."
-- Letters of Charles Eliot Norton (1913), vol. I, p. 486-487.
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