Chapter VIII: Part 8

I have just had a new pupil; he is a very good fellow and eager to learn, and a ‘senior,’ _i.e._ a fourth year student in the College. I am also going to write an article on the Oxford Commission in the ‘North American Review.’ Another book matter is, that Little & Brown, the head booksellers here, want me to help towards republishing Langhorne’s Plutarch. I am to have discretion to do it as I like, and $350 for the work.

My fancy at present is, if possible, to live here in a humble way, take a few pupils, and do booksellers’ work or lecture, and so make up an income. I think it will be less fatiguing and less hazardous than setting up a school, which any rumour of heterodoxy might upset. And I do think that I can teach Greek better than most Yankee Grecians.

January 29.

Yesterday evening out in a sleigh and four horses, with seven ladies and one youth, making nine in all, to Jamaica Plain, four miles off. I was put into a buffalo skin, which indeed was desirable, though it was not very cold. Sleighs, you know, are all open; some are like great barges, carrying thirty people inside, sitting all round, drawn by perhaps eight horses.

There is living here in Cambridge a Greek named Evangelinus Sophocles, who was bred up in a monastery, I think, on Mount Athos, and afterwards in a branch of it at Alexandria. What strange recollections he must have!

February 4.

Sleep as much as you can, eat plentifully, but don’t drink wine or spirits much. Such is the rule they give for New England living.

I don’t think I shall ever do much work alone, not from laziness, but really from having no proper rest to go to after it. I feel as if I had a good deal of work in me, but it takes time to bring it out; and the mere drudgery of the Plutarch, though not disagreeable, takes a deal of time.

I am, I know, sometimes carried away into a world of abstraction when I write or study, or so forth. I believe my ambition also, such as I have (it is only lately that I have begun to believe that it exists in my composition at all), tends in that direction. Yet I am always so glad to come away from it. It is odd how much better I like this Plutarch than I do anything which requires distinct statement of opinion. Yet it bothers me a good deal, for mending up an old translation seems often like putting new wine into old bottles. They would hardly allow time, or else I could almost believe it would be best even for my own sake to spend time in translating it myself.

I, I am sure, have always been inclined to believe in the good of the world, and have always acted on that belief, except for a brief interval (just when I was in London), and even then it was partly that I was afraid lest I should be trusting my own vague hopefulness too unreasonably. Turn the thing over as we will, we can’t _make_ sure; but doubt as we will about things in particular, we can, for the whole, _feel_ sure.

Fires of wood are the pleasantest one sees here: there is anthracite coal and another coal, which I burn mixed. In many houses the rooms are heated only by the furnace, which is found in almost all houses--a great stove down below in the cellar, with pipes sent through the various rooms, and what are called registers. What impairs the beauty and youthfulness of the American women is, I believe, their hot fires and furnaces, and the dryness of the heat given by the anthracite coal. But Mrs. Longfellow looks as youthful as possible.

February 9.

Look in the ‘Fraser’ of this month for some verses about Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington; Napoleon’s dying words ‘Tête d’armée.’ The Duke didn’t say anything, did he? I went on that supposition. It has been beautifully bright and sunny here to-day: there is always that advantage here. The thermometer is down to 6° or 7° to-night, I dare say.

I think I must have been getting into a little mysticism lately. It won’t do: twice two are four, all the world over, and there’s no harm in its being so; ’tisn’t the devil’s doing that it is; il faut s’y soumettre, and all right. Some of my companions are too much in the religiose vein to be always quite wholesome company. This climate also is, I think, mystical.

February 10.

Only ten pages of Plutarch done to-day. But at twelve Emerson appeared, and after sitting awhile with me took me off to dine in town with him. He is just come back from the West. I go to stay Sunday with him, week after next. I dined at his hotel, and sat in his room with him talking till a quarter to five, and then came home to Plutarch.

Drive deep the furrow in the sluggish soil,
E’en to the rock force in the labouring share;
Earth, that with starveling ears mocks niggard toil,
To pain and strife will golden harvests bear.

This Plutarch is not a religious subject, fortunately. I have rather the feeling that one day or other it will have to be done, whatever I do now, and however undesirous I may be. The only thing to keep one quiet is the perfect readiness to be unquiet at any moment that may call for it or occasion it.

February 18.

Two hours and a bit at an evening party. _C’en est trop._ However, there were some few reasonable beings there. I don’t much like going to parties, or rather do not approve of their profuse expenditure of one’s finest spirits: however, one must harden oneself. People are cleverer, and know more over there, though perhaps they are more unworldly and amiable here.

Will you think it wrong if I do what I think best in itself, even if it don’t seem the quickest way to get on? Apropos of this Plutarch, I feel sometimes as if I must not trifle away time in anything which is not really a work to some purpose, and that any attempt to be happy except in doing that would be mere failure, even if apparently successful. It sometimes seems to be said to me that I must do this, or else ‘from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have.’ There is nothing very terrible in this, but I cannot get myself to look at things as mere means to money-making; and yet, if I do not, I seem in some sense guilty. It may be the sanguine atmosphere of a new country has filled me with a vain confidence of there being really something in me to be done beyond mere subsistence. In London I felt myself pretty well helpless to effect anything.

‘Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.’ Is there any application for that, I wonder, nowadays?

February 21.

Just back at Cambridge after my visit to Emerson. I was rather _sleepless_ there, but it is very good to go to him. He appears to take things very coolly, and not to meddle with religious matters of any kind. Since visiting him, I feel a good deal more reconciled to mere ‘subsistence’; if one can only have a little reasonable satisfactory intercourse now and then, subsistence may be to some purpose. But to live in a vain show of society would not do long. The Boston people have been too well off, and don’t know the realities. Emerson is really substantive.

Cambridge is a town or a city, or both, if you like. It is a huge district, a parish (which here they call a _town_) of several square miles, with roads stretching away here and there and everywhere, and houses all along them and off them. It is called a city because it has a Mayor and Corporation; but it is more like a big suburban district, a sort of Clapham or Highgate. There is scarcely anything that is a street, properly speaking; but there are acres of roads with houses along them, and cross lanes with houses too.

The College at Cambridge consists of a collection of old red brick buildings, with a library of modern granite. There are students’ rooms, much in our style, only humbler. The boys at College live partly in lodgings, partly in halls, under some little superintendence, much like College rooms; only they don’t dine together, but all about, in families, &c. They learn French, and history, and German, and a great many more things than in England, but only imperfectly.

February 23.

Just returned from dinner with the Longfellows, where I met Mrs. Stowe and her husband; only I to meet them. She is small, and quiet, and unobtrusive, but quick and ready-witted enough. Her husband is a very pleasant, good-humoured country minister, with keen black eyes. He has been in England before; she never.

I have done my article for the ‘North American’; not very well; but that can’t be helped; it is not in a wrong style of speaking, which is the main thing I care for. I have put a pretty good tail to a poor body, like a squirrel. It is very cold to-night, and the wind bloweth where it listeth in this room of mine.

Are you aware that life is very like a railway? One gets into deep cuttings and long dark tunnels, where one sees nothing and hears twice as much noise as usual, and one can’t read, and one shuts up the window, and waits, and then it all comes clear again. Only in life it sometimes feels as if one had to dig the tunnel as one goes along, all new for oneself. Go straight on, however, and one’s sure to come out into a new country, on the other side the hills, sunny and bright. There’s an apologue for you!

Here is a little story about Napoleon told to me by S. C., and told to him by some old soldier in Switzerland or France, probably a courier. This man was one of the cuirassiers, and was in the Russian campaign, and at his first battle was riding on to the charge, when suddenly he found his kettle (they all carry their kettles behind them) had dropped. So he jumped off, and was picking it up, when somebody called out, ‘Hé; cuirassier, que fais-tu là?’ He looked up and saw the Emperor. Touching his hat (which he did also in repeating it), ‘Ah, votre Majesté, j’avais perdu ma chaudière.’ ‘En avant,’ replied the Emperor, ‘les Russes en ont.’

March 9.

Just returned from a little party, to which I went in a very bad humour, but have returned in much better. A pleasant tiny old house, the oldest in Cambridge, perhaps, that is really a pleasure to one’s eyes; beams across the ceilings, and solid wood-work, and so forth. I went at nine, and back at half-past ten; that also is the right thing. Tea, coffee, and chocolate; that also is sensible.

I am almost persuaded to be an Abolitionist, which, how ever, is not true; but I am a decided Free Soiler for the present, and entirely give up the cause of the Fugitive Slave Law.

Emerson is the only profound man in this country. There are some other nice people at Concord; but for society generally the advantage is greatly on the side of Cambridge. Concord would be but dull, but the walks are far prettier than here. It is nearly an hour’s journey from Boston. People don’t the least despise one for being poor in Cambridge, and indeed I recommend them not! There are two Miss ---- and their mother living here; their father, now dead, was American minister for many years at ---- and ----; and now one Miss ---- teaches French, and the other music. My opinion is that the true position in this country is that of comparative poverty. No sort of real superiority of breeding or anything attaches as it does in England to the rich. The poor man can get his children educated at the public schools, to which the rich children go also, _for nothing_, prepared for College even. And very few people indeed are so rich by patrimony as not to be in business.

What I mean by mysticism, is letting feelings run on without thinking of the reality of their object, letting them out merely like water. The plain rule in all matters is, not to think what you are thinking about the question, but to look straight out at the things and let them affect you; otherwise how can you judge at all? look at them at any rate, and judge while looking. I was just now looking into a book of verse which I brought with me, at what is called there ὔμνος ἀύμνος; it wants a good deal of mending as it stands, but it is on the whole in sense very satisfactory to me still. However, we shall learn more together, I do not doubt. The only way to become really religious is to enter into those relations and those actualities of life which demand and create religion.

In the years 1844 and 1845 I was in very great force, and used to be taken for an undergraduate just come up to College. I am wiser perhaps now, but I have lost a good deal to become so.

March 16.

Here comes a letter from Carlyle, about my coming home and about the Council Office. I tell him I shall be very glad to come home, and very grateful to be brought; but I don’t dwell on what must be an uncertainty. I should like you, even if it were but for a little while, to see this worthy Yankee-land. From the specimens I occasionally meet with, I infer it to be a good deal the best part of the American Republic. But I should like to see the West.

March 30.

This morning I went for a walk of an hour and a half to Fresh Pond, the pond where they cut the ice to go to England, India, or wherever it may be. There are odd birds here. The rooks fly to the South, and have just reappeared; that is, I have seen one. There is a bird about as big as a starling, with a black head, and a slight tinge of red on the breast; this they call the robin. There are little things they call sparrows, more like sedge-birds, I think; and black-birds with long tails, that hold Sunday meetings in the pines, bigger than ours. But the prettiest bird I have seen is the blue-bird, rather less than the robin, with blue back and wings, and a red-tinted breast, something like a bullfinch, only larger.

The extremely-respectables of Boston attend ‘the Stone Chapel,’ an Episcopalian church of old time, whose minister, some thirty years ago perhaps, told his congregation that he had become a Unitarian, and therewith resigned. So they considered and consulted, and said, Well, they liked him very much, and they thought they would turn Unitarians too; what was good enough for him was likely to be as much as would do very well for them. So they took the English liturgy (for moreover certain endowments depended on the use of the Church liturgy) and cut off the tails of the prayers, and pruned things here and there, and lo! they have a very handsome Common Prayer Book, quite as good as any genuine one. And to this Stone Chapel go all the fashionable Unitarian people of Boston, in their best dresses, just as if they were Church of England people, and are deeply attached to their liturgy just as if it was the real thing. Is not that curious?

Did I tell you of the aged Calvinist woman, who being asked about the Universalists, said, ‘Yes, they expect that everybody will be saved, but we “look for better things”?’

April 1.

I went last night to Dana’s, where was pretty nearly all Cambridge; and where I had some port wine, I believe the first I have seen since I came to America. He showed us a copy of Hallam’s works handsomely bound, received by him in gratitude for his services in their behalf from the negroes of Boston. He defended their cause in some of the trials about the Fugitive Law.

Before the end of this month the Nortons depart, which will reduce my stock of sociabilities materially. They go in summer to Newport.

I have already established two decent walks, not to mention a sort of half-hour stroll, at the end of which there is a little spot where one can pause and be solaced. On southern slopes there is positively a slight tinge of green. The common, however, which is level, seems to me as brown as ever it was. Mind you tell me as soon as ever the little ferns begin to curl up out of the ground over with you.

April 4.

I have just had my little Ethics class, who seem to enjoy themselves very well, and certainly relieve my inactive life of Plutarchising very pleasantly. This sort of thing, the class of six or seven, is what I have always got on best with. I might get on as far as twelve or fifteen, but after that it gets disagreeable comparatively. I got on famously with some five of the youths at University College with these same Ethics, in the year 1851.

April 6.

To-day is the annual Fast-day, so my little class in Ethics goes to church instead and comes to me to-morrow. People all go to church to-day, and it is a sort of Sunday. Thanksgiving day in November and Fast-day in March or April are the two State religious observances in Massachusetts.

I am going to send a bit of the Mayflower which grows chiefly about Plymouth, where the Pilgrim Fathers landed, and it is called after their ship, ‘The Mayflower.’ They are rare. The spring is beautiful here also, though so slow. The American weeping elms are extremely graceful, with their long pendent branches hung thick with buds. There are sharpish frosts, however, at times, so that there is no appearance of leaf as yet, except upon these Mayflowers, which I think must have been specially sheltered or forced. I saw, by-the-by, a great bittern at Concord; it rose from a pond, and makes an odd noise, on account of which they call it the stake-driver. There were some Andromedas, just budding, covering all the banks of the pond.

General Pierce’s speech is not really at all aggressive; I believe he was forced to say something for his party, but he kept within the lines pretty well. They say that when he read the passage about territories that must become theirs, there was a general cheer; and when he went on to say that under his government no movement not perfectly fair and just should be made, there was a dead silence. Everett’s speech is made a good deal of; but I don’t think he’s up to the mark, and I believe the old Whigs are quite stranded. Circumstances may split the Democrats (Pierce’s people), and they may form into parties, one aggressive and the other conservative. Free soil, perhaps. For they say Mexico must be dropping in soon, and then there’ll be all the old question of Extension of Slave Area over again.

I am going to write an article in the ‘North American Review,’ on recent English poetry. I have been interrupted in my regular quiet Plutarch work, which suits me much better than reviewing Alexander Smith & Co. M. Arnold’s ‘Tristram’ has been giving me pleasure.

I have been reading Mrs. Gaskell’s ‘Ruth’; it is really very good, but it _is_ a little too timid, I think. Ruth did well, but there is also another way, and a more hopeful way. Such at least is my feeling. I do not think she has got the whole truth. I do not think that such overpowering humiliation should be the result in the soul of the not really guilty, though misguided girl, any more than it should be, justly, in the judgment of the world.

I really am very comfortably settled, on very easy terms with the American world in general, and have nothing to complain of, except perhaps the fact which appears to be true everywhere, that to get a livelihood one must do work according to other people’s fancies, instead of one’s own, which of course are the best, but under the circumstances must give way.

Do you know the Nortons have been so good as to offer me house-room during their absence at Newport? so in three weeks’ time you must conceive of me as embowered among the pines of Shady Hill, about two-thirds of a mile from this present Mrs. Howe’s. It will be cooler too. July, August, and the beginning of September are the hot months.

April 28.

I have had a sort of rheumatic cold. The east winds come in, in the midst of the warmth, with damp icy chills from the icebergs. I have had similar sensations in Italy. This day four years I was in Rome, witnessing the battle in which the French got beaten.

May 12.

Last night I went to a ‘reception,’ that is the next thing after a wedding. At seven o’clock Miss ----, daughter of a German, once Professor, was united to a German merchant, in the presence of about seventy friends, in their drawing-room. I went, and found the groomsman at the door; he took me up, led me to the end of the room, where stood the newly-married lady, holding white flowers in her hand. I made my bow, turned to the right, and presented my congratulations to the lady’s mother, and retired. And so the thing went on for a couple of hours nearly. It is quite the old custom, older a great deal than ours, which only dates from the time when the law was passed enacting that all marriages should be performed before twelve at noon, some time in the middle of 1700-1800.

The most agreeable part of the proceeding was the leave-taking of the young people, who were her friends, which began towards the end of the evening.

On the whole, I do think that pupilising and writing is my proper vocation, and that if I could afford to stick to it, and do whatever work is offered me really well, I should in time be well paid for it. People talk in their sanguine way, but they don’t know how hard it is for the unfortunate solitary schoolmaster to get through his work from day to day: they don’t know how, with no real affection to recur to when he is overworked, he is obliged to run no chances of overworking himself; how he must, as it were, use only his left hand to work with, because he has to _hold on_ with his right for fear of falling altogether. This is not indolence, and so forth.

Eile mit Weile: das war selbst Kaiser Augustus’ Devise.

I send some lily of the valley, which does not grow wild, however and is not native to America.

May 21.

A man who doesn’t go much into the kind of society where people have the chance of going backwards and forwards, and experimenting, and learning their own minds and other people’s minds, and correcting their views by finding out the feelings of others, runs into mistakes more flagrant and irretrievable than hundreds quite as bad really which occur continually. Because he has lived quietly and done his daily duties, and not gone into dancing and flirtation, he has known less about feminine feelings than worse men do, less perhaps also about his own. The mere man’s idea of a wife as a helpmate in duty is not in my judgment an insult to womankind, though it may require modification and correction. But if that were the worst sin committed against womankind the world would be better than it is; and many women, it appears to me, have been misled by their natural aversion to this into accepting worse things. It is a sad thing for a man to feel that by his very steadiness and self-sacrificing in doing his plain duty, he has cut himself off from the happiness which women, alas! are often ready to accord to the indolent and self-indulgent. Indeed, but I fear it is so, very often.

East winds and rain; such is our present not at all pleasant dispensation. September, October, November are said to be the most agreeable months here, and April and May the worst. People fly from Boston in the spring, if they are at all consumptive.

Shady Hill, Cambridge: June 4.

I woke this morning in a sort of paradise. My room here is a most delightful change from my late narrow crib, consequently I awoke in a sort of ecstasy; I have not been in anything like it since I left Combe. It looks south-eastward, right away to Boston, which is full in sight, not much above a mile and a half off; and the masts of some shipping are visible, near where, I think, the steamers lie for England. It is a great relief to get into a nice house, with everything pleasant about one.

On Sunday I walked across a bit of wood and got into a bog, which was all covered with the blue Iris. I picked also some Andromeda and Kalmia.

This climate certainly is to my somewhat rheumatic constitution extremely trying. Think of passing without notice from 85° in the shade to a cold icy-damp east wind of 50°. At three o’clock the thermometer was 89° or 90° in the shade.

June 15.

This is a blazing hot day, which makes me truly wish myself in England. But it will pass, and indeed there is a cool breeze; but that gives one a chill at the same time that one is melting with heat. The autumn is said to be very pleasant, and I myself cared little for the winter. But from the middle of March onward, God help one!

I went to Longfellow’s and had a very pleasant dinner; Emerson, Hawthorne, and C. E. Norton. Hawthorne goes July 7. I am going to Emerson’s next Saturday. I more and more recognise his superiority to everybody I have seen.

Energy is a very ordinary thing; reasonableness is much less common, and does ten times the good. Spurring and lashing is not good; one loses quite as much in sense and sober discernment as one gains in anything else.

June 21.

It rained heavily in the night. To-day is pretty cool and pleasant, and the rain-drops lie on the broad tulip-tree leaves among the flowers which are now coming out, just through my open window. I came back yesterday from Emerson’s, after a pleasant Sunday. I saw Hawthorne again, and his children too, Julian and Una, and a little thing about two years old. Concord is pretty in summer, and a good deal cooler than Cambridge. I saw also Margaret Fuller’s mother at Emerson’s, and liked her. There were visitors from New York, a young Englishman, and a young German that has married a daughter of Concord, both in the artist line, and living in New York; and there was quite a little crowd of people in the evening.

June 22.

The hottest day of the year, 94° or more out of doors and 86° in. But nothing is any real harm but the east wind.

June 23.

Quite cold again, and I have a sore throat with the change.

June 28.

The letter advising me to come home arrived this morning. I have telegraphed for my berth, and sail with this letter from New York.

LETTERS.

FROM 1853 TO 1861.

LONDON.

_To Charles Eliot Norton, Esq., Cambridge, Massachusetts._

On board the ‘Asia’: July 7, 1853.

Here we are, pretty well on our way across, about 2,200 miles from New York.

Mr. Slidell, of Louisiana, and a young man apparently his companion, are perhaps the most unexceptionable human beings that one sees. Some Spaniards from Mexico and Cuba are also pleasant to look at, specially two little boys. A maiden aunt and nephew from Burlington, New Jersey, sit near me, and are not so bad. A horrid woman from New York whines, or rather wheines, or whaines, or even whoines just beyond, whom it is misery even to think of. I feel convinced there is a purgatory for vulgar people.

Combe Hurst, Surrey: July 15.

Now I am here I find the case is altered a good deal. Still I like America best; and, but for the greater security which one has in a fixed salary, would give up all thought of staying here at once. At least I might take the place for a time. It is a temptation, if I am to live the rest of my life chez vous, to secure another year’s schooling on this side first; πολλὰ δὲ διδασκόμενος, in short.

I like America all the better for the comparison with England on my return. Certainly I think you are more right than I was willing to admit about the position of the lower classes here. I hope you will be able to get along without anything like it, and in any case you have a great blessing in the mere chance of that. Such is my first reimpression. However, it will wear off soon enough, I dare say; so you must make the most of my admission. Thackeray, they tell me, is full of the kind-heartedness and generousness of the Americans, and is faithful to his purpose of writing no book.

July 20, 1853.

The thing is done; and I am to try my hand in this place. I go to the Education Office on Monday next. With the prospect of being able to marry within the year, I could hardly do otherwise. Yet I could not venture with any comfort without the prospect of America beyond.

_To the same._

Council Office: August 29, 1853.

Really, I may say I am only just beginning to recover my spirits after returning from the young, and hopeful, and humane republic, to this cruel, unbelieving, inveterate old monarchy. There are deeper waters of ancient knowledge and experience about one here, and one is saved from the temptation of flying off into space, but I think you have beyond all question the happiest and best country going. Still the political talk of America, such as one hears it here, is not always true to the best intentions of the country is it?

Everybody is away from town, except a few stray lawyers and newspaper contributors. I took a long walk yesterday, calling at Highgate, on the Horners, with a young Morning Chronicler, son of the Vicar of Conway, a first-class man at Oxford, and Fellow of University. We went on beyond Highgate to a place called Muswell Hill, and thence near Colney Hatch, near the Great Northern Railway, and across the course of the New River to Southwell, where we got some luncheon, and then came back to Hornsey, where we got an omnibus, after walking from 12.30 to 5.

I met the other day, at the Horners’, Murray, the ci-devant American, just come from Egypt, and starting for Berne, where he is to have office: he is really very American. The Pulskys came in in the evening. I have met Mr. Pulsky three times in the last twelve months perhaps--once in England before I came away; then at Mrs. Howe’s, Boston, with you; and again yesterday, chez Mrs. Horner. We meet with the utmost unconcern under the oddest changes of circumstances; it is really very cosmopolitan.

Well, I go on in the office--_operose nihil agendo_--very _operose_, and very _nihil_ too. London is dead empty, or nearly so. The Lords are scampering through the last bills, heaven knows how many per night. The Commons are off grouse-wards, and scarcely any one remains to ask one to dinner or anything else.

I am very glad to be enrolled among the φ. β. κ’s. What can I do to express my sense of the honour done me? I assure you I am very glad of any tie with my sometime fellow-citizens, if I may so call them. England, we who know America agree, is more endurable because of one’s knowledge of America as a refuge. However, my employment in England is in one respect, namely, in its entire freedom from all spiritual despotism or surveillance, more agreeable than what I used to have.

_To the same._

Council Office: September 21, 1853.

I sometimes get overpowered by the burden and weight of European metropolitan life, and am driven in spirit to the solution of Transatlantic new life, but as to the letter of such palingenesy I can’t say. I like the quill-driving very well. I did not know how tired I had become of pedagogy or _boy_-driving till I learnt something of it by the change. Beyond that mere fact, however, I do not know that there is much interest in composing sheets of agenda.

I am very glad to hear something reasonable about American politics. As for naturalisation, it seems to me a little cloud that must cover a good space of the political heavens before long. I think the old countries must abandon their present doctrine of inalienable right. It seems fair, however, to allow some interval of time; and in case of ‘rebels,’ I should say no fully naturalised citizen, far less a man going to be a citizen, can claim with any justice to return to his old country and be protected by his new country. After full five years Kossuth could not without insult go to Vienna. It would be quite enough that he should go to Turkey or the Canton Tessin, which I _would_ claim for him.

The old classical system by which closer ties of relationship between this country and that, than between this and some third, seems no bad one. Between America and England, between the British American Colonies in particular and the United States, one would be glad if there could exist some isopolity: that a man might be a citizen in which he pleased, and change about as he chose. Treaties with different countries might establish different degrees of privilege very naturally. Had I remained with you, I would gladly have become an American citizen; but I should not like to pledge myself to fight against England, except in _defence_ of my new country. It seems to me it would be well if that degree of transfer were open to one.

_To R. W. Emerson, Esq._

London: Sunday, October 9, 1853.

People are beginning to return now to their beloved metropolis. Here is a specimen of the sort of thing I used to try and represent to you. I went out this morning to do civilities, this being the only day of the week free for that object. I went first to Mr. Frank Newman, with whom was a certain Dr. Stamm, abroad on a mission to or from a new Religious Union or League--he delivering himself of a sort of Anima Mundi Religion; Humanism, I think they call it; F. N. fraternising from a Theistic distance. Thence I got to old Mr. Crabbe Robinson with Liberalism and Abolitionism, &c. Then I went across country and made a call in Belgravia, where presently in came two ladies, one of whom (called by Mrs. B.’s little girl Miss Lord ----, being sister to Lord ----) is a very fair specimen of aristocratic tradition. Then I fell in in my walk with Carlyle; and then two or three other casualties, which I omit. However, these changes of atmosphere do not affect me as they used to do. On the whole, I do not think there is much here you have to envy; and there is a hopefulness and a belief-fulness, so to say, on your side, which is a great compensation.

Your woods are in full beauty, I suppose, about this time. There is something visible of autumnal richness even here in the Regent’s Park.

Thackeray is off to Paris. He seems restless and uneasy after his Transatlantic travel. Europe feels small to him.

_To Charles E. Norton, Esq._

[On hearing of his father’s death.]

London: October 13, 1853.

The news your letter brought was no surprise. The change in your father between the day when you first brought me to Shady Hill, and that when he bade me good-bye before going to Newport, was too great not to give some warning. And, quite recently, the accounts which I had had made me expect that your next letter would be to this purpose.

My own feeling is really, rather than anything else, that of your happiness in having so long and so much enjoyed the blessing of your father’s society. This is all the more striking to me, as I was parted from my father at nine years old, and hardly had begun to know him properly again before his death, soon after I had taken my degree at Oxford. I am truly glad that my visit to America was early enough to let me know your father.

_To the same._

London: November 29, 1853.

It grieved me to the heart to think of my hostages being returned; and my books, &c. (much as I want them), being already embarked. But thank you very much for discharging that painful duty. I send you M. Arnold’s poems. I myself think that the Gipsy Scholar is the best. It is _so_ true to the Oxford country.

December 9, 1853.

All news from your side is very acceptable; political, personal, and first-personal. I do a little Plutarch continually; only a very little, I fear; but it always brings up some vision of the Common, or Shady Hill, or the Appian Way, or the road across from your gate towards Allen and Farnham’s. Things go on slowly and rather dismally here in the December fog.

Tell Child not to be _too_ learned about his Chaucer, for my sake; and, above all, to make the verses scan. I hesitate about recommending any indications of the metre in the typography. But a set of simple directions, emphatically and prominently given at the outset (_e.g._ for the sounding or silencing of the final e), will, I think, be essential. People won’t read Chaucer against their ears.

There is a curious notion afloat among the German extreme Radicals, that Russia is more hopeful than feudal Western Europe; that the life of the Russian commune is pure democracy; and except that every member is bound to the soil, and cannot quit it except by placing himself under the quasi-ownership of a seigneur, I believe there is some truth in the statement. However, I don’t think we can afford to try.

Carlyle has, like Emerson, just lost his mother; like her, I should think, rather a remarkable woman. He left the Ashburtons’ house in Hampshire just after I got there, to go and see her at Ecclefechan, in Annandale.

Will you tell me, please, what is the amount of rate for schools in Boston and Cambridge? I am right, am I not, in telling people that children of colour attend the schools at Cambridge, but not at Boston?

For a scrap of news--

Over-worked, over-hurried,
Over-Crokered, over-Murrayed.

Such was the monody uttered over himself by the invalided ex-editor of the ‘Quarterly,’ on retiring for an Italian seclusion.

_To the same._

London: February 1854.

Here we are enjoying cool weather, with about as much light per diem as you get in mid-winter, looking, therefore, very cheerful and sunny. Meantime the Parliament is going to begin its parliamenteering of the new year; and the Queen, who it was said was afraid her loyal subjects might pelt her husband, is, it appears, not afraid, and is going to open session in person. Many people, do you know, really believed Prince Albert was actually sent to the Tower; and some repairs being in operation in one of the turrets, a large number of people collected to look on, in the belief that apartments were to be fitted up for H.R.H.

I read your article on Indian Canals with much pleasure and interest. I think it is very well done, and I hope it is all true. I fancy the Company have rather gained in public estimation by their late ordeal of trial.

Bright, you see, has for the first time come out for the secular system. It is a great accession to that cause, which, however, I think myself cannot prevail for our country in general. For the clergy in the country parishes are almost always the only persons who really exert themselves, the population in general being at present too apathetic to think of managing these matters. But in the municipal towns something perhaps could be done. And certainly all through the land the secular schools should receive government subsidies, from which at present they are excluded.

Convocation, you will perhaps observe, is allowed to sit, and there really is to be an effort to set the old church a-going again; much to its own and other people’s alarm. The census, by which it appears that the church people, so far as attending on Census Sunday went, are quite a minority, has taken the world by surprise.

_To the same._

February 20, 1854.

Many thanks for the ‘Boston Daily Express.’ I do truly hope that you will get the North ere long thoroughly united against any further encroachments. I don’t by any means feel that the slave system is an intolerable crime, nor do I think that our system here is so much better; but it is clear to me that the only safe ground to go upon is that of your Northern States. I suppose the rich and poor difficulties will be creeping in at New York, but one would fain hope that European analogies will not be accepted even there.

Well, here we are going to war; and really people after their long and dreary commercial period seem quite glad: the feeling of the war being just is of course a great thing. The enlightened or official opinion of the Turkish troops meantime is extremely low.

As for the poems, I really do think seriously of accepting your benevolent offer, but I don’t think I can set to work to unravel my weaved-up follies at the present moment. There are very few, indeed, that I can at all find pleasure in seeing again.

Is it true, as is said, that Longfellow has resigned? If so, he will come over here and run the gauntlet of idolising young ladies, will he not? However, I think he is adroit enough to steer through the Belgravian multitude without much damage.

People talk a good deal about Whewell’s book on the ‘Plurality of Worlds.’ I recommend Fields to pirate it. It is to show that Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, &c., are all pretty certainly uninhabitable, being strange, washy limbos of places, where at the best only mollusks (or in the case of Venus, salamanders) could exist. Hence we conclude that we are the only rational creatures, which is highly satisfactory, and what is more, quite scriptural. Other scientific people, on the other hand, declare it a most presumptuous essay, conclusions audacious, and reasoning fallacious, though the facts are allowed; and in that opinion I, on the ground that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the inductive philosophy, incline to concur. Meantime, it is thought possible that Whewell may rise to the Episcopate on the wings of the orthodox inductive philosophy.

_To the same._

Downing Street: May 9, 1854.

You will think I am perfide Albion itself. The fact is I have been overwhelmed with work and imaginary responsibility. Plutarch goes on, though with huge interruptions. And I was very glad to see Felton. And I obeyed your vermilion edict, and sent some verse by him; if you do think it worth while to be at the trouble, I will not be ashamed. I have some few Elegiacs and Hexameters, written at Rome during my visit there in the time of the siege.

Politics here are rather colourless. Scotch education is thrown overboard by a coalition between the landowners, establishmentarians, and voluntaries, who have defeated Government by eight votes. The Oxford Bill will pass with a few scratches in committee rather damaging to it, but not very momentous. Gladstone, I think, has done himself great honour by refusing to borrow for the war, but the bankers and great capitalists have been abusing him furiously. By this time you are all scattering to the seas and the hills, and Boston will be getting hot and empty, and the shadow of the pines an object of exceeding desire, but for the mosquitoes.

_To R. W. Emerson, Esq._

Downing Street: June 10, 1854.

It is now nearly a twelvemonth since I fled in that precipitate, half-voluntary manner from Massachusetts. Another fortnight will complete the year: and another two days from this will, in all probability, see me married.

You in the meantime, are in all the turmoil of a renewed slavery contest. From this distance it almost looks as if the aggression would be of more use in breaking down the idea of compromise than of harm in its actual results.

I am going on here, working in the office in the ordinary routine, which, however, after years of Greek tuition, is really a very great relief. All education is in England, and I think in America, so mixed up with religious matters, that it is a great difficulty.

_To C. E. Norton, Esq._

Lea Hurst, Matlock: June 28, 1854.

Your letter of congratulation arrived, curiously enough, on the very morning of our marriage, and was a very pleasant incident of the day. Felton’s letter, announcing a variety of kind remembrances, came three or four days after, and was, I assure you, a very pleasant surprise indeed. This place strangely reminds me of Shady Hill last summer; though it is not really very like it, being a house on a broad open bank, a considerable height above the river Derwent, the valley of which it looks down as it flows from Matlock to Derby. Nor have we any of those scorching heats which had begun before I left you, now twelve months ago exactly. I am doing Plutarch, and living in an in-and-out-of-doors sort of way.

_To the same._

Combe Hurst: August 19, 1854.

I have almost chosen a house, and in six weeks expect to be a householder, with goods and chattels, and the _post_ householder _sedens atra cura_.

Cholera is amongst us, as you see, and laying low lords even; Lord Beaumont (but not by cholera) in the last three weeks, besides Lord Jocelyn.

Did you see the ‘Examiner’ on Mrs. Stowe’s ‘Sunny Memories’? _quite_ a severe article, and _quite_ unnecessarily so, I should say. The use of quite is a peculiarity which I quite remarked myself, but I think you have quite a right to use it as a substitute, if you please, for our less exact ‘very,’ and in colloquial writing no one ought to object. I don’t see that the old-country English are to have the exclusive right of introducing new expressions.

_To R. W. Emerson, Esq._

Council Office, Whitehall: August 22, 1854.

My dear Emerson,--Your letter about a week ago was very welcome, and the silver candlestick which came in Felton’s box of treasures was very much appreciated, and I am to send the kindest possible thanks for it. I only hope fortune may indeed some day waft us over, at least for a visit, to your Northern Vinland.

Carlyle is, I believe, ruralising at Addiscombe, a few miles out of London, which always does him a great deal of good. I dare say we shall not meet till London begins to consider itself alive again in October.

This country has, as you say, its concentrated civilization to hold one to it--it seems waste of opportunity to leave such a mass of old knowledge. But I think you are better and more happily off in America, where the vastness of the machinery does not destroy the sense of individual purpose. The ship here is really so big that one cannot see that it moves, or that any one of the little petty services which people are for the dear bread’s sake set to do, can have any effect one way or another on its motion. If one has a place or business here, one is only standing in some other person’s shoes, who really could very likely do the thing as well.

You are so infinitely more plastic, again, as to opinions than, except in talk, the English are. As for your politics, certainly they do not look well at present, and one is afraid that New York may after all acquiesce in the _fait accompli_, and go back to its farm and its country-house without concerning itself further. I am afraid the English theory is, when one has done a wrong thing, to forget it as soon as possible. Farewell!

_To F. J. Child, Esq., of Cambridge, Massachusetts._

Downing Street: September 2, 1854.

I hope the Chaucer is going on prosperously. I think you should adopt means to make the metre quite obvious, at any sacrifice of typographical prettiness. Yet I don’t like the grave accent, ‘When Zephyrus eke with his sotè breth,’ and should almost prefer the ˘, sotĕ, but that it seems unmeaning to use a mark of quantity. Yet it is not a case of accent, either. I think I should in one way or another mark every syllable that would not now be pronounced, grevĕs and levès and Emperourè’s daughter--the most correct mark would be ë: Emperourë’s; sotë. And I should prefix to the whole a very plain and short statement of the usage in these points.

I suppose there is not much doubt about a few general rules, though Chaucer did not regularly observe them, as, for example, the use of the ĕ in adjectives after definite articles, which it seems to me he omits occasionally, with French adjectives, as if it was a matter of ear rather than rule. So also with such Saxon dissyllables as tymĕ, which is not invariably a dissyllable, I think. And yet it would be worth while giving a list of such words as are liable to be dissyllables. However, ere this, I dare say you have settled all these preliminaries. I don’t quite see what you should do about the Miller’s and the Reve’s tales. I think explanation might be a little retrenched there, so as to leave them in the ‘decent obscurity of a learned language.’ They are thoroughly English stories, but I don’t know whether they are New English. They are just what would be relished to this day in public-houses in farming districts, but I can’t say that I could wish them urged upon any palate that does not already fancy them, and I don’t much admire the element in the English character that does relish them. It is a great thing, no doubt, to do dirty _work_, and the English are pretty good at it; but when it ceases to be work, it is a different thing, and I don’t see much good in it.

I think the Americans have the advantage of being less ‘farceurs’ than the British subject is apt to be. There is a sort of servants’-hall facetiousness which predominates in the cockney world, and finds its way into literature, which I think deserves no sort of imitation or admiration.

I have just been taking a house in the extreme skirts of the Regent’s Park, not far from the Zoological Gardens, with a canal underneath it, and some very un-Venetian gondolas, called here coal-barges, passing to and fro upon it in the foreground, while in the distance rise the suburban Alps of ’Ampstead and ’Ighgate--‘Oh breathe on them softly’--and a little to one side swells the pastural eminence of Primrose Hill.

_To C. E. Norton, Esq._

London: September 1854.

I have never acknowledged yet, except per Professor Child, Ph.D., your letter from Newport. Your description was somewhat amusing, as, in point of fact, I have been in Newport, and have not been in the Isle of Wight. I was at Newport at the age of six or seven, and passed by it, moreover--scarcely, however, realising the scenes of my infancy--in that swift transit commenced under your auspices, from Boston viâ Fall River to New York and the ‘Asia’ steamer.