ich I
suppose _will_ find its real "Poets" some day or other; when
once the Greek, Semitic, and multifarious other Cobwebs are swept
away a little! Well, we must wait.--For the rest, if this
skillful Naturalist and you will make any more experiments on
Indian Corn for us, might I not ask that you would try for a
method of preserving _the meal_ in a sound state for us?
Oatmeal, which would spoil directly too, is preserved all year by
kiln-drying the grain before it is ground,--parching it till it
is almost _brown,_ sometimes the Scotch Highlanders, by intense
parching, can keep their oatmeal good for a series of years. No
Miller here at present is likely to produce such beautiful meal
as some of the American specimens I have seen:--if possible, we
must learn to get the grain over in the shape of proper durable
meal. At all events, let your Friend charitably make some
inquiry into the process of millerage, the possibilities of it
for meeting our case;--and send us the result some day, on a
separate bit of paper. With which let us end, for the present.
Alas, I have yet written nothing; am yet a long way off writing,
I fear! Not for want of matter, perhaps, but for redundance of
it; I feel as if I had the whole world to write yet, with the
day fast bending downwards on me, and did not know where to
begin,--in what manner to address the deep-sunk populations of
the Theban Land. Any way my Life is very _grim,_ on these terms,
and is like to be; God only knows what farther quantity of
braying in the mortar this foolish clay of mine may yet need!--
They are printing a third Edition of _Cromwell;_ that bothered
me for some weeks, but now I am over with that, and the Printer
wholly has it: a sorrowful, not now or ever a joyful thing to
me, that. The _stupor_ of my fellow blockheads, for Centuries
back, presses too heavy upon that,--as upon many things, O
Heavens! People are about setting up some _Statue of Cromwell,_
at St. Ives, or elsewhere: the King-Hudson Statue is never yet
set up; and the King himself (as you may have heard) has been
_discovered_ swindling. I advise all men not to erect a statue
for Cromwell just now. Macaulay's _History_ is also out, running
through the fourth edition: did I tell you last time that I had
read it,--with wonder and amazement? Finally, it seems likely
Lord John Russell will shortly walk out (forever, it is hoped),
and Sir R. Peel come in; to make what effort is in him
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