ys at
the same page. For I have some experiences, that my interest in
thoughts--and to an end, perhaps, only of new thoughts and
thinking--outlasts that of all my reasonable neighbors, and
offends, no doubt, by unhealthy pertinacity. But though rebuked
by a daily reduction to an absurd solitude, and by a score of
disappointments with intellectual people, and in the face of a
special hell provided for me in the Swedenborg Universe, I am yet
confirmed in my madness by the scope and satisfaction I find in a
conversation once or twice in five years, if so often; and so we
find or pick what we call our proper path, though it be only from
stone to stone, or from island to island, in a very rude,
stilted, and violent fashion. With such solitariness and
frigidities, you may judge I was glad to see Clough here, with
whom I had established some kind of robust working-friendship,
and who had some great permanent values for me. Had he not taken
me by surprise and fled in a night, I should have done what I
could to block his way. I am too sure he will not return. The
first months comprise all the shocks of disappointment that are
likely to disgust a new-comer. The sphere of opportunity opens
slowly, but to a man of his abilities and culture--rare enough
here--with the sureness of chemistry. The Giraffe entering Paris
wore the label, "Eh bien, messieurs, il n'y a qu'une bete de
plus!" And Oxonians are cheap in London; but here, the eternal
economy of sending things where they are wanted makes a
commanding claim. Do not suffer him to relapse into London. He
had made himself already cordially welcome to many good people,
and would have soon made his own place. He had just established
his valise at my house, and was to come--the gay deceiver--once a
fortnight for his Sunday; and his individualities and his
nationalities are alike valuable to me. I beseech you not to
commend his unheroic retreat.

I have lately made, one or two drafts on your goodness,--which I
hate to do, both because you meet them so generously, and because
you never give me an opportunity of revenge,--and mainly in the
case of Miss Bacon, who has a private history that entitles her
to high respect, and who could be helped only by facilitating her
Shakespeare studies, in which she has the faith and ardor of a
discoverer. Bancroft was to have given her letters to Hallam,
but gave one to Sir H. Ellis. Everett, I believe, gave her one
to Mr. Grote;