AMS

'_October_ 18_th_, 1848.

'MY DEAR SIR,--Not feeling competent this evening either for study or
serious composition, I will console myself with writing to you. My
malady, which the doctors call a bilious fever, lingers, or rather it
returns with each sudden change of weather, though I am thankful to
say that the relapses have hitherto been much milder than the first
attack; but they keep me weak and reduced, especially as I am obliged
to observe a very low spare diet.

'My book, alas! is laid aside for the present; both head and hand
seem to have lost their cunning; imagination is pale, stagnant, mute.
This incapacity chagrins me; sometimes I have a feeling of cankering
care on the subject, but I combat it as well as I can; it does no
good.

'I am afraid I shall not write a cheerful letter to you. A letter,
however, of some kind I am determined to write, for I should be sorry
to appear a neglectful correspondent to one from whose communications
I have derived, and still derive, so much pleasure. Do not talk
about not being on a level with Currer Bell, or regard him as "an
awful person"; if you saw him now, sitting muffled at the fireside,
shrinking before the east wind (which for some days has been blowing
wild and keen over our cold hills), and incapable of lifting a pen
for any less formidable task than that of writing a few lines to an
indulgent friend, you would be sorry not to deem yourself greatly his
superior, for you would feel him to be a poor creature.

'You may be sure I read your views on the providence of God and the
nature of man with interest. You are already aware that in much of
what you say my opinions coincide with those you express, and where
they differ I shall not attempt to bias you. Thought and conscience
are, or ought to be, free; and, at any rate, if your views were
universally adopted there would be no persecution, no bigotry. But
never try to proselytise, the world is not yet fit to receive what
you and Emerson say: man, as he now is, can no more do without creeds
and forms in religion than he can do without laws and rules in social
intercourse. You and Emerson judge others by yourselves; all mankind
are not like you, any more than every Israelite was like Nathaniel.

'"Is there a human be