tutions of your country; they are the expectation of the world; and
if the Americans themselves, by word or deed, proclaim their scheme of
free government a failure, it seems to me that the future condition of
the human race is ominously darkened, and that all endeavor after
progress or improvement is a fruitless struggle towards an unattainable
end. But this is not so. Your people will yet prove it, and it will and
must be through the influence and agency of worthy men like yourself,
to whom fitly belongs the task of rallying this faithless people, flying
from their standards in the great world-conflict. Call them back, such
of you as have voices that can be heard; for your nation is the vanguard
of the race, and if they desert their trust its degradation will be
protracted for long years to come.

The despondency of some of your best men is deplorable, and the selfish
discouragement in which they withdraw from the fight, giving place to
public evil for the sake of their personal quiet, a fatal omen to the
country. It is curiously unlike the spirit of Englishmen. Never,
certainly, were good men and true so needed anywhere as here at this
moment, when the noblest principles that men are capable of recognizing
in the form of a government seem about to be cast down from the rightful
supremacy your fathers gave them, and the light of freedom which they
kindled to lighten the world extinguished in distrust and dismay.

God bless you and prosper you in every good work. Remember me most
kindly to S----, and believe me always

Yours very truly,
F. A. B.

PHILADELPHIA, September 9th, 1843.

Your English is undoubtedly better than Cicero's Latin to me, my dear
T----, inasmuch as I understand the one and not the other. I shall not
stop on my way through New York, on Monday, nor my way back, except to
spend a Sunday in your city, when I shall be very glad to see S---- and
you.

I am disappointed at the uncertainty you express about being in Lenox
while I am there.

Can you ascertain for me whether the Harpers, the New York publishers,
would be willing to publish a volume of Fugitive Poems for me, and would
give me _anything_ for them? If it is not too much trouble to ascertain
this, it would be doing me a great service....

I write in haste, but remain ever yours,