hings at home. New York is _improved_, as the word goes,
wonderfully. You will return to a strange city; you will not recognize
many of your acquaintances among the old buildings; brand-new buildings,
stores, and houses are taking the place of the good, staid, modest houses
of the early settlers. _Improvement_ is all the rage, and houses and
churchyards must be overthrown and upturned whenever the Corporation
plough is set to work for the widening of a narrow, or the making of a
new, street.

"I believe you sometimes have a fit of the blues. It is singular if you
do not with your temperament. I confess to many fits of this disagreeable
disorder, and I know nothing so likely to induce one as the finding,
after an absence of some years from home, the great hour-hand of life
sensibly advanced on all your former friends. What will be your
sensations after six or seven years if mine are acute after three years'
absence?

"I have not been much in society as yet. I have many visitations, but,
until I clear off the accumulated rubbish of three years which lies upon
my table, I must decline seeing much of my friends. I have seen twice
your sisters the Misses Delancy, and was prevented from being at their
house last Friday evening by the severest snow-storm we have had this
season. Our friends the Jays I have met several times, and have had much
conversation with them about you and your delightful family. Mr. P.A. Jay
is a member of the club, so I see him every Friday evening. Chancellor
Kent also is a member, and both warm friends of yours....

"My time for ten or twelve days past has been occupied in answering a
pamphlet of Colonel Trumbull, who came out for the purpose of justifying
his opposition to measures which had been devised for uniting the two
Academies. I send you the first copy hot from the press. There is a great
deal to dishearten in the state of feeling, or rather state of no
feeling, on the arts in this city. The only way I can keep up my spirits
is by resolutely resisting all disposition to repine, and by fighting
perseveringly against all the obstacles that hinder the progress of art.

"I have been told several times since my return that I was born one
hundred years too soon for the arts in our country. I have replied that,
if that be the case, I will try and make it but fifty. I am more and more
persuaded that I have quite as much to do with the pen for the arts as
the pencil, and if I can in my day so enli