k) near Covent Garden; who professes to
correspond with Hilliard and Company, Boston, and undertook the
service. The Book is not gone yet, I understand; but Kennet
engages that it shall leave Liverpool infallibly on the 5th of
June. I wish you a happy reading of it, therefore: it is the
only copy of my sending that has crossed the water. Ill printed
(there are many errors, one or two gross ones), ill written, ill
thought! But in fine it _is_ off my hands: that is a fact worth
all others. As to its reception here or elsewhere, I anticipate
nothing or little. Gabble, gabble, the astonishment of the dull
public brain is likely to be considerable, and its ejaculations
unedifying. We will let it go its way. Beat this thing, I say
always, under thy dull hoofs, O dull Public! trample it and
tumble it into all sinks and kennels; if thou canst kill it,
kill it in God's name: if thou canst not kill it, why then thou
wilt not.

By the by, speaking of dull Publics, I ought to say that I have
seen a review of myself in the _Christian Examiner_ (I think that
is it) of Boston; the author of which, if you know him, I desire
you to thank on my part. For if a dull million is good, then
withal a seeing unit or two is also good. This man images back a
beautiful idealized Clothes-Philosopher, very satisfactory to
look upon; in whose beatified features I did verily detect more
similitude to what I myself meant to be, than in any or all the
other criticisms I have yet seen written of me. That a man see
himself reflected from the soul of his brother-man in this
brotherly improved way: there surely is one of the most
legitimate joys of existence. Friend Ripley took the trouble to
send me this Review, in which I detected an Article of his own;
there came also some Discourses of his much to be approved of; a
Newspaper passage-of-fence with a Philistine of yours; and a set
of Essays on Progress-of-the-species and such like by a man whom
I grieved to see confusing himself with that. Progress of the
species is a thing I can get no good of at all. These Books,
which Miss Martineau has borrowed from me, did not arrive till
three weeks ago or less. I pray you to thank Ripley for them
very kindly; which at present I still have not time to do. He
seems to me a good man, with good aims; with considerable
natural health of mind, wherein all goodness is likely to grow
better, all clearness to grow clearer. Miss Martineau lam