_there:_ I am right
well quit of it; and the elderly gentlemen on both sides of the
water may take comfort, they will not soon have to suffer the
like again. But really England is wonderfully changed within
these ten years; the old gentlemen all shrunk into nooks, some
of them even voting with the young.--The American ill-printed Two
and-a-half-dollars Copy shall, for Emerson's sake, be welcomest
to me of all. Kennet will send it when it comes.

The _Oration_ did arrive, with my name on it, one snowy night in
January. It is off to Madeira; probably there now. I can
dispose of a score of copies to good advantage. Friend Sterling
has done the best of all his things in the current _Blackwood,_--
"Crystals from a Cavern,"--which see. He writes kind things of
you from Madeira, in expectation of the Speech. I will gratify
him with your message; he is to be here in May; better, we
hope, and in the way towards safety. Miss Martineau has given
you a luminous section in her new Book about America; you are
one of the American "Originals,"--the good Harriet!

And now I have but one thing to add and to repeat: Be quiet, be
quiet! The fire that is in one's own stomach is enough, without
foreign bellows to blow it ever and anon. My whole heart
shudders at the thrice-wretched self-combustion into which I see
all manner of poor paper-lanterns go up, the wind of "popularity"
puffing at them, and nothing left erelong but ashes and sooty
wreck. It is sad, most sad. I shun all such persons and
circles, as much as possible; and pray the gods to make me a
brick layer's hodbearer rather. O the "cabriolets, neatflies,"
and blue twaddlers of both sexes therein, that drive many a poor
Mrs. Rigmarole to the Devil!*--As for me, I continue doing as
nearly nothing as I can manage. I decline all invitations of
society that are declinable: a London rout is one of the maddest
things under the moon; a London dinner makes me sicker for a
week, and I say often, It is better to be even dull than to be
witty, better to be silent than to speak.

--------
* This sentence is a variation on one at the beginning of the
article on Scott.
--------

Curious: your Course of Lectures "on Human Culture" seems to be
on the very subject I am to discourse upon here in May coming;
but I am to call it "on the History of Literature," and _speak_
it, not write it. While you read this, I shall be in the
agonies! Ah me! often when I think of