ranquil, _well
let alone,_--an indispensable blessing to a poor creature fretted
to fiddle-strings, as I grow to be in this Babylon, take it as I
will. We had eight weeks of desolate rain; with about eight
days bright as diamonds intercalated in that black monotony of
bad weather. The old Hills are the same; the old Streams go
gushing along as in past years, in past ages; but he that looks
on them is no longer the same: and the old Friends, where are
they? I walk silent through my old haunts in that country; sunk
usually in inexpressible reflections, in an immeasurable chaos of
musings and mopings that cannot be reflected or articulated. The
only work I had on hand was one that would not prosper with me:
an Article for the _Quarterly Review_ on the state of the Working
Classes here. The thoughts were familiar to me, old, many years
old; but the utterance of them, in what spoken dialect to utter
them! The _Quarterly Review_ was not an eligible vehicle, and
yet the eligiblest; of Whigs, abandoned to Dilettantism and
withered sceptical conventionality, there was no hope at all;
the _London-and-Westminster_ Radicals, wedded to their Benthamee
Formulas, and tremulous at their own shadows, expressly rejected
my proposal many months ago: Tories alone remained; Tories I
often think have more stuff in them, in spite of their blindness,
than any other class we have;--Walter Scott's _sympathy_ with his
fellow creatures, what is it compared with Sydney Smith's, with a
Poor Law Commissioner's! Well: this thing would not prosper
with me in Scotland at all; nor here at all, where nevertheless
I had to persist writing; writing and burning, and cursing my
destiny, and then again writing. Finally the thing came out, as
an Essay on _Chartism;_ was shown to Lockhart, according to
agreement; was praised by him, but was also found unsuitable by
him; suitable to _explode_ a whole fleet of Quarterlies into
sky-rockets in these times! And now Fraser publishes it himself,
with some additions, as a little Volume; and it will go forth in
a week or two on its own footing; and England will see what she
has to say to it, whether something or nothing; and one man, as
usual, is right glad that he has nothing more to do with it.
This is the reason why I could not write. I mean to send you the
Proof-sheets of this thing, to do with as you see cause; there
will be but some five or six, I think. It is probable my New
England