storical and political part there is no great probability
that we shall differ in opinion; but what I have said about Bacon's
philosophy is widely at variance with what Dugald Stuart, and
Mackintosh, have said on the same subject. I have not your essay; nor
have I read it since I read it at Cambridge, with very great pleasure,
but without any knowledge of the subject. I have at present only a very
faint and general recollection of its contents, and have in vain tried
to procure a copy of it here. I fear, however, that, differing widely
as I do from Stewart and Mackintosh, I shall hardly agree with you. My
opinion is formed, not at second hand, like those of nine-tenths of the
people who talk about Bacon; but after several very attentive perusals
of his greatest works, and after a good deal of thought. If I am in the
wrong, my errors may set the minds of others at work, and may be the
means of bringing both them, and me, to a knowledge of the truth. I
never bestowed so much care on anything that I have written. There is
not a sentence in the latter half of the article which has not been
repeatedly recast. I have no expectation that the popularity of the
article will bear any proportion to the trouble which I have expended
on it. But the trouble has been so great a pleasure to me that I have
already been greatly overpaid. Pray look carefully to the printing.

In little more than a year I shall be embarking for England, and I
have determined to employ the four months of my voyage in mastering
the German language. I should be much obliged to you to send me out,
as early as you can, so that they may be certain to arrive in time, the
best grammar, and the best dictionary, that can be procured; a German
Bible; Schiller's works; Goethe's works; and Niebuhr's History, both in
the original, and in the translation. My way of learning a language is
always to begin with the Bible, which I can read without a dictionary.
After a few days passed in this way, I am master of all the common
particles, the common rules of syntax, and a pretty large vocabulary.
Then I fall on some good classical work. It was in this way that I
learned both Spanish and Portuguese, and I shall try the same course
with German.

I have little or nothing to tell you about myself. My life has flowed
away here with strange rapidity. It seems but yesterday that I left
my country; and I am writing to beg you to hasten preparations for my
return. I continue to enjoy