is running a foolish risk, and
they who get disappointment by it reap the most probable result
from such experiments. I am quite willing to trust my friends; God
forbid I should ever try them!...

We have not yet been to Boston, and therefore I myself know nothing
of Channing, and cannot answer your questions about him. All that I
hear inclines me to like as well as respect him. His gentleness and
kindness, his weak health, brought on by over-study, his perfect
simplicity and unaffectedness--these are the usual details that
follow any mention of him, and accord with the impression his
writings produced upon me; but of his theological treatises I know
nothing.

I am glad anything so universal as the blessed sunshine reminds you
of me, because my remembrance must be present with you almost
daily. The lights of heaven shine more glowingly here than through
the misty veils that curtain our islands. The moon and stars are
wonderfully bright, and there is an intensity, an earnestness, and
a translucent purity in the sky here that delights me.... Four
months are already gone out of the two years we are to pass out of
England. Dear England! My heart dwells with affectionate pride upon
the beauty and greatness and goodness of my own country--that
wonderful little land, that mere morsel of earth as it seems on the
map--so full of power, of wealth, of intellectual vigor and moral
worth!...

I found Graham a little too much of a Republican for me, though his
"History" seemed to me upon the whole good and very impartial. I am
now half way through Smith's "Virginia," which pleases me by its
quaint old-world style. I am myself much inclined to be in love
with Captain Smith. A man who fights three Turks and carries their
heads on his shield is to me an admirable man....

I answer the propositions in your letters in regular rotation as
they come; and so, with regard to the peaches, those that I have
tasted on this side of the Atlantic I should say were not
comparable to fine hothouse peaches in England and fine French
espalier peaches; but then the peach trees here are standard trees,
and there are whole orchards of them. Their chief merit, therefore,
is their abundance, and some of that abundance is certainly fit for
nothing but to feed pigs withal.