t of your handwriting was a real blessing
to me, after so long an abstinence. You shall not know all the
sad reflections I have made upon your silence within the last
year. I never doubted your fidelity of heart; your genial deep
and friendly recognition of my bits of merits, and my bits of
sufferings, difficulties and obstructions; your forgiveness of
my faults; or in fact that you ever would forget me, or cease to
think kindly of me: but it seemed as if practically _Old Age_
had come upon the scene here too; and as if upon the whole one
must make up one's mind to know that all this likewise had fallen
silent, and could be possessed henceforth only on those new
terms. Alas, there goes much over, year after year, into the
regions of the Immortals; inexpressibly beautiful, but also
inexpressibly sad. I have not many voices to commune with in the
world. In fact I have properly no voice at all; and yours, I
have often said, was the _unique_ among my fellow-creatures, from
which came full response, and discourse of reason: the
_solitude_ one lives in, if one has any spiritual thought at all,
is very great in these epochs!--The truth is, moreover, I bought
spectacles to myself about two years ago (bad print in candle-
light having fairly become troublesome to me); much may lie in
that! "The buying of your first pair of spectacles," I said to
an old Scotch gentleman, "is an important epoch; like the buying
of your first razor."--"Yes," answered he, "but not quite so
joyful perhaps!"--Well, well, I have heard from you again; and
you promise to be again constant in writing. Shall I believe
you, this time? Do it, and shame the Devil! I really am
persuaded it will do yourself good; and to me I know right well,
and have always known, what it will do. The gaunt lonesomeness
of this Midnight Hour, in the ugly universal _snoring_ hum of the
overfilled deep-sunk Posterity of Adam, renders an articulate
speaker precious indeed! Watchman, what sayest thou, then?
Watchman, what of the night?--

Your glimpses of the huge unmanageable Mississippi, of the huge
ditto Model Republic, have here and there something of the _epic_
in them,--_ganz nach meinem Sinne._ I see you do not dissent
from me in regard to that latter enormous Phenomenon, except on
the outer surface, and in the way of peaceably instead of
_un_peaceably accepting the same. Alas, all the world is a
"republic of the Mediocrities," and always was;--yo