nd must be pitied as having
one glittering toy the less. I am a victim all my days to
certain graces of form and behavior, and can never come into
equilibrium. Now I am fooled by my own young people, and grow
old contented. The heedless children suddenly take the keenest
hold on life, and foolish papas cling to the world on their
account, as never on their own. Out of sympathy, we _make
believe_ to value the prizes of their ambition and hope. My, two
girls, pupils once or now of Agassiz, are good, healthy,
apprehensive, decided young people, who love life. My boy
divides his time between Cicero and cricket, knows his boat, the
birds, and Walter Scott--verse and prose, through and through,--
and will go to College next year. Sam Ward and I tickled each
other the other day, in looking over a very good company of young
people, by finding in the new comers a marked improvement on
their parents. There, I flatter myself, I see some emerging of
our people from the prison of their politics. The insolvency of
slavery shows and stares, and we shall perhaps live to see that
putrid Black-vomit extirpated by mere dying and planting.

I am so glad to find myself speaking once more to you, that I
mean to persist in the practice. Be as glad as you have been.
You and I shall not know each other on this platform as long as
we have known. A correspondence even of twenty-five years should
not be disused unless through some fatal event. Life is too
short, and, with all our poetry and morals, too indigent to allow
such sacrifices. Eyes so old and wary, and which have learned to
look on so much, are gathering an hourly harvest,--and I cannot
spare what on noble terms is offered me.

With congratulations to Jane Carlyle on the grandeur of the Book,

Yours affectionately,
R.W. Emerson

Extract From Diary*

Here has come into the country, three or four months ago, a
_History of Frederick,_ infinitely the wittiest book that ever
was written,--a book that one would think the English people
would rise up in mass and thank the author for, by cordial
acclamation, and signify, by crowning him with oakleaves, their
joy that such a head existed among them, and sympathizing and
much-reading America would make a new treaty or send a Minister
Extraordinary to offer congratulation of honoring delight to
England, in acknowledgment of this donation,--a book holding so
many memorable and heroic facts, working di