to you along with the ten volumes which were overdue. All
this was solemnly declared to me as on Affidavit; Chapman also
took extract of the Massachusetts passage in your Letter, in
order to pour it like ice-cold water on the head of his stupid
old Chief-Clerk, the instant the poor creature got back from his
rustication: alas, I am by no means certain that it will make a
new man of him, nor, in fact, that the whole of this amendatory
programme will get itself performed to equal satisfaction! But
you must write to me at once if it is not so; and done it shall
be in spite of human stupidity itself. Note, withal, these
things: Chapman sends no Books to America _except_ through Field
& Co.; he does not regularly send a Box at the middle of the
month; but he does "almost monthly send one Bog"; so that if
your monthly Volume do not start from London about the 15th, it
is due by the very _next_ Chapman-Field box; and if it at any
time don't come, I beg of you very much to make instant complaint
through Field & Co., or what would be still more effectual,
direct to myself. My malison on all Blockheadisms and torpid
stupidities and infidelities; of which this world is full!--

Your Letter had been anxiously enough waited for, a month before
my departure; but we will not mention the delay in presence of
what you were engaged with then. _Faustum sit;_ that truly was
and will be a Work worth doing your best upon; and I, if alive,
can promise you at least one reader that will do his best upon
your Work. I myself, often think of the Philosophies precisely
in that manner. To say truth, they do not otherwise rise in
esteem with me at all, but rather sink. The last thing I read of
that kind was a piece by Hegel, in an excellent Translation by
Stirling, right well translated, I could see, for every bit of it
was intelligible to me; but my feeling at the end of it was,
"Good Heavens, I have walked this road before many a good time;
but never with a Cannon-ball at each ankle before!" Science
also, Science falsely so called, is--But I will not enter upon
that with you just now.

The Visit to America, alas, alas, is pure Moonshine. Never had
I, in late years, the least shadow of intention to undertake that
adventure; and I am quite at a loss to understand how the rumor
originated. One Boston Gentleman (a kind of universal
Undertaker, or Lion's Provider of Lecturers I think) informed me
that _"the Cable"_ had told