cure a sale of a few weeks. They
said, no; yet advised the taking a certificate of copyright,
that we might try the case if we wished. After much consulting
and balancing for a few hours, I decided to print, as heretofore,
on our own account, an edition, but cheap, to make the temptation
less, to retail at seventy-five cents. I print fifteen hundred
copies, and announce to the public that it is your edition, and
all good men must buy this. I have written to the great
Reprinters, namely to Park Benjamin, and to the Harpers, of New
York, to request their forbearance; and have engaged Little and
Brown to publish, because, I think, they have something more of
weight with Booksellers, and are a little less likely to be
invaded than Munroe. If we sell a thousand copies at seventy-five
cents, it will only yield you about two hundred dollars; if we
should be invaded, we can then afford to sell the other five
hundred copies at twenty-five cents, without loss. In thus
doing, I involve you in some risk; but it was the best course
that occurred.--Hitherto, the _Miscellanies_ have not been
reprinted in the cheap forms; and in the last year, James Munroe
& Co. have sold few copies; all books but the cheapest being
unsold in the hard times; something has however accrued to your
credit there. J.M. & Co. fear that, if the new book is pirated
at New York and the pirate prospers, instantly the _Miscellanies_
will be plundered. We will hope better, or at least exult
in that which remains, to wit, a Worth unplunderable, yet
infinitely communicable.

I have hardly space left to say what I would concerning the
_Dial._ I heartily hoped I had done with it, when lately our
poor, good, publishing Miss Peabody,... wrote me that its
subscription would not pay its expenses (we all writing for
love). But certain friends are very unwilling it should die, and
I a little unwilling, though very unwilling to be the life of it,
as editor. And now that you are safely through your book, and
before the greater Sequel rushes to its conclusion, send me, I
pray you, that short chapter which hovers yet in the limbo of
contingency, in solid letters and points. Let it be, if that is
readiest, a criticism on the _Dial,_ and this too Elysian race,
not blood, and yet not ichor.--Let Jane Carlyle be on my part,
and, watchful of his hours, urge the poet in the golden one. I
think to send you a duplicate of the last number of the _Dial_ by
Mr. Man